Midterms are nothing short of a mental battlefield. Our sleep-deprived children step out of the house, their hoodies raised over their ears like helmets, covering hair they didn’t have time to comb while also keeping inside their overburdened heads the Latin words for “seize the day.”

They clutch their swords — their No. 2 pencils and erasable pens; and grasp their tiny shields — the one-page sheets filled with the equations for photosynthesis and the description of the domain Archaea.

When the kids arrive at school, they don’t look left and right because they don’t have much time to chat with friends, avoid enemies or wonder what fashion statement the popular students are making. They are bracing for battle and they have to climb the mountain in front of them without allowing too many mistakes to slow them down.

We adults have been through these moments before, just as we have had shots, skinned our knees and struck out in a big game. And yet watching our kids go through all these challenges brings a whole new level of anxiety, butterflies and, like Pandora’s box, rays of hope. Might this be the time when they succeed just as they feel they are about to succumb? Could this be just the confidence boost they need to help them relax and attack these tests with the equivalent of the light side of the force on future tests?

While the kids write about epiphanies, rarely, as those of us who have gone through this know, do they happen in the middle of an exam. Sure, there might be a moment when they say, “Oh, right, of course, I know this. The answer is ‘0’ because it can’t be anything else.” But more often, even if they figure that one out, they still have another six pages of mysterious questions, such as “What king believed in absolutism?” [Louis XIV of France]; and how did Dante know what my world would be like on test day when he wrote “The Divine Comedy”?

There are all kinds of lessons that await them, some of which apply to the material itself, while others relate to the best test-taking strategy. I recall a test many years ago in which the teacher urged everyone to read all the instructions first before starting. Few of the students did that because they didn’t want to lose time and because any sound outside their heads competed with the pneumonics they were repeating inside their brains like lines in a play.

As the tests arrive on their desks, their legs might start shaking involuntarily, trying to get their minds moving, the way Olympic runners take short, quick jogs before crouching down in the starting blocks. They go through whatever lucky rituals they might have, thinking about the words of a friend or relative, taking a few deep breaths or looking up at the clock, knowing that — one way or another — the hands that slowly circumnavigate those 12 numbers all day, every day, will move them toward their uncertain future.

Maybe they chuckle to themselves at the higher dose of perfume than normal from the girl to their right or the stronger scent of Axe deodorant from the boy to their left. Maybe these other students didn’t take showers that morning because they got up too late or because they sat on the edge of their beds cramming through those last few facts.

Few of them will emerge from the battle completely unscathed. Hopefully, next time around, they’ll remember their earlier wounds and will learn how to avoid making the same mistakes. That, in any context, constitutes progress.

Steven Strogatz picked up the phone to hear the familiar voice of someone he’d never met.

“I got a call from out of the blue, which was really shocking,” said Strogatz, a math professor at Cornell University. “He said, ‘this is Alan Alda. I don’t know if you know me, but I’m an actor.’”

Alda had read an article Strogatz wrote for Scientific American about synchronization in the natural world, which included phenomena like thousands of male fireflies flashing in unison like a Christmas tree. Alda said he wanted to discuss the article.

The Manhattan-born actor visited Strogatz, who was then at MIT in Massachusetts.

“He was this super-famous TV and movie actor,” Strogatz said. “He was not particularly well-known for work in science communication, like he is now.”

At the time of his call to Strogatz, which was more than 20 years ago, Alda was only one year into hosting the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers, in which he wound up interviewing hundreds of scientists during the 11 years he hosted the program.

Alda, who is turning 80 on the Thursday this newspaper comes out, has developed a second career as a science communicator, winning a star-studded list of new fans who appreciate his passion, intellect and, most of all, thirst for knowledge that has turned this seven-time Emmy winning actor into a champion of scientific knowledge and scientists.

Alda is “phenomenal,” said Eric Kandel, the director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science at Columbia University. Kandel explained that Alda and a talented Norwegian journalist have been the master of ceremonies for the Kavli Prizes, which are given out in Oslo, Norway, every two years to researchers in astrophysics, nanotechnology and neuroscience.

The prestigious Kavli awards are modeled after the Nobel Prize. Kandel, 86, knows a thing or two about those awards as well: he shared the Nobel Prize in 2000 in Physiology or Medicine.

Alda has helped teach Kandel about the communication of science. Alda’s “range is quite broad and his ability to communicate is quite remarkable,” Kandel said.

Kandel attended an 80th birthday bash for Alda a few weeks ago. He took a turn talking to those celebrating an extraordinary life.

“What had been emphasized by the family was his acting career,” Kandel said. He described two important features about Alda.

First, “He’s revolutionized the communication of science to the public. He’s made an enormous impact. He does not have a peer.” And second, “He’s the most unpretentious guy you’ve ever met. You’d never have thought he’d done a movie.”

In 2006, the unpretentious Alda approached Shirley Kenny, the former president of Stony Brook University, about starting a center that would help scientists share their goals, approaches, and results with the public.

