Audio Stimulus for Engineering: How to Stay Creative in University

[3dot]

Hello, this is my first discussion post on these forums and I hope I won't break any rules. I have only two years of university study in engineering, and so to begin with: I am what a motor in your car is to a nano-motor. I'll probably sound big, but know very little about what is actually important.

My favorite thing to do after a long couple of weeks of intense study at the University of Toronto, was always taking a break by listening to audiobooks by or pertaining to Terry Goodkind, Star Wars. This is a habit I've developed over the high school years and into university, all in all normal. I believe the statistical breakdown is: I have good ears, simply because I hate shows that regularly expose people to dB's well above the regulated standards set by law. My brain is looking for an audio source to initiate creative thought, yet I know that in real life: "It doesn't come to you, you should get it", so to speak. Having left university for a year due to a health problem in the beginning of summer, I find it much harder to dismiss the linguistic spam I see everywhere on WWW, Normal News (which I've always never watched due to decontextualization).

So how do you guys do it? Imagine for a second you were always that one bastard in school who comes to class with a mp3 player only once during a week, and openly demonstrates albeit quietly and politely that he's listening to a book because the lecture has already been understood through a careful application of patience and self-reflection. By not saying anything that is, and at least 90% for your tests or you wasted your life attitude.

How do you do physics/science/engineering when the auditory center of your brain could very well be muscled to the point of absurdity? Where specifically?

(any advice is appreciated)

 

[ThomasT]

Hello, this is my first discussion post on these forums and I hope I won't break any rules. I have only two years of university study in engineering, and so to begin with: I am what a motor in your car is to a nano-motor. I'll probably sound big, but know very little about what is actually important.

My favorite thing to do after a long couple of weeks of intense study at the University of Toronto, was always taking a break by listening to audiobooks by or pertaining to Terry Goodkind, Star Wars. This is a habit I've developed over the high school years and into university, all in all normal. I believe the statistical breakdown is: I have good ears, simply because I hate shows that regularly expose people to dB's well above the regulated standards set by law. My brain is looking for an audio source to initiate creative thought, yet I know that in real life: "It doesn't come to you, you should get it", so to speak. Having left university for a year due to a health problem in the beginning of summer, I find it much harder to dismiss the linguistic spam I see everywhere on WWW, Normal News (which I've always never watched due to decontextualization).

So how do you guys do it? Imagine for a second you were always that one bastard in school who comes to class with a mp3 player only once during a week, and openly demonstrates albeit quietly and politely that he's listening to a book because the lecture has already been understood through a careful application of patience and self-reflection. By not saying anything that is, and at least 90% for your tests or you wasted your life attitude.

How do you do physics/science/engineering when the auditory center of your brain could very well be muscled to the point of absurdity? Where specifically?

(any advice is appreciated)

It's not clear to me what your question is. That is, as far as I know, and from my experience, one learns physics/science/engineering by reading relevant material, working the problems, learning the math, and memorizing as much as one can.