Presenting to you a Cure for Insomnia, and Myself

I'll cut to the chase: Baa Baa Land. An 8-hour movie. Of sheep. Chewing, trotting, sitting and whatever else it is that sheep do. To push the frontiers of slow cinema further, this movie is produced in slow motion. This ultimate cure for insomnia has been around since September 2017 and was featured on prominent news platforms such as Wall Street Journal, Hindustan Times, Reuters, etc. If you missed it, that's understandable. Aside from cryptocurrencies, this is the era of Trump tweets, AI frenzy, Mars rovers and Russian hacking, not insomnia.

Hi, my name is Rohit Zambre. I learned about Baa Baa Land on my recent plane ride to Chicago from Dublin. It was a podcast interviewing Peter Freedman, the producer of Baa Baa Land. The interview was brimming with interesting facts about the movie and the making of it. I bring it up because it got me thinking: that it didn't require a magical level of creativity to make this film. It was a simple idea, executed with some determination and viola, the next thing you know you have a world premiere with people actually attending to see this silly, self-proclaimed-to-be-dull movie. You can make something out of nothing. Of course, it didn't just come out of nowhere. This was the idea of the Calm app and the theme of meditation is engrained into the movie. But that it got everyone talking, including me, is intriguing.

The Paragraph of "I"s

I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Engineering. I enjoy writing. I am good at technical writing but not so good at creative writing. While technical writing does involve some degree of creativity, it is somewhat easier than creative writing since there is always a concrete point to be made. A fact is a fact. How you best express that fact is where you have the freedom of creativity. I may not be great at creative writing but that is what I intend to practice with Steemit.

What I'm thinking of writing about are chapter-summaries of the books that I am currently reading. Don't worry, they won't be the boring computer engineering ones. But ones that reveal interesting science about humans. I'll start off with "The Optimism Bias" by Tali Sharot. Sometimes, I’ll share my research work as well. Additionally, I would like to record some of the experiences and perspectives that my life has given me as a Ph.D. student. Some have been lessons, giving me concrete directions for the future. But more often than not, they leave me more confused than earlier. Writing about my reflections on them will help me understand them better and also, hopefully, get your input on my experience and reflections.

While the phd tag isn't trending on Steemit, I was able to find some Ph.D. students here on Steemit. There's a handful of us here. But that's not surprising. Each one of us is an individually run company with an investor and ourselves to report to. Continuous progress is hard to make when motivation is sinusoidal and failed experiments reflect lack of progress. Naturally, we are a busy, and stressed batch. But, nonetheless an interesting one with each having a story to learn from. In my opinion, every Ph.D. student should write. They should write to help, with a retrospective perspective, other Ph.D. students, and to share their research with everyone. Communicating research ideas to people of all backgrounds is quintessential to the purpose of research. Here’s to practicing what I preach!

Until next time, stay calm.