I Was a Failure In College: The Dark Side of Academic Success

Here’s my story of  learning about the things  they don’t tell you in a college brochure or in any acceptance letter.

The New York Times has a front page article today about the suicide rate and propensity of suicide in high-ranking schools [Campus Suicide and the Pressure of Perfection]. It tells of a high-achieving freshman at UPenn who sinks into a depression and nearly commits suicide when she realizes that as a straight-A student, sorority member, intern teaching elementary school-aged kids, and a participant in additional extra-curricular activities, she is simply not doing enough. She has no time to think, rest, develop as an individual or possibly consider that all these higher achievers around her are feeling as equally insufficient and overwhelmed as she is.

I remember when I got my first B in a class at the University of Arizona. I was distraught and it bothered me for months. I resolved to never let it happen again. I assumed at the time that this failure was a lack in motivation, studying, and dedication to the task at hand; but looking back, I doubt it.

I thought I was a generally good student, and definitely a high-achiever. I was enrolled in the Honors College. I was taking Arabic, and I was good at it. I was a double major in Creative Writing and Linguistics. I was slated to graduate early, despite the double major.

I thought I was in good shape until I started meeting students who were not only taking a 17-20 credit course load (I was taking 17), but were also working part-time, had one or two internships and independent studies, were taking trips to local attractions on the weekends, and were already applying for positions to launch their career into the stratosphere post-graduation. I met double-doubles: people who had two majors and two minors. I met triple-majors, who would graduate with a B.S. and a B.A. I met people taking two, and three language classes per semester. I met students who were already so buddy-buddy with their professors by the time the semester started that it felt like I was fighting a lost cause to introduce myself to them.

I was barely managing my straight A’s and a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant on the weekends. I was a transfer student who was shy, and the idea of asking a professor for independent study opportunities was enough to give me a panic attack. I felt under-read in literature when talking with my English buddies, and I felt under-exposed to cross-linguistic typologies and languages that my linguistic friends would discuss with gusto after class or over dinner.

The impression that everyone around me was doing twice as many things as I and with double the finesse and efficiency exponentially increased my feelings of inadequacy and failure; which in turn incapacitated me with fear and anxiety that kept me from pursuing opportunities that would help me more than graduating with a 3.94 GPA would.

I wish I’d done things differently. I wish I’d plucked up the courage to do more independent studies (I did do one year of thesis-focused independent studies), to engage with my fellow students more. I wish I’d done more than just percolate my fears and inadequacies into an ever-strengthening brew of self-disgust and hatred that recursively confirmed that I was, indeed, a failure, and that I would always be one.

I wish someone had told me that straight As don’t get you jobs after school- practical experiences and connections with professors and faculty did. I wish I’d pursued relationships with people who were more knowledgeable and smarter than me, who I deemed off limits because I wasn’t “cool” or “advanced” enough.

When you base your identity in excelling in academia and your best efforts are not enough, your identity takes a major blow. You find yourself crying in the library bathroom, or having a difficult time deciding where to go for lunch because you don’t want to risk running into someone you know who will see “I am a failure” written on your forehead just like you do. You will find time to marathon-watch a season of a TV show but not to work on your next project, because the mere thought of failing one more time leaves you paralyzed.

I started to come out of my shell in my final year of college. I went to Jordan to study Arabic, even though it didn’t contribute to my major or minor. I busted my butt on my thesis (though I still consider it a shadow of what it could’ve been). I took a job as a specialized learning tutor. I deepened friendships with professors. But it still didn’t seem like enough, and as I look to applying for grad school, it definitely doesn’t seem like enough.

When you base your image and identity academic excellence and that image is destroyed by failure, you begin searching for another source of identity. You start to realize how much your own identity is fused with the idea that you cannot fail. You start to realize how destructive and absurd an identity is based on a vacillating estimation of success.

You start fighting back against the feelings of anxiety and inadequacy, armed with the knowledge that you were created by a perfect God, who delights in you even when you can’t stand yourself. You start to realize that life is far more fulfilling when lived caring for others regardless of what they can offer you in academic circles. You realize that treating others as the unique, complex and imperfect individuals they are rather than treating them as competition or as a mere obstacle to your next goal makes life worth living again. You realize that you are starting to grow up.

