 Fantastic thank you to our panelists for joining us in the prerecord and now they're joining us live so it's great to have all of you with us. If you do have any questions that you'd like to ask our panel please put them in the Q&A feed and we'll get to those in a moment. But I would like to start off by opening the floor and finding out a little bit about the university experience of each of our panelists. It's been a bit of a theme today with some of the other sessions that have been going on. So I want to start off by asking what has been something that unexpected that you've done at university during your time. Anyone like to kick us off? Yeah I'm happy to start. Yeah so one thing I really noticed like in your first week at ANU you have market day and that exposes you to a whole wide range of clubs and societies that you can join and me coming to uni I just played saxophone so I was really keen to get involved with music where I could and in my first year I was lucky enough to be a part of the Big Night Out at uni or which is like a battle of the bands between different colleges on campus and so I think that was a really great part for me because I wasn't doing a music degree but I still enjoyed that so it's great to be able to get that involved. Fantastic. Who wants to share the next unexpected experience of studying at uni? I'll share. So I lived at Bruce Hall one of the residential halls at ANU and I think that pretty much just defined my entire social life and you know it's very different when you're living with your best friends when you're sort of around them all the time and there's a lot of as Michael alluded to sort of intercollegiate events like Big Night Out and so two of the things I got involved were the Bruce Hall play which we put on each year and then also an event called 40 hours of film which is a competition where each college is given a set of prompts to produce a short film within 40 hours and then there's like a big screening event and it goes towards the interhaul arts shield and so that was just a random thing that I picked up on a whim and really enjoyed and I think college life is really full of that just random things that you can just choose to do on a whim that end up being a lot of fun. Definitely sounds like from Michael and Matt there that those on a whim experiences been quite enjoyable. Lauren and Sasha have you had a similar experience with on the whim participation outside of the core study that you've done? Yeah definitely I had a similar experience to Matt with college life I was at Fenner Hall. I somehow got in charge of making the set for the play with $50 so I was going through cardboard recycling bins and then cans of spray paint to sort of create three different moods for the play but that's definitely something that I was not qualified to do but very enjoyable. Fantastic and Lauren your thoughts? Yeah I can jump in I think I'm the odd one out in that I didn't go to college well I didn't reside on college rather I as I came in just for my post-grad I've done my undergrad elsewhere I was living off campus from the get-go in saying that there is a similarity in the thing that surprised me most was the like sense of community within my school so not just amongst the undergraduate students but the postgraduate students and even the academics so even as a new post-grad student who hadn't gone to the ANU there's a lot of collegiality within the research school of physics which is where I'm at and people are super welcoming there to an absolute newcomer even like myself and they're interested in you and you can be interested in them you can get a lab tour just by being interested and learn a lot about what's going on around the school and the social events that we have there too Fantastic well keep you on this you know it's starting breaking the waters of the university experience if you've got any questions about what it's like to study science at ANU and we're going to dive in a little bit more about Marysem in a moment but the other university experience question I have for our panel is what has been the biggest challenge about studying at a university now while you're thinking about that I'm going to add in my little anecdote about random university experiences to give you out 20 seconds to think and that is the Lettuce Appreciation Society it's an ANU society that's been around for a few years now it's my absolute favorite definition of all of the random things you can do at ANU rolled into one the way that the Lettuce Appreciation Society works is they vote for their president based upon who can eat an iceberg lettuce the fastest and it's just one of those fun social things where you still get the experience of engaging with people about a single topic and it can be people from all different disciplines so it's not just you know people that are studying science or arts all gathering together and I think we've seen that echoed with getting involved with Big Night Out you've got musicians and definitely not musicians all gathered together for that one aspect all righty now you've had some thinking time biggest challenge about studying at uni so I think in in my case it's the adaptation from the sort of high school vibe of being very catered for academically and having people kind of almost breathing down your neck making sure you know you're making progress and okay to a sort of more independent style of studying to being self-guided not only within the individual courses themselves and sort of being in charge of your own deadlines and your own progress and you know being expected to learn like an adult but also I think in terms of long-term planning being able to sort of choose your own majors and courses and figure out where you want to do internships and things like that it's really that sort of self-organization planning that I think was one of the bigger challenges for me and I think this is a very common thread with that being said I did feel quite supported again living in college with sort of older students who had you know been through this process done the first year courses was always easy to you know at weird hours of the evening just knock on someone's door and get some help or then there are things like peer assisted learning which is run for some of the ANU science courses where you have sort of older student mentors who have been really chosen for their proficiency and providing that kind of support