[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 333 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Héloïse Stevance talks about fostering, curiosity and stem and beyond.

[00:00:15] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

[music]

[00:00:25] Bonni: Hello and welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. Today’s guest Dr. Héloïse Stevance was originally born and raised in France. She moved to the UK to study physics and astronomy at the University of Sheffield.

After working as a support astronomer at the Isaac Newton Group in La Palma for a year, she obtained her masters of physics in 2015. She subsequently started a PhD, studying the 3D shape of core-collapse supernovae and earned her title in spring 2019. July of that year, she joined the University of Auckland as a research fellow to research the evolution of massive stars, to better understand how they die, and produce supernovae and kilonovae. She started her public outreach work, which you’ll hear a lot about in this episode, during her doctoral studies in early 2016 and she has not stopped since. Héloïse, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:01:56] Héloïse Stevance: Hi, Bonni, thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:59] Bonni: I want to tell you how we met, only it’s not going to be how we met but it’s going to be how I feel like I came to know you. I know you know that feeling where you just feel like you know someone even though they don’t know you back. Can I tell you how we met?

[00:02:16] Héloïse: Yes, absolutely. I’d love to hear that.

[00:02:18] Bonni: Please feel free to fill in the details, because I think you’ll remember them better than me. There was a young woman I saw her video but it was because you had reposted it, remixed it. She is putting on her makeup. I instantly figured out what was going on where sometimes they’ll do what they want to appear to look like a makeup tutorial, but then they’re actually really talking about things of substance. By the way, side note, makeup’s very crucial.

I don’t really get a lot out of makeup tutorials but I was instantly captivated by this young woman. She’s saying things, and again, feel free to jump in or I miss. She’s saying like, “I just don’t understand why back then back in the day, did they even need–” was calculus? What?

[00:03:03] Héloïse: Yes. She was asking where does maths come from basically. I see math is not math, because England and all of that. She was asking how did they make math? She was like, “Maths doesn’t feel real.” Like she said, “I know it’s real because it works and people use it but I just don’t know how it has come to be.” She was asking very, very good questions. How did these people from 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 years ago, come up with all of this seemingly out of thin air because she was never taught any of that stuff.

[00:03:37] Bonni: Then that’s where you come in.

[00:03:39] Héloïse: Yes. Did the whole of TikTok and Twitter, mostly Twitter, started making fun of her being like, “Oh, I don’t understand how people can be so stupid.” Because the questions she was asking were seemingly very basic, “Where does math come from? How does it exist? How do you know that it works, that it is real? How do you know?” It’s a very fundamental question that’s actually very difficult to answer. Some of the most fundamental questions that you can ask are some of the hardest to actually answer and explain in a concise way.

I guarantee you that none of these people could answer this woman. I guarantee you they had no idea. They just thought these are such basic questions that as a young woman, as a young adult, you should be past asking yourself these questions. That’s the problem, because asking yourself these basic questions, is what makes you a scientist. That’s what scientists are. People who ask questions that others will take for granted is weird. That’s why it captivated our whole community and I felt like I wanted to answer some of the questions because she made a follow-up video defining some of the questions a bit more.

[00:04:56] Bonni: This is not a topic I’m interested in, but something about what you did brought me in. I can’t be alone in that, because–

[00:05:05] Héloïse: That makes me so happy.

[00:05:07] Bonni: The big theme that I want to explore with you today has to do with curiosity because what you seem to have a very, very wonderful ability to do is to generate curiosity, where it does not exist. How do you think about doing that? Because you teach college classes. You also teach the universe through lots of different social media and we’ll get more into how you approach that. How do you think about your role as an educator, and what it has to do with trying to generate curiosity in other people?

[00:05:45] Héloïse: That’s a very interesting thing. I think what I always tell people when they want to go into sci-com is think of yourself as an entertainer first. I know that it might be controversial. It’s something that people might not understand but science at that level, it’s not science that people need in their everyday life. It’s not something that people need to learn. It’s entirely for leisure.