 

 

Save the Lions, Invest in Good Grammar

This morning as I was perusing Facebook I came across a particularly interesting grammatical error; one that could result in the harm of a species in danger of being endangered. RantLifestyle had posted a link to a video of a lion playing with a soccer ball with the below headline:

It doesn’t get any more awesome than a soccer playing lion.

Now, at first glance you may wonder, “What’s so terrible about the grammar of that sentence? They don’t say “awesomer.” They insert an apostrophe for the contraction of “doesn’t.”  They use the proper “than,” not “then.” Actually, they’re doing pretty good grammar-wise.

Let me direct you to the last three words of the sentence: “soccer playing lion.” Obviously, the person who posted the link meant to say “soccer-playing lion,” using a compound adjectival modifier to mean “this lion plays soccer.” However, the hyphen is missing, which takes the sentence into the realm of meanings such as:

A girl playing house.

A pianist playing Mozart.

An actor playing Hamlet.

A soccer (ball) playing lion looks something like this:

a “soccer playing lion” is pictured above, whereas a soccer-playing lion is featured in the video linked to above.

I don’t even want to think of what that soccer ball had to do to obtain a mane, whiskers, ears, a nose, and an (admittedly adorable) pair of eyes. I shudder to think of what horrors a lion faced in order for this soccer ball to indeed, “play lion.”

Yes, I understand that “soccer playing lion” in the meaning I illustrated above is not a perfect rendition of grammar, either; hence my parenthetical addition of (ball) above. However, I thought it was an excellent chance to point out that grammar matters. No, it may not matter much when we are scrolling through our news feeds on Facebook; we understand that the sentence “I am defiantly going to loose a lot of wait with this awesome work out!!” actually means, “I am definitely going to lose a lot of weight with this awesome work-out!!”  [As opposed to rebelliously letting loose long wait-times on unsuspecting customers at work. My brain hurts trying to make sense of that.]

I’ve noticed something in my use of the Internet over the years: grammar, spelling, and punctuation have gotten drastically worse over time. And not just in my news feed on Facebook but in articles I read on the Washington Post website, or even the New York Times, and other similarly prestigious news sources. The “speed” and “freshness” of content is placed at a far higher premium than the quality and accuracy of the content.

And I’m here to tell you that quality and accuracy are important, not just in an online news article, but in every facet of our lives. So please, if grammar and spelling aren’t your strong point, there are tons of resources our there– Here’s one to get you started. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, at some point makes mistakes in their writing. That’s what second, third, and fourth drafts and editors are for (and writers and editors like me! Here’s a shameless plug for my writing and editing services. Check out my portfolio).

Something I want to stress is: informal writing does not necessitate incorrect writing.

This blog post is very informal in tone, but it is (almost) completely free of errors, though some of my comma and colon use is questionable.

Take the time to invest in your input to the social media world. I wonder if half the posts we see online (the less savory half) would even make it to the internet if everyone took the time to edit their posts for grammar and spelling. Editing one’s words means one must analyze and moderate one’s own words; which, I think we can all agree, would make a positive change in the “Interwebz.”

And you better believe I looked through this post several times to filter out errors.

Chau!

Four Conjectures about the Investigation of Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez’s Rampage

My predictions are based on the assumption that the blog discovered by SITE Intelligence Group is indeed written by Muhammad Youssuf Abdulazeez. If that is true, then I would bet a lot of money that all these four predictions are true:

1. Abdulazeez’s attack on the two military sites was planned and executed alone without any orders from external terrorist organizations. He may have drawn inspiration from terrorist organizations/figures, but he was effectively alone in his actions and planning process. The attack was indeed made for religious reasons, though it is likely that political events influenced his decisions in some way.
2. His parents and siblings had no idea that he planned or was even considering an attack. If anything, they were only suspicious at his strange behavior recently.
3. In his visit to Jordan and Kuwait, Abdulazeez likely met someone (an older male figure, possibly an uncle) who germinated a seed of ideological radicalism that led Abdulazeez to believe that violent acts like this attack were necessary in order to prove the sincerity of his faith and devotion to Allah, also known as Ibadah. This figure may or may not have been involved with ISIS or another well-known terrorist group.
4. The attacks were not psychologically motivated by a desire to make an overarching religious or political statement, but were committed as a personal testament to Abdulazeez’s faith in Allah; that he was a Muslim worthy of paradise, and was devoted to Allah and his tenets. It was a fundamentally different attack in regards to purpose in comparison to the Boston Marathon bombing or 9/11.

