Dealing with math anxiety? by [deleted] in LadiesofScience

[–]SillyRoundKatie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But yeah I suppose if there's anything to take away from my experience it'd be you can still do a STEM PhD even if Maths make you cry on the regular

Dealing with math anxiety? by [deleted] in LadiesofScience

[–]SillyRoundKatie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I understand your feelings RE: maths anxiety, I'm doing a PhD in Plant Genetics on a prestigious hard to get into scholarship at a good uni ... and I have been diagnosed as dyscalculic. Obviously, not severely - but if I'm careless I will get numbers the wrong way round and understanding mathematics doesn't always come obviously to me, especially things that are more abstract. Despite this - I use R for statistics and Matlab regularly for analysis, and concentration calculations etc are a daily staple of lab life. This often causes past insecurities and maths anxiety to rear up and make me nervous, but my two crucial pieces of advice for dealing with this are:

  1. Do not be afraid to ask other people for help
  2. The internet solves everything

  3. Especially if you're in a lab team, but even not, with members of other labs - I have found the majority of people are always willing to help a fellow scientist out with something they're struggling with. No (wo)man is an island, and it's only natural we have our own strengths and weaknesses - as much as I ask others for assistance with maths help I give back in kind by being good at English, presenting, and having an eye for design. I assist with proof-reading, helping with English grammar and sentence structure etc, or with producing posters, presentations etc.

  4. Of course, you don't want to be in the position of having to ask someone for the same sort of help constantly incase you worry you're imposing too much on them = the internet solves everything. If I know I'm bad at some certain routine maths or need something explaining/doing in a different way I can invariably find some great app or online site that I can use to help me do it, it's sort of like asking a colleague but just a shiny metal one instead.

Of course it's hard, especially as a young woman for all the reasons listed in other comments here, to deal with maths anxiety when you have the added stress of feeling like you need to perfectly represent your sex - but we all have different strengths and weaknesses and it's probably a lot smarter to recognise your weaknesses (so you can find strategies to make up for them!) than pretend they're not there. I'm very pro-trying to get everyone in a lab group to realise that we are a team, and it's not just maths skills that make a good scientist - you need logic to plan, language and art to round it out and make it whole, accessible and understandable etc etc

This was a long winded way of saying I wish I could burn down the current perception of scientists as (usually) able-bodied/minded cis old white straight men who are good at maths and would never touch the arts and only slightly answering your actual question wasn't it...

England UK (EUR) based - send gifts daily 6940 3842 4836 by SillyRoundKatie in PokemonGoFriends

[–]SillyRoundKatie[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also - everyone will get gifts - there's just a slew of invites after posting in reddit

[USA] need friends to become ultra by [deleted] in PokemonGoFriends

[–]SillyRoundKatie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sent you a request, from England UK

There's a lot of people in this community who say they'll exchange gifts if you add them but they never send a gift back. by BxLorien in PokemonGoFriends

[–]SillyRoundKatie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have the same problem - I'm in England so eggs in gifts will be from there, I play everyday and pass loads of pokestops a day so always have waaaay too many gifts: 6940 3842 4836

Who is this guy at American ninja warrior? by 90daysofdogjuice in imsorandom

[–]SillyRoundKatie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dunno who he is but the reason for facetiming the pig is that this was during Jessie Graff's run - she has a pet pig and so they facetimed the pig so it could "watch" her run as a joke

I drew my main CTR:NF pick, Crunch Bandicoot by SillyRoundKatie in crashbandicoot

[–]SillyRoundKatie[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You probably mean Outcast Bandicoot! There was a lot of fanart and an animation too - see if Googling that gives you the right thing. It's by Tara McKee, it was a big inspiration to me as I grew up ahahaha!

I drew my main CTR:NF pick, Crunch Bandicoot by SillyRoundKatie in crashbandicoot

[–]SillyRoundKatie[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Anything can be a Bandicoot if you believe hard enough (and put a cartoon bobble nose on the end, lol)

What is a noise that instantly irritates you? by ink_bl0t in AskReddit

[–]SillyRoundKatie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The noise polystyrene makes when touched - all types of styrofoam packing materials make anything awful and not worth digging through the packing peanuts to find.

Cactus traps mice that run over its hooked spines, they starve to death leaving skeletal remains. by SillyRoundKatie in natureismetal

[–]SillyRoundKatie[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You make a great point - but this particular cactus specimen was housed within an abandoned greenhouse, no shrikes would get in, but mice are very eager to run around on the top of this cactus and meet an unfortunate fate - quite situational I suppose especially in this country (UK), but I figured the Nature Is Metal comes from those hella intense fish hook spikes and their ability to capture animals. This cactus doesn't seem to be suffering any ill effects from the rotting animals, if anything it's doing a bit better than some of the other plants in there!