but I think it was quite a process of sort of personal growth and adapting to being independent really great thoughts there and thank you for answering my follow-up question which is what supports have you used to overcome this challenge so now everyone knows what the follow-up question is if you've got any questions for our great panellists of people that have studied at the ANU and also been involved in the Marystham project chuck them in the Q&A function Sasha I'm going to volunteer you that you're going next to share your challenge definitely yeah similar sort of things sort of time management it's very tricky when no one's sort of telling you to go to class you sort of have to decide to go to class by yourself instead of the bell going off and that being the place that everyone's going so you go along to it as well and yeah the self-organization deciding stuff is just a lot more independent I guess but yeah the sort of community support and that really helped and there are people who will lend a hand and will sort of guide you along the way so don't be afraid to reach out and ask questions yeah completely with Sasha and Matt about that whole managing yourself and I think that's enhanced when you're doing a research project or the research part of your degree say in honors or if you move on to masters or PhD all of that is just enhanced because you've gone from this even though there's no one breathing down your neck you still have structure you have you might have assignments every week or every fortnight and then you've got an exam and so you're continually doing these things that somebody's going to check up on when you get to honors or even say a summer research project that might go for three months or honors which will go six to eight months now like that deadline that one thing that you have to do is right at the end of that time and it can be really hard to adjust to that different pace of doing your work and especially that self-management that like well you know nobody's really going to notice if I only do two hours today instead of five or six so adjusting to that and like learning how to pace yourself so you don't have to do this sprint right at the end is the thing that I found the most challenging and tied in with that I'm just going to add a second one is with research projects as well there's not necessarily an answer and that's a really big shift to get used to even in your undergraduate courses often there's an answer to an assignment research you you know there's probably an answer but you don't know what it is and maybe no one in the world knows what that is and that's not something that you really encounter until you do these research projects and yeah the way to get through that is to as Sasha and Matt have both mentioned to like maybe lean on the experience of others a little bit especially in that really like uncertain time of you know not knowing the answer or not knowing if you're heading in the right direction of an answer looking to the research experience of others who can maybe have a bit more of a I don't like using the word intuition but they've got more experience in kind of being able to know if you're on the right track or not fantastic thank you for for sharing such in-depth there and moving us away from just chatting about time management but I know that's a big challenge for for students out there transitioning and I think I echo the sentiment that's been shared those that have volunteered from Mary Sam so contributed their time to create educational resources to pass on to year 11 and 12 students do so in their own time and it's so it's part of managing not only your study but all of the extra things that you want to contribute to so thank you for all those tips Michael any different challenges or a very similar challenge theme for you no it was a bit different for me so for me coming to uni I came from town in Tasmania so coming to uni was a big change for me I like from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a very big pond and so for me it was more of figuring out where I fit in and kind of feeling oh am I a bit of an impostor do I deserve to be here there are so many smart people around here you know is it okay that I'm here you know I better that impostor syndrome and what helped me overcome that was sort of talking to people and realizing oh you know everyone not everyone knows the answers to everything even though it may seem that way and just really understanding that you're all in this together you're all in the same boat you're all learning that's why you're at university and once you get into that mentality it's kind of good to be the dumb one in the room because you've got so many experts and smart people around you you can ask questions from and you can learn so much from them so I think that was it for me it was shifting that mentality but it's okay to not know the answers it's okay to feel out of place and to really make the most of the knowledge and expertise around you thank you Matt with some really good tips there all right I want to trans transition the conversation of focus focusing in on science all right so the the question that I have for you all now but I'm hoping this gets a little bit of potential tension or back and forth between you all so please feel free to jump in over each other here but you're all from slightly different fields of science you've studied different things or worked in research in different areas Sasha in chemistry Lauren in nuclear physics Matt in more of the the mind-messing physics and Michael across so many other like mixed disciplines and time that all together so are there any common misconceptions with your area of study or expertise that you'd be interested in getting across to those observing so many about nuclear physics where do I begin I guess the the the basic one is that all anything attached to the word nuclear physics is dangerous um that's not true for a lot of reasons um more generally danger comes from when we don't understand what's going on when we don't understand the amount of radiation something might have but nuclear physics is used in things like medicine as well a lot of cancer treatments in particular will use nuclear physics so they'll actually use nuclear decays to attack cancer cells because you can target specifically a region of the body with radioisotope and deliver that just to where a tumor might be and then use this you