Hi all,
I want to talk about googling information today because I made a mistake regarding it the other day.
I love technology. I think it is very helpful in a lot of ways. We should embrace it. But as with everything, it has some bad sides as well.
You probably heard the warnings against looking up symptoms on Google. Why? Googling our symptoms makes us panic because it seems like whenever we have a little symptom, we might have a serious illness. In most cases, that is false alarm.
Another thing you should not google is how much does X study/work a day. I am a PhD student and I am expected to work a lot. But this essentially means that we are expected to produce research, which we understand as working a lot. I have had my own struggles with it. My nature is such that if I work a lot, I become extremely unproductive and unimaginative. I usually have not been as nerdy as expected from a PhD student. But there came a point where I thought everyone around me was working very hard but I was not. So, I overworked for a whole semester, which became a nightmare later. It led to a big burn-out. I only lasted a semester with that schedule. Then, I got back to my own schedule: work but also chill as much.
But the other day, I got that feeling again. I am going to a conference in January and my research is nowhere close to end, so I panicked a bit. So, I checked if I was studying as much as expected.
I was not. I was doing half of what they said. Then I said to myself: ‘Of course your research will not fall in place. You are not giving it your all.’ I felt bad and slept. But then I sat down and reminded myself of what happened when I tried to work more. And I also reminded myself of my own study style. Everyone is different and every field of study is different too.
I got back to myself but it took some while. Googling hours of study was not a good idea.
The lesson in this is that we should discover some things by trial and error, namely by discovering how it applies to us. Sure, we can get ideas from others, but we should limit it in a way that will not harm us.
Does googling some things give you anxiety? If so, what are they? Have you googled your symptoms? If so, did it make you panic? What are some things that you think we ourselves should discover? Let’s talk about how to utilize information on the internet.