How do you make something interesting like that you entertain people, you wow them, you show them crazy thing, you tell them about the extremes of the universe, and you captivate them with the things that are fun, basically. That’s the way that I see it, is science at that level is entertainment because learning is fun. That’s something that people forget, or just don’t get a taste of with the school system that we have.

Learning is always painful, learning makes you feel like a failure, learning takes time and it’s very difficult and that aspects of learning and problem solving that of course are painful, and difficult and time-consuming. If you’re just given some really cool information, it can just be for fun. You don’t have to do the 20 years of school that I did, to read all of these lengthy papers and everything.

I do that hard work. I’ve done that hard work, then I’m going to give you the fun stuff because it’s 3:00 AM on a Tuesday. You’ve got insomnia. You’re sad, because we’re all sad, it’s the middle of the pandemic, and you just want some fun space facts. Here you have them. It’s not trying to teach people as many things as possible in as much detail as possible. You can’t do that. That’s a bit dull or just, you’ll given too much information that is either not interesting or they can’t process in the small amounts of time and attention that they can give you. If you see yourself as an entertainer first through the medium of science, then you’ve got a good start to be a science communicator.

[00:07:44] Bonni: I was on Twitter a couple days ago. Sarah Rose Cavanagh posted, “I was not expecting this to happen.” Of course, I answered like, “Okay, what is she talking about and I go through.” It’s a woman, and she’s talking about the brain, the different regions of the brain or that kind of thing. She starts out talking I’m going to post a link to this in the show notes because I can’t do it just as when I’m ruining the ending now. I just have to say it, I have to say it.

She starts cutting her hair. Then she starts shaving her entire head. Someone else comes into view and starts drawing with, presumably– it wasn’t a permanent marker, but it looks pretty concrete there on her bald head. Then they start coloring in the different things and things like that. I’m thinking about as you’re talking, that one of the challenges people might have about viewing their role like this is once you’ve shaved your head, you’ve gone like– Is what you’re describing, in your pedagogical view, a means to an end so you earn the right once you have their attention to walk through some more of the– Do you have to be this entertaining? 100% of the time, I guess, is what I’m trying to ask.

[00:09:02] Héloïse: It depends on what audience you’re trying to reach and able to teach. The people who already have an interest, and you were asking about the people that don’t actually have an interest. That’s where that came from. My content spans different areas. There are more approachable pieces of content that are very generic and have more “clickbait.” It’s not clickbait, but it has a clickbait format title.

There’s also content that’s about just brown dwarfs and brown dwarfs don’t sound very appealing. If you’re not someone who’s really interested in space and you don’t know what a brown dwarf is, you might not be interested in watching that video and that’s fine. But the whole bunch of followers who are here for my space content, because they really want space content, people watch it. It’s just if you’re looking at getting the attention of someone who’s not naturally interested in science, yes, you have to be very entertaining. You have to because we live in a world where people’s attention is currency. That’s just the way it is. You need to grab their attention and deserve to give them the piece of knowledge that you want to give them by giving them something else that they usually seek. They don’t seek your science content but they seek entertainment on the internet. You’d give them the entertainment, and you’d give them the science, you slip them into science just at the same time and maybe you’d capture their attention for longer if you spot that curiosity, but that’s the name of the game.

[00:10:31] Bonni: I know that this can be such a struggle for people because, I’m going to sound really condescending, they’ve been taking themselves seriously for a very long time. They’ve been taking their disciplines seriously. Academia seems to. We’re just supposed to all be very, very serious, and people really do get very passionate about their disciplines. They’ve been studying it for years.

I’m wondering if we can shrink down to some tangible ways how could you be a little bit more entertaining, because we’re probably not going to start out by shaving our heads or being as good as you are. Part of what I see you doing is breaking some norms. How could we break some norms in some smaller ways just to start to get used to this playful nature of the unexpected of the entertainment that you described? Can you think of some approaches we could shrink it down?