In all accounts, Abdulazeez was a typical young-adult product of American suburban life. He was described as charming, popular, and not typified as a person  of mental instability. This façade of normalcy clearly was hiding a subverted personality and set of beliefs, the elements that led to his tragic and abhorrent actions. In order to maintain an external persona of normalcy however, his logical faculties must have been intact. In fact, it may have been these faculties that were in fact what led to the attack. He was normal except for the fact that his devoutly held religious beliefs held a massive logical flaw at their foundation—the base upon which Abdulazeez built his mental case for taking extreme action to prove that he was worthy of his god and that his god was worthy.

Abdulazeez was a young man who during high school participated in wrestling, MMA, active, fit, smart, refined. He was reportedly popular, well-liked, and well-adjusted in high school, a devout Muslim but not appearing radicalized in any way. No more radical than a bible believing church-going Christian, if you desire comparison.

There are two blogs that are purported to have been written by Abdulazeez by the terrorism intelligence and monitoring organization SITE Intelligence Group. These blogs were both posted three days before he fired on the two military sites. They are titled “A Prison called Dunya [earth]” and “Understanding Islam: The Story of the Three Blind Men.” It is interesting to point out that his blog’s theme or layout is titled “Edin,” which, depending on your pronunciation of the word, sounds very much like the Arabic word for “religion.”

All the main sports the shooter competed in—Wrestling, MMA, etc.—are one-on-one sports. Sports where his success depended upon his own personal skill as a competitor. No teammates, no equipment save that of his own body were involved, and nothing that required input from others save for his coach and his opponent.

It is likely that Abdulazeez took the same approach when it came to the attack on the military facilities in Chattanooga. His plan was simultaneously well-thought-out and yet shallow in ambition and impact. He had ample firepower and planned targets along a transportation route located along highways or freeways, enabling him to reach his targets quickly. However, at the first target facility, there was no attempt to confirm casualties by Abdulazeez or to ensure that his attack was successful in that regard, if, indeed bloodshed was the chief goal of his attacks.

It is quite likely that Abdulazeez had one more target location that he was planning on attacking. There is a drive-by nature of his first assault on the Recruit center, and Abdulazeez did not commit himself fully to penetrating  either target site in order to cause as much damage as possible. It is possible he had a third location he was planning on attacking, and quite possible the most important and salient target.

A military recruiting office isn’t necessarily filled with military; it’s just as likely to be filled with people who are merely inquiring into being in the military as actual enlisted officers. It is possible that Abdulazeez wanted his drive-by attack to act as a diversion as he drove to his second, and possibly third target sites.

Abdulazeez’s second target, the joint-Navy and Marine base was a more secure target, and a more significant one in many respects. His execution of this second attack was again imperfect. He rammed the security gate open with a (what looks to be) Mustang convertible, less than two years old. He did not penetrate far into the campus, which may be partially because the police reacted far quicker than Abdulazeez anticipated. It is also possible that there was a third target that he was planning on attacking. This would explain the fairly non-committal entrance to the facility, and also match his highly mobile pattern from the first attack. It is possible that Abdulazeez exploited low-security targets, but decided to open fire on several in order to expand the influence and potency of his attack.

All Abdulazeez’s targets were low-security and low-impact targets. His targets give a strong sense of his motivations, and limitations in planning. He chose targets within the suburban area of his hometown, essentially the closest targets possible. He did not target these sites because of their perceived importance; he merely chose targets affiliated with the United States Armed Forces.

