Extreme learning

One of the drawbacks with acquiring a PhD is that you “lose” around five years of work experience, because you are busy studying. It’s the same with all forms of education a.k.a. sacrificing the present for the future. I felt this very strongly during my first years as an acoustician. My friends who went straight to a private sector employment had several years head start on me, so by the time I was finally ready to start working for real, I was far behind, and I was frustrated by the feeling that colleagues assumed that my experience would be great and not comparable to a fresh recruit. Of course, when you have a good education/toolkit in your mind, it is only a matter of time before you catch up and take the lead, and in my case, I reckon it took around ten years in total (including PhD studies). During my insane quest to learn the drums, I realized something similar the other day with regards to music.

Education, MusicRikard ÖqvistNovember 20, 2023drums, music, learning, habits, education, school, focusComment

Distance education in front of an audience

During the Covid years of 2020 and 2021 I went all in on distance education and experimented wildly with live-streaming and recording of lectures. But this spring I am back in the classroom again, and it has been very interesting to apply the lessons learned and the content created. In 2021 I held a few lectures in Building Physics on the topic of moisture, which I also recorded. It was the first time I lectured on the topic and my full focus was simply to keep my nose above the water line and get through the lectures without making to big a fool of myself. The students were very clear in their feedback and most wished for more calculation examples and less lectures. Consequently, this year, I thought about how to approach this and decided to replace all the scheduled lectures with calculation sessions instead. I am now extremely curious to see what the students´ judgment will be.

Education, ComputerRikard ÖqvistMay 23, 2022education, online education, distance learning, technology, school, lecturingComment

Should you diversify or focus?

For the past 216 days I have created a painting/sketch every day. For the first months I used a timer set at 60 seconds, no more, no less. In the beginning I tried out some different techniques and tools, and I quickly settled with Autodesk Sketchbook on the iPad pro. Simplicity was the key. You can just fire up the iPad, grab the Apple pencil, choose an object to draw and then you do it. Indeed, extremely fast, and simple. But there is a drawback: When you are travelling, the iPad is too cumbersome. That’s why I went to Panduro and bought a small artist sketchbook, some graphite pens, an eraser and a sharpener. As an artist, my kit is perhaps as portable as it gets, considering the infinite possibilities on offer. I was planning to use it only when travelling and go back to my iPad when I got home. As it turns out, I haven’t used my iPad for weeks now. I stayed with the pen and paper.