know otherwise harmful nuclear decay to attack the cells that you want to attack and stop them from reproducing but it can also be used in diagnostics and things like that like MRI is also known as nuclear magnetic resonance it's all about exciting nuclei in the body in a safe way and then letting them relax down again and the signal that you can detect when they relax can tell you about the different tissues in the body and the structure and can be used to identify abnormalities in the body for example so yeah definitely there's many other things I could talk about as well but nuclear physics not just dangerous fantastic any other misconceptions in the the fields that you'd like to get off your chest I guess it's a it's a similar story here so you know what you described my my field of science as being the more mind-bending kind of physics and I think often when I when I tell people that I'm a theoretical physicist their response is immediately to you know picture me as this sort of you know very abstract you know Einstein kind of figure coming up with crazy theories about you know time and gravity and I think something that is maybe becoming a little bit more clear to the the public recently but still well underway is an understanding of the fact that theoretical physics is actually a really great avenue to new technologies and it has been you know essentially for the entire existence of physics so some of the greatest innovations of the 20th century things like semiconductors and transistors that are you know powering the devices we're using right now to have this conversation they come out of weekly correlated quantum systems and so now some of the research that we're pushing now in more strongly correlated quantum systems could could power more interesting innovations in terms of quantum computing for things like understanding exotic materials and medic you know designing medication and drugs and and things like precision sensing etc and I think the one thing I'd really like to get across is that theoretical physics quantum physics can be really useful and practical and I think some of the most exciting technologies that we'll see come out in our lifetimes will be powered by that and again coming back to Lauren nuclear physics is underpinned by quantum mechanics and these principles and a better understanding of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics can help nuclear physics as well yeah um so I studied chemistry and I guess chemistry isn't just hexagons um I know and memorizing the periodic table there's a lot more to it um I sort of focused in on materials chemistry which was very much sort of how things respond um and a lot of fun can be had in that area um so don't be um what would you call it disheartened if you have not memorized the periodic table because it is I have not no one really does you're always getting exams um don't stress Lauren just couldn't control herself there have you had an experience with this um it's a similar the um nuclear physicists have not just the periodic table to look at but the chart of the nucleides where you have thousands of isotopes nobody memorizes that either so it's okay you always every researcher has it pinned on their walls so that's the thing to look at and think to remember this is what I love about the different sciences my background is astrophysics and in astrophysics you the periodic table is hydrogen helium and the rest of metals we don't worry about those for the moment they're in such small quantities across the world across the universe that we just don't worry about those when we do calculations Michael any misconceptions that you'd like to communicate about all of the cool things that you've learned yeah sure one that I think some people have about all of science but perhaps in particular masses that it's very isolating and that you're just sitting in a room by yourself nutting out a problem and you don't really see you or talk to anyone else and that's definitely not the case it's very social um a lot of your best ideas come when you're just chatting with someone about something completely unrelated and then you know they bring up something and then like oh I haven't heard of that and you go look it up and you just talk about it more so I think getting across that science is a very collaborative and very social and you meet lots of people from all different backgrounds and with all different experiences and I think yeah that social aspect you know you're not by yourself in this you're in it together yeah I um I strongly agree with that so um I think a lot of the most interesting collaborative papers that kind of like fuse different areas of science always seem to start over like a you know coffee or a water cooler or a beer or something and um so last year when I was working um on my honest project um Michael I actually remember um asking you and some of the quantum chemists and nuclear physicists for advice on certain types of computational techniques which I then found very helpful because um again it's an exchange of knowledge so let's chat about that exchange of knowledge if you've got any questions for our panelists please put them in the Q&A function they've had a wide range of experience that we've spoken about I'd like to focus the conversation on Mary STEM now and the contributions that each of you have made because you've made them in very different ways so as a bit more background on Mary STEM we create educational resources for year 11 and 12 science to help science students and teachers have more time for the fun practical experiences and all the the fun lab experiences because your first introduction to a concept is in a video format so we might do a quick rip around and find out what have you contributed to the the Mary STEM project and have there been any exciting learnings during that time Lauren I might get you to go first sure I made some videos for the chemistry the unit two module I believe of chemistry um for Mary STEM and oh the thing I learned in that is that editing a video takes way way longer than creating the content for a video um you can talk and sketch things up in quick time but um then to actually like edit it all together and make it look nice and communicate your concept clearly is a whole other challenge thank you communicating that concept clearly is a really interesting thing for researchers most of the time I understand you know you're writing