It is important to note that he did not attack civilians; at least, he did not target non-civilians except in a collateral capacity, like the police officer injured (and potential civilians at the Recruitment office). This is quite unlike terrorist attacks such as the Boston Marathon bombing or 9/11. It is interesting to note that Abudlazeez shares at least a few traits with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger brother of the terrorist duo convicted of the Boston bombing. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a college student, a Muslim, and also identified as a fairly popular and well-liked individual. There are many potential reasons for this; one, is that the attack was a retaliation of some sort of actions taken by US military abroad. It is also possible that Abdulazeez had no desire to potentially kill those whom he perceived as “innocents,” as opposed to trained military personnel. Another potential motivation is that Abdulazeez viewed himself as a type of soldier, or combatant in the worldwide efforts of Jihad; as such he found it most appropriate to place himself in opposition to other soldiers. The latter motivation would be substantially reinforced if the blog posts discovered by SITE were indeed written by the gunman.

Links:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/17/us/tennessee-shooter-mohammad-youssuf-abdulazeez/

http://www.history.com/topics/boston-marathon-bombings

https://myabdulazeez.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/a-prison-called-dunya/

I also used Google Maps and relied heavily on WRBC TV’s online articles based on local coverage of the event for information.

Also, as of yet there has been no official confirmation that the blog titled “myabdulazeez” was indeed the blog of the shooter; however, there has been no official statement that the site is illegitimate, either.

An Old Man’s Tumor, an Old Woman’s Longing

Today I went up to my favorite resting place; Mt. Lemmon. It is a huge relief to be able to escape from the desert floor and rise up into the pines like a fresh wind. I know the curvy road up the mountains so well that I drive it one-handed. I roll down my windows and inhale the scent of wet earth, resin from the trees, and enjoy birdsong from the anonymous orators in the trees.

This morning I was feeling drained and raw, my brain stretched in so many different directions the night before that it had snapped and now lay in a proverbial pool in the base of my skull.

So I went hiking. Walking through the forest immersed my mind in a salve, the greens and browns mixed by the slanted morning light, the birds’ varied notes falling on my heart like raindrops.

And I saw this wizened old man along the trail, bent over by old age and possibly scoliosis. He twisted and bent over, and at one point tendons unraveled, giving a view through them. He has seen better years. He had a tumor (two, actually) that clung to his neck.

I felt sorry for him, but he wasn’t completely twisted and broken. He had a bright green tuft of leaves at the end of this long, curved branch.

Next to this elder, only a few feet away was another figure. She was tall, long-limbed but curved with age. Gone were any external adornings of youth; only the spartan beauty of wisdom and a arms held out in a long-sustained desire.

They are old, and overlooked among their younger, healthier counterparts. They are two in a forest of two million, but today they both caught my attention. It is a strange gift to not have deadened the pangs of longing even in old age, like these trees– a kind of longing described by C.S. Lewis as a desire to find “where all the beauty came from.” There is a kind of beauty in the longing of these two broken figures, a beauty more apparent quite possibly because they are more broken than most. It takes a great deal of strength to deny death in ones exposed bones and bring beauty in a broken world; and yet, these trees do so naturally.

A dead tree becomes the foundation for a carpet of green moss; a bowed limb is the most amiable of rests for an avian opera.

In Syria, Wars rage; in Amman, Falafel Fries.

It was hot in the open-door falafel shop near the seventh circle in Amman. As we entered an Irishman looked up from behind the counter, and shock mixed with the mouth-watering scent of frying batter embraced me. He had dark red hair cropped short and fair skin lightly splattered with freckles. The illusion was shattered when he greeted us in Arabic with an accent that was different from the lilting, distinguished city dialect. He wore an emerald-green shirt emblazoned with the word “CALIFORNIA.”

I sneaked a picture of him while he was making the falafel… He looked up right after I took the picture, and he didn’t look real pleased but he basically ignored me.

I expected him to laugh at any moment, and in a staunchly American manner, say “Just kidding, guys! I’m not really Arab. What’s up?” But he didn’t. Instead he stared blankly at us while we fumbled through our Arabic dictionary to find the right words.*  I forced myself to find the right words, combatting the oppressive June humidity and communicated to him that we needed some 40 falafel for the evening meal.