[00:11:26] Héloïse: I think because everyone is so different in their individuality, I would say if you want to get into sci-com and you’re worried about not being entertaining enough, just at this point, don’t worry. Just do the thing, and practice, and find what makes you happy, what makes you laugh, what you would find interesting.

Oftentimes I think about what would I have wanted to see and watch when I was 14. That’s what I think about. What would have captured my attention when I was interested in space but didn’t know about it? Practice really makes “perfect.” It doesn’t make you perfect but you get the gist, and letting loose in a sense. I have one big tip that had just come to mind.

One of the biggest fear, especially early career researchers, is that when they’re doing outreach and doing that kind of stuff, they’re worried that if they break things down too much or if don’t use jargon, they’re not going to sound clever, they’re not going to sound like they know what they’re talking about. I understand that can be a fear if you don’t look like a scientist. If you look young, you’re worried.

If you’re typically not in the circles, if you’re a person of color, if you’re indigenous and people just don’t associate your image with that of a scientist. With that being said, I think the biggest piece of advice I can give someone is good outreach doesn’t make you sound clever, it makes the audience feel smart. That’s your goal. You shouldn’t let that fear of, “I’m not going to sound like a scientist,” or “I’m not going to sound like I know what I’m doing,” get in the way of explaining the concepts to your audience and making it accessible.

[00:13:17] Bonni: In terms of that fear that we won’t be taken seriously, that’s allowing it to shape us other than what a teacher is, because a teacher isn’t really worried about what other people are thinking, they’re worried about helping their students learn. You divided our students up into people who have yet to have their curiosity ignited, and those who have, and those who have yet. Unfortunately, so many of our systems and structures are built up to make them feel alienated that we got to do something to bring them back in.

[00:13:50] Héloïse: Absolutely, absolutely. It’s one of the things that motivates me into science communication because I was quite privileged to be in a decent school system with really good teachers and I had facilities at school. Academia was the path for me. I’ve always been a scholar. I’ve always love learning. Learning was fun for me because I was good at it and I got good marks. People give me a little pat in the back. If you love learning and you’re struggling with the school system, then that love and that interest gets crushed.

You don’t get the space and the time to learn at your own pace. If you’re teaching people in a medium where it’s mostly entertaining, that’s why you have to make yourself relatable and be like, “Look, we are not that different, and there are really cool things that I know that I’m sure you would love to hear about too.” If you commented from that elitism, “I’m better because I have a PhD,” that just doesn’t work. Think about it as if you’re going down to the pub with your friends and just telling them about some cool stuff you learned today, that’s it.

[00:15:05] Bonni: When I was in my 20s, I used to be really into a type of swing dancing called the Lindy Hop. I was so into it that I would take about three lessons a week and then I also had a private lesson I would do. Then I’d go out at night and go dancing in a couple of times a week. This was something that I was passionate about.

Occasionally, people from work would come out, and one of the places was just a little Italian restaurant. They’d come, and sit, and then watch, and they’d be like, “Wow.” It’s one of those things, you see it and you’d go, “This is incredible. I want to be a part of this too.” They would take one dance lesson, out, because what they didn’t see– All they thought, they came out one night, they see me dancing, they see all these people dancing, and they’re amazing in what they do, and it’s just an incredible thing.

I didn’t get incredible the first time I took a dance lesson. I would try to tell them, “Let me tell you how embarrassing it was as someone who sometimes gets insecure about one’s own weight to have someone try to do a lift, and I fall on the ground, and so does the guy.” You’re going to fall in the most wonderfully spectacular way in front of the most people possible.

That’s how you’re eventually going to– I was pretty good. I got pretty darn good but there were lots of failures and lots of absolutely foolish things along the way. Are there any things for you that come up where you just think, “Wow, I had this spectacular failure that people don’t see now because they see you as you’ve already come so far?”

[00:16:37] Héloïse: That’s a really good question. I think that one of my biggest failures in terms of science communication was the first time I probably talked about space. It’s no surprise. The first time I did it, I was over-ambitious and I lost people’s attention. It was just school. It was school children, and I put way too much information.