Alda met with several people in East Hampton, including Howard Schneider, the dean of Stony Brook’s journalism school.

“The creation story” that explains the origins of the Center for Communicating Science, “starts with this porch meeting,” Schneider said.

When the group returned from East Hampton, they discovered that there were occasional programs and courses and workshops about communicating science, but there didn’t appear to be any center devoted exclusively to “improving the ability of scientists to communicate with the public,” Schneider said.

Aided by former U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop and current U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington), Stony Brook applied for, and received, a federal grant of $220,000 to start the effort.

Alda “was the inspiration and remains the inspirational figure in this effort,” Schneider said.

The seed money led to the founding in 2009 of the Center for Communicating Science, offering students an opportunity to learn how to connect with a range of audiences through various types of training, including improvisational acting, which is the only training Alda received.

Improv requires people to listen to what other people are saying and build off of that, forging connections through shared common ground, Schneider said.

“One rule of improv is that you say, ‘Yes and,’” said Elizabeth Bass, a founding director at the center. “You have to take what [the other person] gives you and add to it.”

Valeri Lantz-Gefroh, the improvisation director at the center, came from the world of theater to the center. She said Alda helped her learn more about a “skill I’ve been working on for 30 years by teaching it in a different way. That gift has come from Alda.”

Indeed, scientists who have taken these courses suggested that they have been invaluable in helping them deliver their message and connect with their audience.

Colin West, a research assistant at the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook, took six courses at the center. Before he attended the classes, he said he was introverted.

“It’s not enough to eschew the jargon from my own vocabulary,” West said. “I should be trying to understand the jargon and phraseology that’s typical in their patterns of thought and incorporate them into my language.”

Alda has also helped a wide range of scientists. He has “made many of us look from the outside at what we do and ask how we can do better in telling our stories and be more engaging about our fields,” said Louise Leakey, a research professor in the department of anthropology at Stony Brook who works on human evolution in Africa.

Alda asked Leakey to sit on the advisory board at the center because she was working to make the fossil collection accessible online and set up a citizen science project in paleontology.

The notion of sharing science with non-scientists has only recently become more acceptable and more popular, in part because scientists are struggling to get funding for projects ranging from basic science exploring physical properties at an incredibly small scale to discoveries that might help treat diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease or schizophrenia, researchers said.

Alda has continued to be a driving force at the center, which, in 2013, was renamed the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. In what friends suggest was typical self-deprecating fashion, Alda said he was flattered that the school was named after him and suggested that, to that point, only a horse had shared his name.

Committed to the center and passionate about science, Alda continues to keep a schedule that would exhaust someone half his age. Years ago, he shot his final episode of The Blacklist, in which his character, Alan Fitch, dies.

That night, Alda flew to Chicago to give a talk as the keynote speaker of the American Association of Medical Colleges to an audience of more than 1,200. Alda didn’t get his wake up call and got up 20 minutes before his 8 a.m. speech, when he inspired leaders about the need to share science with the public.

That night, Alda flew back to New York, where he opened on Broadway in a matinee of “Love Letters.”

Bass said Alda’s work ethic has inspired others at the center.

“We want to help” these efforts become “an important part of his legacy,” Bass said.

It’s a legacy that continues because of a lifesaving surgery Alda had when he was meeting with a scientist in Chile in 2003.

When a local surgeon made a diagnosis and told him the procedure, Alda said he’d need an end-to-end anastomosis. The surprised surgeon asked him how he knew that, and Alda said he used to pretend to perform that in the show “M*A*S*H.”

Friends, colleagues, and scientists appreciate the active intellectual life Alda and Arlene Alda, who have been married close to 59 years, share.

Arlene Alda, a photographer and children’s book author, and her husband have numerous books in their house, Strogatz said. They use these books to continue to feed their curiosity. Alda has also asked Strogatz to give him geometry problems to solve.

“He works on them with great effort for weeks or months at a time,” Strogatz said.

For Alda, the final product, however, is less important than the process. And that process continues as Alda heads into another decade.

These days, the people who imagine his distinctive voice aren’t picturing Hawkeye Pierce in a red robe running to a helicopter so much as they are looking for inspiration in their efforts to share the wonder and beauty of science.

“Sometimes when I have to explain a complicated topic to a nonscientist, I imagine Alan sitting next to me and asking me questions like I’m a guest on Scientific American Frontiers,” West said. “Trying to envision what questions he would ask often helps me figure out what answers to give.”

The team moves as a unit, wearing the same clothes, often with the same hairstyles and even, on occasion, with the same walk or swagger.

They laugh together, lean on each other, share embraces and confess their inadequacies.

“I was terrible,” one of them said, while she took a restorative homemade brownie from a friend.

“You’ll get ’em next game,” her friend suggested. “We’re back on in 15 minutes.”

We took our daughter to a regional volleyball competition in Pennsylvania recently, where teenagers from all over the area trekked in packed cars to bump, set and spike together.

