Comments on: Paper to the rescue

By: Oskar Shapley

Oskar Shapley — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:47:17 +0000

Stephen King observed in ‘Shining’ that playing with cars, ordering them, etc., is a simple meditation technique that helps thinking. Using your hands helps to keep busy those chaotic and restless areas of the brain while your consciousness does the higher level work.

By: ImaginaryGirl

ImaginaryGirl — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:24:07 +0000

My husband is just now finishing his Ph.D (literally—defense in a few weeks). Over the years, he’s had many distractions (not the least of which was meeting me and getting married), including swing dancing and playing drums. But then he got into poker and serious “amateur” photography. Poker and photography have been the great distractions.

By: perianwyr

perianwyr — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 20:21:00 +0000

Full contact LARPing!

You spend all the random time you have either making new weapons or thinking up new and wacky ways to make them, and then you spend the weekend hitting people with them. Good stuff.

By: Eszter

Eszter — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 16:37:49 +0000

Cooking is a good one! I did some of that at some point. I think it seemed like to large a distraction toward the end though.

I tried Yoga a couple of times (some friends swore by it and probably could not have finished grad school without it), but it never did it for me.

How could I forget WEBoggle??:) (I didn’t use that particular version, I’m not sure if it was around. But I used a similar one.)

I would’ve loved to do dancing, but I wasn’t happy with the local options in grad school so I added that to my schedule recently.

To clear my head, I used to drive around a bit before going home (often around 2am), an activity I found very relaxing. It also helped me come up with some really great ideas about work. (I don’t think papier mache ever had that kind of an effect on my research.)

By: Jason Kuznicki

Jason Kuznicki — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 14:47:33 +0000

As someone who completed his PhD in September, I would definitely second the yoga recommendation.

I also got into making homebrew beer as a grad student. It requires a couple of afternoons of sustained effort, one at the start of the process and one at the end. The result is five gallons of beer that’s every bit as good as high-end commercial brews, but with whatever specifications you like. I’ve made a rosemary lager (“Rosemary’s Baby”), a cinnamon Christmas beer (“Herald Angels: The Porter of Glad Tidings”) and many, many more.

Homebrew also makes you popular at grad student parties.

By: agm

agm — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 10:34:22 +0000

Well, not quite to the writing stage (there have been, er, some unexpected difficulties), but I took up social dance to keep from going insane. As a fringe benefit, my social life didn’t atrophy the way many grad students’ does, AND I dropped two pants sizes from all the groovin.

By: Donald Douglas

Donald Douglas — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 02:44:29 +0000

Running. I was probably close to competition shape while writing my dissertation, a level of conditioning that long ago passed into history now that I have a tenured position, two boys, etc. I hike now, mostly on the weekends, sometimes strenuously, when I don’t have papers to grade, lectures to write, case studies to prep, exams to revise, journal articles to catch up with, blogs to check out, and so forth. Although most ABDs can’t wait to finish, that last year is probably the highlight of the graduate career.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 01:06:16 +0000

Yoga of the type that challenges you physically, not sure that the more ‘spiritual’ types are of much use to prevent RSI and get rid of tension in your shoulders and other upper-body parts

I pass this on as an observation; in fifteen years of work, I have never known anyone get RSI who was not also suffering from stress or discontentment in their everyday job or life. I have seen dozens (by which I mean, more than twenty people) of RSI sufferers get much better very quickly when they changed jobs to

My guess is that if you are feeling stressed, your muscles stiffen up and that hitting a keyboard with stiff hands is more damaging than hitting keyboard with relaxed hands. Either way up, I’d expect that the spiritual type of yoga could be as good or better than the physical kind for this purpose.

By: DC

DC — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 21:12:18 +0000

There’s two ways of doing three of the above, as I see it. Computer chess and cycling appear incompatible.

By: mitch

mitch — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 21:02:38 +0000

Well, while I was finishing experiments, a half hour run at the gym was a great way to relax. When the experiments were done, I moved up to frigid Montreal in the middle of winter to finish writing. That left me with no warm place to run, and so I discovered to NetHack (yeah, yeah, I’m an engineer!) to get me through the days.

By: luci phyrr

luci phyrr — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 19:15:04 +0000

Taking a ride on my bicycle through the neighborhood, working out, computer chess, and masturbation.

By: Ancarett

Ancarett — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:16:30 +0000

During my dissertation years, my break time was spent in beading or doing counted cross stitch. Since the kids were born, I’ve put aside such fiddly, small projects that require space and a long term commitment of concentration. Now I usually relax by working on computer graphics, photo manips or vidding.

By: ingrid

ingrid — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:03:21 +0000

Given that PhD students are at serious risk of RSI, good activities for breaks are taking a stroll, or going to a yoga class (Yoga of the type that challenges you physically, not sure that the more ‘spiritual’ types are of much use to prevent RSI and get rid of tension in your shoulders and other upper-body parts).

I was very suspicious (i.e. prejudiced) about Yoga before doing my PhD, but together with the Belgian chocolates it saved me and helped me reach my deadline in time and with a finished dissertation.

By: Stentor

Stentor — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:02:24 +0000

I do some origami as well, and compose music. They do have an unfortunate tendency to slip from "healthy break" to "outright procrastination."

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 14:34:16 +0000

swimming and reading completely non-academic books.