As engineering students, we learn how to solve real-world problems. After four years of study, it is interesting to look back and to see how some of the concepts we learned could be applied to arguably the realest problem of all – daily life. In this blog post, we (Bryan and Sam, fourth-year Engineering students) decided to reach out to a few UBC Engineering professors and experienced students to share their favourite engineering concepts, what skills they have learned from them, and how these skills could be applied to improve our daily lives. We summarized their key insights and ideas into a series of two blog posts.
This is the first blog of the series and it deals with the importance of sleep, diet and exercise. We hope you will find some of these insights useful and practical.
Designing Better Health
Master Your Sleep
We spoke to Dr. Potvin, an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He discussed how biology and microbiology can impact our learning.
“Learning is about information processing, and this is why sleep plays a pivotal role in learning. When we study or try to learn new things, we are trying to establish neurological pathways that correspond to the kind of knowledge or concept we are trying to learn. Part of that process involves the storage and consolidation of information in our long-term memory, which is what happens when we sleep. So, not sleeping or not getting enough sleep means you are bypassing the process that actually saves the information for later retrieval. So, studying all night without getting adequate sleep is like staying up all night to type an essay and then not saving it before shutting down. Therefore, sleeping is not just good because it is good for your body, it helps us learn better because it is a physiological phenomenon that is required.”
If you would like to learn more about how sleep helps with learning, please feel free to visit this page.
We asked Dr. Potvin how he managed his sleep when he was a student and what tips he had for students. He empathized with how busy and challenging being a student is, having completed a Biochemistry and Chemical Engineering degree, and encouraged students to learn how to apply time management to balance school work and still get adequate sleep.
Master Your Diet
Dr. Potvin also had some insights about the importance of a balanced diet for processing and retaining information, and, in turn, achieving academic excellence. Recent research has given us a better understanding on the link between our diet and the way our brain works. He explained: “In Chemical Engineering, we design processes. In these processes, we define the inputs and output and we find ways to transform what we put into the system through a variety of steps. So, if something goes wrong in any part of that system, it impacts the entire process since everything is connected. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small part or if it’s a big part; if you have a leak in the system, the whole thing goes down. It’s the same thing with the human body, which is a system on its own. Our brain is a physical piece of equipment which connects everything in our body. It receives inputs and outputs and it relies on the rest of the human body to function properly. If you start interfering with the physical inputs and outputs of that (by not eating healthy) then it might affect performance in other ways. So, the key takeaway is to genuinely make an effort to make sure our diets are balanced for personal and academic well-being.”
Charging Through Sleep
Imagine you just bought a new phone and to keep it new, you had to charge it between 7 and 9 hours a night. If you failed to do this, its battery would swell up and the screen would start to flicker. Though this sounds like a shoddily made phone, most products are engineered with some sort of maintenance in mind to keep them working optimally. In this regard, the human body is no different.
Sleep is one of the most crucial processes for the maintenance of mental and physical wellness. Skipping this nighty maintenance comes with dire consequences. Skipping sleep can be as detrimental to productivity as knocking back a few beers first thing in the morning. The long-term effects are grimmer still with long-term sleep deprivation linked to faster onset of Alzheimer’s disease and increased risk of all-cause mortality.
Now, it is all well and good to know these facts about sleep. But how do you get enough with all the competing course obligations, deadlines and other social obligations of a student?
One tip I (Bryan) have found very helpful is to set and stick to a bedtime alarm. Most students set a wake-up alarm which can be a helpful practice. How you feel when you wake depends on two factors – the length and regularity of your sleep. Once you’ve determined how many hours you need to feel rested, say 7.5 hours, you’ll want to be in bed 15 minutes before your sleep time to allow time to fall asleep. Setting a bedtime alarm one hour before your bedtime can give you enough time to wrap up whatever you’re doing so you can get to bed in time.
Process Control in Real Life
Process control is a term in chemical engineering that refers to the active changing of an industrial process based on feedback from monitoring the process, to achieve a desired output.
After studying process control for about 8 months now, I (Sam) have learned that the human body is a sophisticated system with incredible process control in our daily life. Think about how the body maintains our temperature at around 37 C, our blood pressure, or how our bodies respond to “disturbance variables” when we are getting sick. I find it very fascinating how our body is like one big machine, except it is a lot more complex.
However, that got me thinking: since our bodies already naturally have these systems in place to control different variables in our daily lives, are there ways we can improve these systems just like we can improve any engineering process? Then I realized, absolutely yes! In fact, I (like many others) have been applying this unknowingly. How I have personally applied this concept in my life is by applying one of my favorite control strategies – Feedforward Control. An example is discussed below.
Exercising, for me, is a strategy I implement. There are tons of benefits from exercising. For me, it is a habit that has enhanced my productivity and improved my discipline. I have made this a “feedforward control process” in that when I plan my week/day, I try to identify in advance what variables will likely spike my stress levels. It could be those back-to-back assignments, a presentation, or an upcoming exam. Instead of waiting until I am stressed out, process control/feedforward control has taught me that I can take action by first recognizing these “disturbances” and controlling them by exercising, which increases my motivation and enhances my productivity.
This is one example of how I have applied this concept, but I believe that we achieve better results in different ramifications of our lives if we view it as a system with a lot of variables that can be optimized. Also, this is in line with one of my favorite sayings: “live life by focusing on the things you can control”.
As students, it is tempting to begin to sacrifice things like sleep and exercise in order to create more time for our academics. As research has repeatedly shown, cutting corners when it comes to fundamental necessities of the body like sleep and healthy food can work against our academic goals by degrading our general health and wellness.
Check out the second part of this blog series for further insights on keeping a schedule and planning your leisure time.
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