I had been nervous. What if she didn't want to see me? She beamed at me unfeignedly, though. Her auburn hair fell in thick tresses around her pretty face, and she looked five years younger than when I'd last seen her.
I was happy to see her happy. She was about to take a whole series of courses in math she hadn't used since grad school, she said. She had obtained permission to teach half-time the next school year. She and her husband had bought a vacation home in a state she loves, and she fervently looked forward to spending the summer there. She had many plans, and none of them were dull.
How about me? What had happened to me?
Read more. . .
My mother had gotten breast cancer. Her illness revolutionized our nuclear family dynamics for the light-years better, but she had nearly died and I didn't want to talk about it.
Tiny One? Tiny One worked as an editor of medical journals in a city hundreds of miles away. She had a head for business, though, and I suspected that she would develop into a promising entrepreneur. Currently, she lived with an Irishman, whom she would probably marry.
I had studied archaeology for two years. I had been to Easter Island. I had taken this awesome course called Method and Theory. I had comprised one point of an inappropriate "love triangle". "Love triangle" is in quotations, because I never dated this professor. He ultimately chose his undergraduate lab assistant over me, consummating their relationship and running away with her mid-academic year. Yes, I was sick of forging abusive emotional ties with men named after archangels who wound up with Last Unicorns named Pauline. I'd try harder next time. I had fought with the Dean over the cancellation of certain important classes. He disliked me. A lot. Did I mention that I'd taken this course called Method and Theory? Did she know that the practice of science actually begins with ontology? All science. Most people confuse science with empiricism. It's so much more than that, though, and, if they only knew how truly splendid it was, they would ask--
"So you've graduated?" my calculus teacher asked.
"No," I chuckled. "I decided to be a geneticist instead, and I quit."
Thoughtful silence.
"Everyone should pursue what they really want to do," she said, cheerfully. "Even if they would be way better at something else."
This. This right here. This which she's always been saying to me. This which I'm sick of believing. Of all the limits my calculus teacher has tried to impose on me, this is the one I most want to defy. So, above all else that I wished to tell her and never did, this is the thing I most want to get into my time machine and say:
STOP TELLING ME THAT ENGLISH MAJORS CAN'T MAKE GREAT SCIENTISTS.
Yeah. I'm better than writing than I am at math. Okay. Except I don't suck at math; you told me so yourself. You know why I don't suck at math? Because I'm not just any writer. I'm a gifted writer. Yeah. I said it. Motherfucking gifted. How many gifted writers have you heard of who weren't crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy smart? Yeah. I thought so. Because that would be bleeping impossible. I am smart enough to understand anything with effort, and you know it.
The ability to write extraordinarily well is dependent on a whole suite of character traits and skills. What makes you think that science doesn't require the creativity that gifted writers possess? Did you think science was solely comprised of quantifying things? That's empiricism, not science. Suck on that, all you jerkwastrels who insist otherwise in countless classrooms across America. Between the conflation of empiricism with science, eugenics, and history books that made the second-grade Juniper shamefully ask, "Why did only white people do all the smart and interesting things?", it's a motherfucking wonder I've gotten this far in the first place!
No one denies the crucial function of math in science. "Math, Queen and Servant of Science". Of course. But not for the reason that you think.
What makes you think that mathematicians are necessarily better scientists than writers? Gawd, some of the most superstitious people I know were rated talented mathematicians at Cal. "I asked God a question," the Crazy Math Guy told the undergrad Juniper solemnly, "and, at the moment I asked it, a leaf fell conspicuously from the tree I stood under." He was as susceptible to "magical thinking" as my English major ass. By the way, he hates science. He likes puzzles (including those of math, physics and twisted human relationships), psychology and art, and he loathes endeavors like archaeology and genetics. FSM knows why, but he does.
Math is simply a language in which, uniquely, all rules are made explicit. The cognitive skills required to master mathematics are no more or less important to science than those required to master a common-sense language-- this last in which most rules are cryptic, and intuitively as well as logically grasped. Dude, how is either one of these abilities not a valuable tool with which to answer questions about the physical world?