long form papers but during your PhD studies are you also communicating your science not only to your you know fellow researchers but also the general public and are there you know things that you've learned from Mary STEM that help you in that Lauren uh yeah definitely I think having um when you're putting a presentation together um whether that's a spoken presentation or uh whether you're writing something having a clear idea of um the big picture as well as the the narrower bit of work that you're doing is really important communicating how what you're doing is uh relevant to a wider context like across the world for example um is I think the best and most effective way to communicate your science fantastic and Sasha you've had a similar experience you've created videos from Mary STEM but that was actually through a like for course credit can you tell us about that and any cool learnings yeah so um mine mine was in science communication um so with that I got to do an internship with Mary STEM um got to hang out in the offices for a month or so um and yeah got to learn about um sort of how Mary STEM works more broadly as well as creating um some chemistry content um editing yeah it does take a lot of time um but I said the the flips um classroom whole thing is just really amazing and I wish that my high school did it um because it is um just leaves more time for the fun stuff really in class thanks Sasha and thanks for mentioning that uh you know science research you've teachery term which is flipped classrooms so for background for those uh playing along at home a flipped classroom is where you're introduced to the concept first at home so it might be a video you might be asked to read something then you come to class with your initial questions and it's something that all of undergraduate physics at the A&U is now based upon uh you won't have any lectures in undergraduate physics you will be watching videos and doing learning and then coming to tutorials and that's across the whole of a A&U science that's spreading now across those areas so it's something to be aware of in terms of you're getting prepared and that time management piece that we mentioned earlier. Michael you also had received some course credit I believe for your Mary Mary STEM contributions can you tell us about that? Yeah sure so I um also did kind of an internship with Mary STEM over the winter I did a because month or two project and I developed teacher resources so this was early on with Mary STEM chemistry and I was coming up with uh worksheets and assessment items and lesson plans uh so that teachers have those resources available they're not sort of given a whole bunch of videos and they're like oh what do I do with these how do I put them together how do I um assess that you know students have actually watched them and I think the takeaway I got from that was you coming up with a good question is hard because you want to keep it succinct and simple but you also want it to challenge people and challenge what they think they know it's like are they really do they really know that and you also want to include you know the real world in that as much as you can but the real world's really messy and so it's trying to get a simple case scenario out of that real world and give it to students so they can get excited about oh wow this is what science actually does but in a way that they can understand but that also ties into the curriculum. Exactly right there and like we really need to emphasize that everyone has contributed to Mary Stem the students so ANU students ANU academics professional staff and the reason why the Mary Stem project exists is about communicating that science in different ways and supporting those different tiers of students that have engaged. The reason for having Matt involved in this is Matt hasn't been in front of the camera and hasn't got course credit for his contributions to Mary Stem but he's still been able to to give back into the Mary Stem community so Matt can you just quickly take us through the next 60 seconds what what you've contributed to Mary Stem and any learnings? Yeah so I think out of everyone on the panel I've probably done the least for Mary Stem but I think that's actually an interesting perspective so I've sort of participated in sort of smaller jobs things like captioning videos and providing sort of feedback on individual pieces and I think the key lesson from that is just how keen a lot of people are here to get involved just the sheer numbers of people that were rallied at these volunteer evenings to caption videos and sort of putting you know the this real like hour of power towards you know producing this content I think that's the key takeaway that I'd emphasize. Thanks Matt it's really you know great in the ANU community we have such an interest in contributing and gaining skills and that's one of the goals that I've hoped would be able to communicate with this webinar is that in when you're studying science or interested in the science disciplines you're going to learn a whole range of things it's about communicating it to different audiences and developing those skills is important and then also the volunteering aspects and the skills that you gain through that which is really important. We are now approaching the final two minutes or so of the webinar so I want to give a massive thank you to Michael, Lauren, Matt and Sasha for participating in our conversation. Thank you all for listening along as well and for Jay for moderating. If you would like to learn more about the Maryston project and gain access to our study resources if you're a teacher that wants to use them in your classroom or a student who wants to learn from hopefully your fellow future ANU students your future lecturers PhD researchers for example or alumni please get in contact just type Marystem ANU into Google or marystem.anu.edu.au we'll also send you to that page. If you've got any questions for our panelists you haven't had an opportunity to ask please use our website to get in contact with us we'll definitely pass on those questions and start a relationship with between our panelists and yourself with any questions that you've got. So panelists thanks so much for coming along audience thank you for participating it's been great to have you I hope you all have a great rest of the ANU virtual open week so shall we give a big wave send-off see you later everyone