The weekend presented an opportunity for our children to play a sport they love, while it was also a chance for parents to squirm, squeal and celebrate alongside them.

The younger generation exuded joy and confidence. After every point in teenage volleyball, the girls cheer, offer a quick huddle and then return to their positions on the floor.

Our team developed its own ritual after long points in which it emerged victorious. The players all jumped straight up in the air, then met in the middle of the floor to celebrate the hard-won point.

When they’re not on a volleyball court, these children mostly move around individually, even if they can stay in touch with friends and family on their phones and through social media. They don’t take tests together, they don’t study together — most of the time — and they don’t have a common goal. Sure, they might all wish each other the best but, ultimately, they learn on their own and succeed individually.

Modern team sports which, admittedly, take an extreme commitment of time and money, have also created opportunities to make memories, to grow together and, for the moment at least, to share a goal that is bigger than any one person.

That, of course, isn’t limited to sports. That can be true of a music group where everyone creates the kind of live performance that reverberates in audiences’ minds long after the instruments are put back in their cases and the musicians return to their homes and their homework.

The unbridled and shared joy in the moment is akin to witnessing the flames of a dancing campfire high in the mountains on a starlit night. During these matches there are no tests, no boyfriends, no worries about college, no concerns about acne, no wardrobe misfires and no helicopter parents. There is only the euphoria of the moment, the ecstasy that comes from pulling together and going toe-to-toe with another team and, at least in that second and for that point, emerging victorious. It’s not even about winning the gold medal or even a match.

My daughter’s team defeated one of its opponents easily, winning two games by a wide margin. The other team, however, won several exciting points and, despite the lopsided score and the unbalanced skill sets, celebrated every point with the same energy as if it had achieved something remarkable. And who’s to say it didn’t? The games presented ample opportunities for victories that were independent of the final scores.

Parents were as emotionally spent after exciting matches as their children, as they cheered, clapped, pranced nervously along the sidelines, and hooped and hollered. They basked in their children’s successes and encouraged them to find a way to triumph, where the margin of victory often seemed to reflect perseverance and determination as much as it did genuine skills.

In our lives, we have become so focused on our goals for tomorrow and plans for our future journey that we don’t always get to stand up and celebrate the moment. All weekend, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and a community of new friends celebrated a common goal of finding and sharing the best in each other.

He started, “Once upon a time, three little brown bears.”

“No, no, that’s not right!” she shouted, interrupting him before he could get to the action. “They weren’t little, there weren’t three of them and they weren’t brown.”

“Wait!” he protested, putting up a finger. “Who is telling this story, you or me?”

“No, well, if you’re going to tell it, tell it right,” she argued.

“But it’s a children’s story,” he snapped. “Can’t we just tell the story?”

“You want him to go to school with the wrong details? You want him to come home with a bloody nose because someone punched him when he argued about whether they were little brown bears or medium-sized, endangered polar bears?”

“You think our kid is going to get into a fight because I might have used the wrong details in a story? Weren’t we trying to put the kid to sleep? Look at him now. He’s crawling all over the bed, putting everything he can reach into his mouth,” he said.

“Yeah, well, get the details right next time,” she huffed, storming out of the room.

What is it about storytelling that divides the sexes? Why is it that a man remembers a story one way and a woman seems so much better at remembering the details?

Is it fair to generalize? Well, like every generalization, yes and no.

A friend recently shared his observation that his girlfriend, whom he thinks is absolutely one of the best people he’s ever known, has only one small problem — she tends to take all the momentum out of his stories by correcting him.

Is she wrong, I wondered? And even if she’s not wrong, do the details matter? When I thought about all the couples I’ve known over the years, it seemed to me, in my nonscientific recollections, that the women were more likely than the men to halt a story to fix a detail.

“So, there were we were, in the middle of a fire alarm scare in Boston, and we were standing at the window ledge, eight stories up,” he might be saying.

“No! No! We were in San Francisco, not Boston, and we were on the 11th floor,” she might suggest.

A glare and bad body language often follows, as the man loses the thread of his story while he grinds his teeth, wondering whether he can or should confront the love of his life in front of other people.

Is this one of those differences between the sexes that reflect the fact that men are from Mars and women are from Venus? I suspect it is. The way I see it, the details we share about our lives in stories are like the fish we might collect if we were standing at the edge of a pier in Stony Brook, dropping nets into the water to catch fish — or story details — as they swim by.

The holes in a man’s net are larger, letting the small fish swim through, while the holes in the women’s nets are smaller. The women pull up their nets and notice and count the large and small fish, paying meticulous attention to everything, cataloging the variety of fish in their nets.

The men look at the fish and wonder: (a) “Is this enough for dinner?” (b) “Should I take a picture of it?” and most importantly (c) “Did I catch more fish than my brother or the stranger at the end of the pier who kept bragging about all the fish he caught?”

The next time a man’s story goes off track because of specific details, maybe he can suggest he’s focusing on the “bigger fish.” Then again, a woman might rightfully reply that he’s just telling another “fish” story.