Hey everyone! We know that juggling studies and research can be a bit overwhelming, so we’re rolling out a brand-new program called “Grab & Grow”. These quick, 30-minute workshops are perfect for busy students and staff looking to boost their research skills without a huge time commitment. Whether you’re trying to figure out the library’s call number system or explore scientific research using open data, we’ve got you covered. Here is what you can look forward to: you’ll learn how to Manage your references effortlessly Create eye-catching presentations and videos with Canva, and Dive into scientific research using OpenAlex. These sessions are all about making your life easier and enhancing your efficiency in research. Plus, they’re engaging, so you’ll walk away with practical skills and use right away. So, if you want to level up your research capabilities and keep your research on point, join us for “Grab & Grow”. Keep an eye on our announcements for the schedule and grab your spot. Let’s make research fun and effective together!

Part 1 discussed how students can fight monsters of anxiety about grades & GPA by laughing and learning with the Wisdom Stone Game. But, some carry around other fears. Since childhood, we’ve become familiar with the idea or cliché of corpses and skeletons coming to life. Others may fear living creatures like spiders or snakes. We get “spooked out” by such things, except when they are silly or pretty. There’s a long tradition of dealing with these fears by confronting or even celebrating them. Here’s an example: Danse Macabre, composed by Camille Saint-Saëns, performed by Lydia Ayers, Andrew Horner, and Stella So. Danse Macabre, also called the Dance of Death, is an allegorical concept said to encapsulate the unconscious fear of death.1 The popularity of the Danse Macabre art such as poetry, music and drama, can be traced back to the 13th century, when Europeans became obsessed with death inspired by the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War.2 This video of a puppet show, available on DataSpace@HKUST, is part of a collection of the music, and puppet productions of the late Dr. Lydia Ayers, a former professor at HKUST, given by her widower, Dr. Andrew Horner, a professor of Computer Science here.

Halloween is a time when stories with mystery and imagination come alive. When we were young and had limited understanding of the world, we might struggle to differentiate between fantasy and reality. Thus, our fears were mostly related to imaginary creatures, mythical scenarios or the dark. The older I get, the more I realize that thrilling mysteries are not based solely on our imaginations, but on things close enough to “haunt” our memories and connected deeply to our personal fears. This is why the HKUST campus legends mostly relate to studies. We take our exam results and learning outcomes seriously: they become the root of our anxiety. I can relate it because I graduated from HKUST too. Remember how people in the Harry Potter series banished their boggarts, which took the form of their worst fear? They shouted “Riddikulus!”.  Thus, we can defeat fear by humor and laughter. If our boggarts are anxiety about our grades and GPA, let’s turn it into something fun and interesting, so it can never dominate our spirits.

In this post, Holly Chan, our Assistant Manager of Digital Humanities, demonstrates how to perform Cantonese speech-to-text transcription with coding.