I was thinking, “I can totally teach them that stuff. I just need to explain what this word means at the beginning and then I can base my thing of that and whatever.” It was the concept of light-years. I explained what a light-year is, and then I took them on a journey across the universe and showed them the scale of the universe.

The problem is that when you show the scale of the universe to people in terms of numbers– I’m a scientist. I’ve been working with numbers for years so numbers, they sync me, they tell me something. I have an intuition for numbers especially for powers of 10. You tell a child that something is 10,000 or a billion might as well be the same. It makes no difference to them. Like most people who don’t work with these gigantic powers of 10, they don’t get the concept either.

It was a terrible idea. The only way to properly do this is to bring the scales back to earth with like if the sun was a grain sand, then the distance through this galaxy would be this, something like that. You can only do it with analogies. I didn’t because I thought, “No. It can work that way,” and it didn’t. I felt the energy in the room, kids just losing interest and not being able to process all of that.

I’m going to be honest I think if I’ve done that also wouldn’t have gone all that much better. That taught me a lot. It taught me a lot, it thought me a lot about how much you can expect from a room of people who’ve never seen these things, how much information you can throw at them before it starts sticking to the walls basically. I needed to fail in order to see, catch that limit. Yes, there’s been a lot of failures. Even the videos I still do nowadays, they’re edited. Failure is just part of the process, and it’s an ongoing part of the process. It never really goes away.

[00:18:54] Bonni: That’s so much of what we don’t see. I just follow your video, was instantly captivated. I didn’t see all the takes that it took, all the editing, and there’s that part of it in that moment. How long do you think it took you to do that particular thing, the response to the young woman with the makeup?

[00:19:12] Héloïse: It was a one-minute video. I think the total, I spent about 45 minutes because I had to think about how I was going to approach her questions. I had taken notes down, I had to think about what drawing I was going to use to illustrate things, I had to shoot it, make sure they fit in one minute, and then I added a bunch of text over it at the right time and everything. In the end that’s editing. It took 45 minutes to an hour to shoot a one minute video in response to that woman.

[00:19:42] Bonni: I think that’s really important for us to know. I wish we could see more of each other’s failures to be able to recognize that this stuff is a lot harder than sometimes people like you make it look, for sure.

[00:19:55] Héloïse: I’m not anymore. I’m in full-time research. This is why.

[00:19:59] Bonni: Tell us a little bit about what services do you belong to? How do you figure out how to engage? What made you decide to engage with this woman with the makeup? Tell us a little bit about that part of your life.

[00:20:11] Héloïse: Okay, the platforms that I like, I’m mostly on Twitter, and that’s where my science communication started. It’s hard to explain because I was not fully dedicated to science communication until relatively recently. I did do it, but I decided to do more of it because of the pandemic, online, because I’ve been doing science communication for years, but typically, I did it live, it’s no longer possible. As my platform has grown, it’s been easier to reach international communities and people that I wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise, so that was part of the interest.

Twitter is great for really snappy pieces of information or news, it’s great for news. You can make threads, science threads do work, but people whose attention you already have, they will sit through a 32-parts Twitter thread on black holes, but otherwise, not really. It’s great for memes as well, science memes and there’s a great academic community on Twitter, so that’s a great place for that.

I also started doing TikTok videos. Actually, my first TikTok video on science was in March of this year. My platform on TikTok grew because of skating videos, not because of science, which is pretty freaking ironic, and then I switched to doing full-time science videos on there.

[00:21:38] Bonni: Can we go back for just a second, did you say skating?

[00:21:42] Héloïse: I’m a roller derby girl.

[00:21:45] Bonni: I apparently did not properly prepare for this, okay, roller derby ,all right.