Almost every time I have talked to you about science, you have turned the conversation into an ad hoc assertion that you would make a "better" scientist than me. Who says? And what the fuck does that have to do with anything anyway? Look, I am not you. I do not view every single human interaction as a competition for some finite amount of some ineffable something that will prove the victor "superior"-- whatever the fuck that means!-- to the person with whom she's interacting. Why the fuck would anyone as wonderful as you want to do something so boring, anyway? Why? You're not a boring person. You're not even a petty one, deep down.
You know how I became an archaeologist? I can't believe I'm about to tell you this. I was surfing the biology departments of California universities and colleges. I wanted to know what it would take to prepare me for a career in biology.
I hardly knew where to start. Except for me, there are no academics in my family, and, at the time, I didn't know post-baccalaureate programs even existed. I thought I would have to take an entire B.S. worth of biology, chemistry and basic physics classes one at a time, while I held down a nine-to-five to pay the bills, and I grew older and more hopeless every minute.
While I surfed, I stumbled upon a website discussion of "evolutionary archaeology". I had never heard of it, and it was very interesting, so I paused to read it.
At this point, you entered the downstairs study, something happened, and I wound up allowing you to decide that, since I did not want to pursue the more "suitable" career of science writing, I would make a better practitioner of a "softer" science. Especially archaeology! Why, I would make a fine archaeologist!
And therefore study genetics from afar. Well, maybe that made sense. I hadn't majored in biochem as an undergrad, and I had missed the boat.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHLOL! The irony of this is that, were archaeology (and anthropology) a real science, then it would be harder than astrophysics! That's because archaeological science requires the generation of four-dimensional theory-derived analytical units, to enable practitioners to scientifically measure time as well as space for the purpose of answering archaeological questions. Dude, the theory doesn't even exist yet! As in, no one has been able to articulate a true archaeological theoretical framework. Even biology, a historical science, and therefore a science concerned with the dimension of time, doesn't have four-dimensional units yet. Why do you think that today's biologists constantly bicker over "species concepts", while today's physicists and chemists never bicker about what an oxygen atom really is?!
(But I'm getting ahead of myself. I was supposed to save that shit for my Method and Theory series. Oh, well.)
Dr. Method and Theory is a fucking genius, and, two hundred years from now, scientists will wonder how anyone had the gall to stash him at a substandard university without a doctoral program when he was obviously the Charles Darwin of the science of the fate of the human species and he ought to have been whisked posthaste to a Research I and given his own shiny lab and made to collaborate immediately with talented anthropologists and geologists and chemists on numerous projects. "People sure were morons in the early twenty-first century. Yep." If I were in this solely to impress the Person du jour, I would have remained an archaeologist and studied under Dr. Method and Theory forever. Seriously.*
I have been raised all of my life to impress people, without a clue to my purpose or the importance of my peculiar efforts. It made me, for awhile, a proud, predictable snob, who only did the bidding of people of weak character while hurting and betraying the people of strong. It also hampered my ability to ask and answer questions about how the world worked.
Genetics--biology-- was the first thing I couldn't quit wondering about, for reasons completely unknown to myself. For the entirety of seventh grade-- despite the sarcastic male teacher I was scared of-- I drew Punnett squares in notebooks and tried, tried, tried, to get my mother and father to feel the sheer wonder of them. I just wanted them to feel it, if they didn't understand how they worked. At night, I talked about chromosomes to Tiny One. I walked around the park mouthing words like "endoplasmic reticulum". Why were the plant cells different from the animal ones, anyway? "Do you know the chemical formula for urine?" I couldn't help asking one of my playmates, amidst our latest game of "Orphaned Magic Princesses". She stomped off in disgust.
No, I will not put this into my Statement of Purpose, and, no, I don't think these experiences "count". They're examples of my disjointed, not fully conscious thoughts about a subject I assumed I could not make a career of. If anything, they just prove what an idiot I am. I kept having this floaty experience with biology, with this fixation on genetics, for years. A girl with more gumption would've figured it out long before I did.