I watched him scoop up the falafel batter into a half-sphere mold, shaping the top of the ball with a spoon in his left hand, trimming the excess dough with six sharp movements. The spoons clacked together with each movement, six clicks forty times over, popping each ball into the sizzling oil. The rich smell of greasy, deep-frying falafel filled the air.

We learned that he was from Syria, and he’d come to Amman two years before to work in his brothers’ falafel shop. We didn’t ask him if it was the war that had forced him to move, mainly because we didn’t have the vocabulary to do so; partly because he didn’t seem open to discussion. He didn’t seem very chatty, beyond our initial conversation. He was reticent, focused on the task at hand. But half of Syria’s population has been displaced in the fighting that has enveloped the country; there really wasn’t much of a question as to why he was there.

Today I learned of the suicide bombing in Syria attributed to the Nusra front: two dozen loyal to Al-Assad were killed in Aleppo. ISIS has also retaken the city of Ayn Issa (which means “eye of Jesus”) in the past few days. I thought of the Syrian falafel maker I met last June; I wonder if he lost any friends or relatives in the latest skirmishes. I wonder if he had anyone left to lose.

You can learn a lot about someone by their actions; more so than by their words. So when I watched the Syrian make the falafel, forming the mounds with as much efficiency as a machine and far more grace than one, I got a glimpse into who this man was, if not what he’d been through.

As the falafel finished cooking, he handed us samples. The falafel was so hot it burned my fingers through the paper wrapping he handed it to me in. Once I got it in my mouth, it melted, a perfect crispy shell crystallized by the hot grease, surrounding a soft center gritty with spices and full of flavor.

We thanked him profusely in our horrible Arabic, and as we left a hint of a smile pushed up on his mouth.

Postscript: I have recently been doing a lot of reading on the conflicts involving ISIS and resistance groups in the Syrian and Iraqi area; this post is the result of that research (and my time in Jordan, of course). One of the reasons why ISIS has been so successful in its advances is the general instability that has plagued the region for years—generations, really. Factions, tribes, and religious sects have been largely unable to unite for a very long time, and ISIS, with their focus and drive, has taken advantage of the splintered infrastructure to gain holds in Syria, Iraq, and even along the Turkish border (not to mention Libya). This is to say nothing of the political strife in Egypt, or further east in Afghanistan and Iran. Pray for the people of Syria, Iraq, and all of those living in the region; pray for relief workers and resistance groups. Most of all, pray that many would be exposed to the peace of the Gospel and come to know Christ.

If you want to help Syrian refugees in need, consider donating to the Nazarene Syrian Relief Fund.

*As this was only my second or third day in Amman, Jordan, I had no idea that red hair and fair skin is actually not a horribly uncommon combination to see in the Levant, esp. (?) for Syrians.

One Thing I’ve Learned about Freelance Writing in the Last Month

It can be summed up quite simply:

Freelancing is hard.

Very hard.

With that being said, I have learned quite a bit about the process over the past three and a half weeks.

There is no end to the potential jobs, positions, and opportunities for freelancers. There is an enormous amount of websites to help you through the process of freelancing, and a great deal of free resources at that, which is great.

But to be honest, trying to start freelance work rather feels like standing on the center platform in one of Tokyo’s main train stations, except the trains aren’t slowing down for me to embark, but go zooming by, trailing nylon grip handles behind them, expecting me to grab onto them and clamber on the train while it’s still moving. But I can’t even see which line the trains zooming by are on, and when I realize that one train might be the one I want to go on… well, it’s already out of the station. It seems as though I’m the only one who is not accustomed to this new method of transportation, since there are many other people on the trains already and appear to be going places, all the while I stand still.

Well. That’s the way my month’s been, in a nutshell.