[00:21:51] Héloïse: Roller derby is awesome. It’s a great demonstration of angular momentum and gravity. Anyways, yes, I started making more TikTok videos a few months back that were entirely dedicated to science, in order to post them on Twitter, which started working, and then more people did that too, so Kristen Banks, Kirsten Banks, sorry, I butchered her name, does that too, because it’s a very short format. It’s one minute, one-minute video. That’s where you get that snappy content, that people with short attention spans, me, can really easily digest. But it’s also very challenging, because you have a very small amount of time to explain complex concepts, but it’s an interesting challenge, and I really enjoy it.

Now I’ve switched away from TikTok actually, because of technical issues, repeated technical issues. TikTok would de-sync my video, completely with my sound, so it would look like my lips were moving independently of the words, which was very frustrating, and it started deleting some of my videos on the platform. A whole bunch of reasons why TikTok was a fun platform to learn how to be comfortable in front of the camera, to explain science concepts like that, and learn a little bit of editing and what works and what doesn’t.

Now I’ve switched to making my own videos with a software, an editing software, on my mobile. It’s still not professional, it’s literally an app, I’m taking videos with my phone that’s flipped like that on a stack of books, in front of a window, I’m sat on the floor and everything, but at least, the sound matches a lot better with my lips. Now I post them on YouTube instead. That’s still very new, the YouTube channel, but the concept is the same.

The final medium that I have played with as well, is of blogging and writing. Most of my blogging is with academia really, advice and tips and experiences, but I’ve done a little bit of outreach with that. That’s really fun, and more breathable, because you have as many words as you want, you can add as many pictures as you want, you have as much time as you need, to explain these concepts. The only challenge here is to know when to stop.

[00:24:17] Bonni: I have another question because I saw you, I don’t know where I saw you. It’s one of those things where I just see it and click, and before I know what I’m there, but you were doing streaming stuff. I don’t think you were on Twitch, but that’s the–

[00:24:32] Héloïse: Oh, yes, I am not on Twitch, but I do stream once a week, and every week there is a new technical challenge. I’ve been doing it for two months now and I suck, still. Once a week, I stream for 20 minutes. It’s called AstroLive, it’s at 6:30 East Standard Time on Sundays, and Monday mornings in New Zealand. Basically, I take not necessarily science news, the way I describe it is, “I take you on a 20-minute ride at the forefront of space science.” Basically, I explain a brand new scientific publication, I break it down for the public. When there’s big news, like, for example, this week we’ll talk about Venus, because obviously, we have to.

[00:25:22] Bonni: I actually know this story, hurray. I’m so going to have to either if I can join you or listen after the fact. Oh, I’m so excited.

[00:25:30] Héloïse: Yes, they’re all posted on YouTube after the fact and they are streamed on Twitter as well. The concept, the idea is that even if there’s no science news, I pick some things that I read on what we called the arXiv. The arXiv is where physicists post their new papers that are about to be published, and that’s where we see all of our news, but it’s way too complicated for the layperson to read any paper from the arXiv, it’s for specialists.

If there’s a very new interesting object, or concept or piece of news that’s on the arXiv, and not on the BBC, or something like that, then I can take that stuff and explain it to people in about 20 minutes and tell them why this paper is interesting for our field, and use it as a springboard to be like, “Oh, and this is what this means for this type of … or here is some basic stellar evolution or some basic understanding of the universe that you might not have already.

[00:26:31] Bonni: When I was there, I noticed there were quite a few people commenting. Do you pay attention to the comments as they’re coming in? Or do you tend to do your 20 minutes and then look at what came in during? [crosstalk]

[00:26:44] Héloïse: I do it at the end because I don’t get all that many comments during, but when I do, I don’t want it to get too distracting. I did that in the first one, that was a mistake, where I kept stopping and starting. I was also looking at the number of people viewing and getting worried or just jumpy when it jumped up and down, which is again, … don’t look at it.

I just tell people now to put their questions in the comments on Twitter during, because the problem is that there’s also a delay between when I’m talking and when it’s appearing on Twitter, sometimes a 15-second delay. I’ll be like “Hey, now time for questions and then nothing.” so I’ve made that mistake where I’ve just missed entire comments, because people just hadn’t heard that it was question time now. People just write their questions as I go, and then at the end, I go through them.