By my second year of archaeology graduate school, I found myself crashing an upper-division seminar in medical genetics that I had no business being in. I had my rationalizations, but, really, if pressed, I couldn't justify my presence there. I also attended section. During a discussion of articles on investigations of "good" and "bad" cholesterol, the TA held up her hands, walked to the board, and drew sequences and illustrations of "relevant biochemical pathways". I sat there and wished desperately that I could read it. I don't think I ever wanted something like that so badly in my life. I'm going to regret making this public in six hours.
I dedicate the profanity in this series of posts to Comrade PhysioProf, who once wrote this:
[B]eing a successful scientist ain't fucking rocket science, and doesn't require "genius" or any other type of magical intellectual prowess. It is a profession like any other, and the skills necessary to succeed can be learned. I consider this an important point to convey as an aspect of making science much more inclusive to people other than well-off white dudes.
Why is it so wrong for me to think I can do this? I only want to do this because I want to do it. I don't think I'll cure cancer or win a Nobel Prize, and I don't think I'll sell pop sci books at the rate Jared Diamond does. I don't even think I know how to go about learning how to do this; I'm certainly not cherishing a conviction that I'll be a Master of the Universe one day. I just want to know how certain things work.
This is a degree of sense and humility that I've never before possessed in my life. And, now that I've finally, finally, finally rolled this stone off my chest, maybe I'll stop having degrading fantasies of knocking on Calculus Teacher's door years from now and bellowing, "I love you! And I owe you so much! But, before I repay you, I just want you to know that I earned a PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Stanford, and I now work as a virologist for the Department of Defense! And my IQ is ten whole points higher than you thought it was!11111!!!!!1111!!!!"
*Incidentally, Dr. Method and Theory doesn't know that I think this.
20 comments:
This is a lovely series of posts, Juniper. I wouldn't take anything your high school teacher said seriously. I don't think we are any semblance of the person we will become in high school and those teachers really have no idea what we have the capacity to become.
Dr. Isis failed math in 8th grade.
One other thing being a writer does (or at least being a good one): it teaches you not to lie to yourself, even when that would be much more comfortable. Dear lady, you're going to be an amazing scientist.
You can count me as another person who had major anxiety and depression. I'm pretty lucky to have survived to adulthood. I'd write about it if I thought I could capture it half as well as you have, but there was a major change in my mental state in my late teens, and the difference is big enough that I literally don't remember much of anything from those years most of the time.
I just came across your blog and found this fascinating. A few thoughts popped into my head, and I hope you'll forgive my rambling.
I've made the mistake of assuming that someone who wasn't a "mathy" person was less brilliant than they were. I didn't understand how hurtful those comments were until I had the same done to me. But often people making those comments feel the need to prove themselves...it's hard to understand that other people may perceive you as bright and competent when there are always one or two people to tell you otherwise and make you feel insecure.
I read a story by Asimov once where the main character grows up in what he thinks is a colony for people who are terminally stupid. He goes through this process of running away, screaming, "I will be a scientist and a creator!" When he finally does this, it's revealed that he really is exceptionally smart, but they needed to be sure it's what he wanted. It's like a litmus test. I grew up in an incredibly poor family (we were the poor white trash that no one wanted their kids to hang out with)...and I felt like I had to do that, too. I started out in physics because of a teacher who encouraged something that I wanted to do but no one else thought I could. (This, of course, was because I was obviously lazy and stupid. In fact, this teacher was under this impression until my mom accidentally told him that I had none of the math prereqs for my physics course.) I pretty much gave up after a couple years in college and having a child. But something kept pulling me back, and I liken it to that experience. Something is screaming in me that I will be a scientist, and even with all the other things to suggest I should not have been, it's still there and won't be ignored.
I think you'll make an awesome geneticist. It's obviously screaming inside of you, too, even if no one else can hear it.
The ability to write extraordinarily well is dependent on a whole suite of character traits and skills. What makes you think that science doesn't require the creativity that gifted writers possess? Did you think science was solely comprised of quantifying things? That's empiricism, not science. Suck on that, all you jerkwastrels who insist otherwise in countless classrooms across America.