One good thing about this month has been the invaluable lesson of not giving up, even when I so very want to. Rejection and discouragement are, let’s face it, quite common companions throughout life. It’s hard to keep leaping for nylon grip handles, especially when I’ve missed so many before. But I have to. And you have to, whether as a freelancer or a mother or a father or a stock broker. I guess I’m a slow learner, but I am learning something this month; something akin to the idea that success is a whole lot of failure with a lot of perseverance mixed in. And maybe, just maybe, we might get a little success sprinkled on at the end.

Postscript: I know I said I’d post three blogs today, which I have; but, WordPress’ clock is not synced with my local time, so it looks like I didn’t keep my word (anyone know how to change that? I’ve scoured all over for the time settings). I assure you however, all three posts came in the same day—for me, at least.

Why The Blacklist should be on your Watchlist

Two words: James Spader.

[Note: some spoilers ahead, but I avoid earth-shattering  revelations that would remove suspense from watching the show.]

You may be familiar with James Spader because of his role as the voice of Ultron this year; if you are ten or twenty years older than I, you probably grew up swooning over him in his younger roles as eccentric, deviant characters. Okay, to be honest, Blacklist is one of the few things wholesome enough with Spader in it for me to feel comfortable watching it, but I’m glad that he’s investing his talents in a more mainstream-accessible genre and rating. That being said, Blacklist is not exactly a fresh-air walk in the park. It does have a lot of violence and a high body count, and some scenes of sexual content. However, the storyline is so well-paced and tight-knit that it is hard not to watch once you start.

The best thing that The Blacklist has going for it is also the worst thing: James Spader. I say he is the best thing because it is his characterization of Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington, criminal extraordinaire-cum-FBI-groupie that keeps you watching. His acting is a perfect combination of all the answers you want being written on his face, but smudged out in his words. I say he is also the worst thing, because, well, his performance is so weighty that it flings the rest of the story out of balance.

Nice-guy-turned-evil-spy Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold) does a decent job being an incredibly caring, thoughtful husband to the main character Elizabeth (Lizzy) Keen, with just the right amount of chilled creepiness that hints at his surreptitious machinations.

Megan Boone, On the other hand, who plays Lizzy, the FBI consultant and only FBI agent that ‘Red” will consult with, has a hard time keeping up with Spader. She is not a bad actress per se—in any other drama with most any other actor or actress she would be fine. But in the most poignant and gripping scenes of the series, which inevitably involve her and Spader exclusively, she is shown to be not quite up to snuff. The producers and cinematographers compensate for this by excessively using close-up shots of Spader strutting his stuff, simply because the intensity and stark brazenness of his acting and behaviors is far more arresting than Boone’s pale and watery performances in comparison.

This works to the character Reddington’s advantage however, because since he gives the role such a visceral portrayal, you really do believe that Reddington is the smartest person in the room, at all times, because well… Spader seems to be in the same position performance-wise.

I thought the first few episodes of season 2 were lackluster. Gone was the roguish, unapologetic Red who committed heinous crimes but managed to make you love him anyway; He instead started moralizing things, a lot, to both his marks and to Keen. Luckily, the writers snapped out of it. At episode five things start to get interesting and Red “relapses” into his evil-but-there’s-something-good-about-him persona, and Boone’s character actually gained a lot of depth and complexity which I think were missing for most of season 1.

I was worried for the first part of season 2 that the series would do a tailspin into dull nuancing of side characters. There were a couple close calls; Diego Klattenhoff’s Agent Ressler is, despite the screenwriters’ best efforts, a transparent and uninteresting character. Amir Arison’s Aram showed promise in the first season, but as of episode 10 of season two remains little more than a fast-quipping love interest for the bizarre half-CIA, half-Mossad Agent Navabi who also is an informant for Reddington.

The Blacklist’s reliable two-part nail-biting story in season two does not fail to impress; Ron Perlman’s depiction of Luther Braxton is, frankly, awesome. I am almost halfway through season 2, and I cannot wait for The Blacklist to return in September!

EDIT: After thinking it over a bit, I’ve realized that Red has had a bit of a moral tint to him from the beginning– albeit a very twisted moral tint (e.g. in Season 1, ep. 2, he makes them go after Floriana Campo, for his own benefit– but he is also disgusted at her diabolical operations that front as an anti-trafficking charity when she is the leader of one of the largest trafficking rings in the world. I guess Red does have a moral compass, but it definitely doesn’t point true north.