[00:27:36] Bonni: Okay. Well, this is so fun, you’re actually reminding me a little bit, it’s almost like you’ve come full circle. You’ve been using your live experiences and some of those earlier failures. Then you got to that short format and what you learned about that, and then bringing it full circle to something that somewhat approximates the live, but then, it’s different.

[00:27:59] Héloïse: Yes, I think it was the natural progression, because I much prefer, which I know some people hate it, but I much prefer live. I am an extroverted person, I like human contact, I like being social, I like interaction. Being alone in my room, and also there’s a higher expectation of edited videos, and I am a bit of a perfectionist. I know, and I’ve learned to let go of that, but it makes it way easier for me if it’s like, “You can’t edit this. This is how it is going to be, so you don’t even think about it. That’s just how it is, and then I can have fun.

I do a lot of random lives on Twitter as well, because it’s the pandemic and I’m lonely. We just talk about stuff and people then ask me science questions, because I’m a scientist, and I can answer them if they have them. We’ll just talk about random science stuff and random academic stuff and random life stuff live, because this is where I have the most fun, really.

[00:28:59] Bonni: There’s so much we can learn from those in the moment, it’s happening right now, and yet, I wanted to go back to what you said earlier, because I just don’t want it to get lost. You made a one-minute video, and it took you between 45 and 60 minutes, and you’re already very good at what you do. I think some people would take from that, that the lesson they should take is, “Well, that would take way too long. What I’m going to do instead is just record myself for 45 minutes unedited, and provide that to my students.” It takes the same amount of time, 45 minutes.

I still remember giving, this is many moons ago and I’m sure it didn’t happen at my institution, I’m sure it was a different one, where someone had given a phenomenal workshop on how to create more compelling, more engaging slide decks, and then the comment was, “Well, that would take me too long.”

[00:29:55] Héloïse: Yes, absolutely.

[00:29:56] Bonni: It’s like, “Well, you’re asking then your students, to have to– the burden of you don’t want to spend the time to get it right, you’re shifting that exponentially on every student that you ever have.

[00:30:09] Héloïse: The problem is capitalism because there’s way too much pressure put on teachers and lecturers as far as output is concerned, and a lot of your lecturers will be people who are researchers, and to be relevant in the field, they need to keep producing and they need to keep writing.

[00:30:29] Bonni: Well, and thank goodness for people like you that are given us other ways of looking at what it means to be a teacher. I’m so glad to be connected with you. This is the time in the show where we each get to give our recommendations. I think I’m going to recommend that video that I was mentioning earlier on the show. I’m definitely going to have that as my recommendation where she shaves her head. I want to apologize to all of the Teaching in Higher Ed listeners for ruining it for you because now you know what’s going to happen, but you still have to watch it, it’ll be so good.

Then the second thing I want to recommend is that there were a number of people talking about the essays called This I Believe essays. Bryan Dewsbury, who has been on the show previously has talked about this. And there’s a blog post I want to share because the author did such a great job of curating so many different kinds of the This I Believe. This I Believe essay is something that you can assign to your students, they have a whole curriculum around it. I remember specifically when Bryan Dewsbury was talking, it was kind of, “As a STEM professor, how do we help students bring their values into science and be able to match up their values and what they’re doing in science.”

She’s got this other author of a blog post where she curated the different This I Believe, she talked about some literacy narratives, if we’re focused on critical thinking and the humanities we work with. She had one by Bill Gates, Brian Grazer, Rick Moody, Errol Morris. Then if we want to expand the way students are thinking about their gaming narratives, and this was a whole world I know close to nothing about, but some interesting titles here. Jazz is the Sound of God Laughing, There Is No Such Thing as Too Much Barbecue.

[00:32:24] Héloïse: I agree with that.