Absofuckinglutely! And I am truly honored that you chose to quote me in this context.
Wow - I gotta say Juniper, even though you hate my taste in socks, you are an amazing writer. Your ability to write so honestly is incredible and humbling.
Juniper - these posts kick ass!
I cannot even begin to count how many times I have been frustrated with a colleague or "superior" scientist for their inability to communicate effectively or grasp or contribute an original and imaginative thought to our scientific discussion. If only more scientists were writers even approaching your talent, we could figure so much more interesting shit than we're already doing.
You have a tremendous ability to bring to the table. You are definitely NOT wring to think you can (and should!) do this. PLEASE do it -- we need so many more people like you, with imagination and a penchant for getting your point across in way that is infinitely interesting and compelling and inspiring. (Let's just hope that there are more people like you.)
IMHO, you have the capacity to make an excellent scientist. The desire to just figure it out is crucial and you've obviously got that. Your ability to communicate and convince other people to look at things differently as evidenced here are going to have you standing heads above the rest.
Nice work. Keep it up.
Whoa. I go away for a day . . .
Many of your comments overwhelm me. No, seriously. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate them. And now I'm going to have to answer you in this inelegant format. It's just so weird and difficult!
But I'm more than happy to do it. Naturally.
Dr. Isis failed math in 8th grade.
It's easy for me to believe that Dr. Isis was always unpredictable. In true goddess fashion.
Stephanie,
How do you manage to be so penetrating this frequently? It does teach you not to lie to yourself. Which is painful, but freeing, and more interesting besides. I'm glad you drew our attention to this invaluable benefit.
I'd write about it if I thought I could capture it half as well as you have, but there was a major change in my mental state in my late teens, and the difference is big enough that I literally don't remember much of anything from those years most of the time.
I've never experienced anything like that. I can't remember many of the few good times I managed to have during the worst years--my early twenties-- well enough to treasure them. I am only carefully grateful for them, because I probably needed those lessons. Sometimes this makes me fleetingly sad. But what you describe sounds like something entirely more profound. May I ask if this change took place quickly?
Wow. Look at that. I don't even know how to ask questions about it!
I think you should write about it. You'd be splendid.
mareserinitatis,
Of course you're not rambling! I love it when readers share their stories.
I had a friend at UC Davis from a background very similar to yours. She came within a year of completing her BA, and then she quit. I never bought that she wanted to quit. Her academic passions ignited her by episodes-- and then she somehow allowed people to discourage her in ways she couldn't even identify.
Just to make clear where I'm coming from, that isn't a put down-- it's a testament to what a socioeconomic business academia can turn out to be, especially for us starry-eyed strivers who don't hail from people who know the game. I think you're onto something: it is kind of like a litmus test, isn't it?
I read your bio. It's so encouraging that you're on your PhD! (Or did you recently finish? I don't know when you last updated it.) You're one of the people who kept finding their way back even when they were dissuaded by myriad complicated interactions and events, many of them not necessarily bad, but none of them able to substitute for being what they wanted to be, in the profession of their first choice. Thanks for stopping by.
Juniper....some of my least favorite writing is that of totally one-dimensional characters following one-dimensional storylines (you know, "the pretty girl", "the jock boy", "the love triangle", "the happy ending").
I dislike it because it's bad - and thus easy to do.
Conversely, it is incredibly difficult to write as you do - making it easy to understand and accept that nothing is that simple. I don't know how you manage to make me understand that you both love and simultaneously have a complicated relationship with your teacher, with your family, with yourself....but you do.
Truly....few people's blogs require my full attention to read, and then are totally worth the full attention.
No go on and kick some serious ass girl!
Dear PiT, thank you for visiting! I really like your blog. I'll just forget about the socks . . . unless you begin a Pair of the Week series. Then, we must go to war.
Ambivalent, did you really get back from vacation and beg me to become a scientist? You have given me so much support over the last few months, and, as you are a scientist yourself, this encourages me. I'm always glad to hear that science has room for me. Thank you for being on my side and letting me know.
