If today you feel off your game, this post is for you. Maybe, your experiment failed. Or your paper got rejected. Or you didn’t get the position you wanted. Or a colleague criticized you harshly. The academic game is a tough one. Criticism rules the game. Striving for excellence is the norm and, besides the elation of learning and running our studies, we, scientists, don’t get much gratification for our hard work. So on days when we feel the doors are slamming in our faces, sometimes the best thing to do is to forget about the science, go home and watch a movie that will cheer us up. Here are five movies that may do the trick.
Enjoy and chin up!
THE INTOUCHABLES
The Intouchables is a French movie about the friendship between a wealthy aristocrat who became paraplegic after a paragliding accident and a young man from the ghetto hired to be his live-in caregiver. The film is everything but pathetic; it’s hilarious, moving, and deeply inspirational.
RUSH
RUSH (available on Netflix) tells the story of the rivalry between the Formula One drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt. It’s also a true story and, boy!, were these guys tough! It feels good to have people to look up to.
WHEN WE WERE KINGS
… is a documentary on Muhammad Ali’s legendary boxing match against George Foreman in 1974 in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), also called the “greatest sporting event of the 20th century”. Ali is a motivational monster. The soundtrack is a delight for the ears of funk music fans, and the whole historical background is captivating.
HARRY POTTER and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the 5th movie of the series. Voldemort, the evil Dark Lord, has returned and has decided to impose his tyranny on the world again. Harry raises a secret army of students to fight him. The final battle he must fight is in his mind, which Voldemort has managed to invade. A beautiful allegory of our inner struggles.
JULIE AND JULIA
Julie and Julia (available on Netflix) is based on a true story. Julie Powell, a failed writer, challenges herself to complete all 524 recipes from Julia Child’s classic cookbook from the 1960s in 365 days. The movie tells the parallel stories of two women separated by time who have used their passion for food to regain meaning in their lives. Meryl Streep’s performance is amazing. This movie shows that great things take time to mature up.
First of all I want to say great blog! I had a quick question that I’d like to ask if you don’t
mind. I was curious to find out how you center yourself
and clear your thoughts prior to writing. I’ve had a tough time
clearing my thoughts in getting my ideas out there.
I do take pleasure in writing however it
just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes tend to
be lost just trying to figure out how to begin.
Any suggestions or hints? Many thanks!
Hi! And thanks for your kind words!
In answer to your question, I would first like to say that starting to write is a challenge for most people. You are not alone experiencing this problem and it is normal that you need a few minutes to get into the swing of things. Psychological research shows that it takes about 6 minutes to focus on a new task; this is simply the way our attentional brain networks operate. That being said, there are tricks to getting into a writing flow; I wrote a blog post on this topic: 12 ways to motivate yourself to start writing. Check it out and let me know if you find something that works for you.
All the best from Graz, Gaya