[00:32:25] Bonni: My Legacy of Playing Games. Anyway, it’s a wonderful way of looking at how to use this essay writing format to help students express themselves in a lot of different contexts and a lot of different disciplines. I’ll be linking to that in the show notes, as well as the video of the wonderful teacher who did such a memorable video. Now, I get to pass it over to you Héloïse for yours.

[00:32:49] Héloïse: Cool, thank you. I have two recommendations as well. The first one is a Netflix series, which hopefully is also available in your countries. It’s called Away. It’s I think a 10-part series, which I assume will get a second season, about a crew of astronauts that are going to Mars, they’re the first crew to ever land on Mars and step on Mars. I found it very interesting because it not only shows you the real dangers and troubles of space, I mean, it is a film. It’s a series so it has its limitations as far as physically accurate, but it shows you how dangerous and challenging space is on a physical level.

But it also really looks at interpersonal relationships and how difficult it is to be stuck in a tin can with people for several months’ journey to Mars, and how difficult it is to be away from your family for years. It also explores international relationships and how it works because obviously, it’s really good. It’s not American-centric. It’s just a bunch of Americans going to Mars, it’s an American, a Russian, an English citizen, and a Chinese citizen all going together and there are some interesting ways in which they show how different countries deal with space in a different way. That’s really good.

Another recommendation is less entertainment-based and more spread awareness of sort of thing. I’d like to spread awareness of hyperventilation syndrome because I was diagnosed with it a couple of weeks ago when I was feeling really, really unwell. I got very odd symptoms of drowsiness, dizziness, I couldn’t work anymore, and it was narrowed down to what’s called HVS, hyperventilation syndrome, which is basically chronic hyperventilation, and it’s something I never heard of before.

I knew what hyperventilation is because I’ve had panic attacks, a lot of people have had panic attacks, and know what it’s like, but it’s something that can be chronic where your body basically, because of stress factors, whether they are physical or mental, whatever it is, your body just doesn’t breathe properly, it forgets how to breathe properly, and your brain just doesn’t get oxygenated.

Just it’s very ironic because you breathe too much, your CO2 levels drop, and your brain doesn’t end up getting the oxygen that it needs and that’s why you feel dizzy and drowsy, and can’t focus and all of that. If you have a history of anxiety, and this is a very difficult and anxiety-inducing time, it’s a very stressful time, I highly recommend that you check out for symptoms of HVS just so you’re aware, so if it starts happening to you, then you can catch it and take it early, where you need to take breaks, you need to do breathing exercises, learn how to be in tune with your body to really take care of your body and your mind. That’s my message for the day.

[00:36:02] Bonni: Well, I am both– I’m sorry that this happened to you, but I’m so also relieved because it sounds like this is something that is manageable. Am I interpreting that correctly?

[00:36:13] Héloïse: Yes, it’s completely manageable at this point in my case. It’s something that I can manage myself, but I just want people to be aware that it might affect them too.

[00:36:24] Bonni: Well, now, it’s not just me who knows you, you know a little bit of me and now the community of Teaching in Higher Ed knows you. I’m so glad that they do. Some of them probably already know you from before, their other interactions with you, but it’s been a real honor to get to talk to you and so fun and you’re just sharing so much of ways that we can all get better and thinking about how to be better teachers and that comes back to that practice that you talked about, the failure, being ready to do that and trying different mediums. It’s been so fun to talk to you today.

[00:36:55] Héloïse: Thanks so much, Bonni. It was so much fun talking to you and very thought-provoking. I have to say you triggered a few lightbulb moments and a few memories there with your question. Thanks so much for having me here.

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[00:37:10] Bonni: Héloïse, it was such a pleasure to get to talk with you today. You really ignited my imagination so much about the ways to help to do the same for our students. Thank you for helping us think through ways that we can generate more curiosity with those already interested in our disciplines and those very far from those interest levels. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you would like to access the show notes for today’s episode, those are at teachinginhighered.com/333.

If you would like to receive the semi-regular updates from Teaching in Higher Ed, go over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. Thanks so much for listening. I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

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The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning. 

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.