Space… The Final Final Destination

I recently have been reading The Hazards of Space Travel by Neil Comins, an astrophysicist (from what I can tell). The book would better be titled Space: A Thousand Ways to Die.

I had always known that space travel was hazardous because of things like space junk and the fact that the vacuum of space doing its best to capitalize on any and every seam that might give entrance (and make you a human pouf-ball).

But there are more frightening deaths that await you in space. One’s ship could be hit by a micrometeorite only a few centimeters across traveling from 11,000 to one hundred fifty thousand miles an hour. Anything hitting your ship  at those kind of speeds, even if it’s as small as a dust mote, can leave a pockmark or crater– or puncture. Anything larger than a few centimeters, and well– you’d better keep your space suit handy, because it’s going to get cold very quickly.

Speaking of space suits, I had never understood the laborious process behind suiting up for extra-vehicular activity. The soft suits that astronauts wear must be left with lower pressure than what is normal on earth (about 15-20% of the 14.7 psi that is par for sea-level), because if the suit were fully pressurized, the pressure would be so strong that they would be rendered stiff and immobile in the “blown up” suits.

Instead, the suits are pumped with just 3 psi of pure oxygen, the same proportion of oxygen that is in earth’s atmosphere. This allows the suit-wearer to have a good degree of mobility and flexibility in the suit. However, since this is only a fraction of the typical pressure exerted in earth’s atmosphere, astronauts will get potentially deadly bends, just like if they were to go diving underwater. In order to avoid the bends, they must breathe pure oxygen for an extended period If you were thinking earth isn’t a friendly place, think again. The earth is like a cocoon of fleece blankets and seat warmers compared to the rest of the universe. Radiation is, of course a far greater danger once outside the earth’s protective layers of atmosphere. Out in space, there is a high rate of exposure to gamma and alpha radiation. There are also Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) that are delivered to our solar system from a galaxy far, far away. Mostly consisting of stray protons, GCRs can also be helium nuclei, as well as a bunch of other naturally-forming atomic nuclei, like iron or nickel. A second type of radiation, Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) are emitted by our very own sun. Mostly lone protons and electrons,SEPs are dangerous because of the sheer mass that they assault a spacecraft with, rising in quantity and intensity with solar wind storms and other solar events.

Luckily, earth’s magnetic fields help defend the earth from the deluge of radioactive particles, blocking a lot of the SEP assault and some of the less powerful GCRs. The magnetic fields, called the Van Allen belts, only protect those who remain below the magnetic field. The belts stop and trap much of these SEPs, and the innermost belt, the most powerful one, holds SEPs from outer space as well as residual GCR particles bouncing back off of earth, as well as other radioactive particles.

Traveling through these belts in a spaceship is dangerous. All those particles that do not make it to the surface still have enough energy to penetrate and wreak havoc on spacecraft passing through the belts. There is a particular part of the innermost Van Allen belt, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, which the ISS (International Space Station) must pass through five times daily. In this orbit that passes through this area infused with a high ratio of radioactive particles, those in the ISS get half their radiation exposure in this area, even though less than 5% of their orbit time is spent there.

In space away from any protective layers of atmosphere or magnetic fields, these radioactive particles wreak havoc on computers, a spacecraft’s structure, and have a similarly devastating effect on human cell regeneration as chemotherapy. If bombarded with enough radiation, astronauts face the same painful cell deterioration and death that afflicted those in nuclear reactor events, such as workers affected at Fukushima or Chernobyl.

These are only a few ways that you can die in space, or in interstellar travel, and likely not even the most interesting ones. Don’t even get me started on medical practice in microgravity — can you imagine operating on a patient whose blood floats away from the incision site?

Also, I apologize profusely for the lack of posts in the past week. In compensation for this gaping silence, I will be posting three blogs today– yes, three. One of which will detail my as-yet overwhelming and confusing foray into the world of freelance writing and editing work (read: it’s not going as well as I hoped, but I am learning a lot, hence a blogpost about ways to die in space.