Phizzle! What's up? Yeah, like you, I've hated that one-dimensional shit forever. My sister owned some of the RL Stine series when we were in elementary school-- you know, the horror books with the comic relief token black characters and the pretty "all-American" cheerleaders and the jocks and the geeks and all that infuriatingly boring, excluding shit-- and I used to write parodies of them, I had so much contempt for them. And, whenever the mood struck me in high school, I wrote a series dubbed "Juniper-Harlequin Romances" for my best friend. It starred her and whichever guy she currently had a Major Crush on, and it was FUN!
Yeah. Life is weird and complicated for everyone, in actuality. Thankfully.
Here's to an ass-kicking 2009! (I hear you're graduating. :)
Juniper, I will try to write something about the process, but it won't be soon. As you know, this is the kind of thing that has to percolate for a bit. For now, I'll just say that parts were quick (a big chemistry change tied to pubescent hormones, I suspect) and parts were very slow (rewriting behavior that was only good for coping and not for thriving).
I'll just forget about the socks . . . unless you begin a Pair of the Week series. Then, we must go to war.
That's it for my outlandish sock collection so it looks like we'll still be on relatively friendly terms for a while.
For me, blogging is all about honesty. Honesty about my career, my fears, my successes, my problems (with a lot of sarcasm thrown in for good measure). Even with a PhD and a faculty position, it's not easy to admit that I don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing most of the time. Reading other blogs as well the comments on my own blog have helped me understand that I'm not alone in feeling lost and the advice and support I've had from other bloggers has helped me immeasurably.
The honesty with which you write is truly remarkable. Keep it up and you'll find me here on a regular basis.
I think I love you Juniper Shoemaker - I too was a English major back in the day. Most people look at me funny when I tell them what my first degree was in before Eppendork refound the light. And boy is the light bright and shiney!
E.
Very cool post. I have to say that my own views on this have, uh, shall we say, evolved over time.
Both my parents are physicists, and I have always trended toward math & science and disliked (and sucked at) writing, even though I used to read too much. As such I've always had a pretty low opinion of the humanities and the various associated disciplines (in my defense, I think there's rather better (partially political) reasons for that in Bulgaria, where I'm from, than here in the states which I won't go into).
So it was a bit interesting to me that probably the two best friends I made in undergrad physics, and now in grad school, both started as english majors in undergrad. Both of whom are at least as good if not better physicists than me, so needless to say I've revised my opinions a little bit. Not that I've all of a sudden started to like (or be good at) writing; but I think it's very obvious that whatever one chose to do early on doesn't necessarily limit what she/he can do in the future. Unless of course, you believe that it does.
For science, so long as one passes some pretty minimal requirements in mathematical and (unfortunately for me) literary ability, being genuinely interested in what you're doing tends to be the most important factor. You seem to have that covered.
Coming back to reality, one thing that I'm a bit troubled by, is what do you mean by empiricism? The way I see it (with my 0 philosophical background), science is basically making up models and seeing if they match up against the experimental evidence. If they match, we keep em, if not we dump em. And isn't that roughly what empiricism means?
Oh juniper what an excellent series! although I took science in undergrad, I never did the molecular biology/microbiology degree, yet had a fascination with it. A desire to read the code as you said. You have captured so eloquently what so many feel. I guess I would like to say, you are not alone.
I surely hope you do not regret making these public, as they are an incredible set of posts.
My major was horticulture for three years in community college, before I switched completely to engineering and did three more years at a state school for a B.S. And, I had to take Calculus 1 three times.
The only requirement to kick ass in your new field is the ability to think clearly, and I think you have that one nailed. And you can write clearly as well - what a fantastic advantage you now have!
You have inspired me to think about my own set of posts on mental issues - I'll set it to percolate for another day...
Eppendork,
YES! A fellow English major who saw the light and switched to science!
Sorry for the delay in my response. It's actually your fault. Well, no. Well, partially. You posted on the renegade scientists hacking genomes in their garages, and I got all excited and started a post in response. Then Biopunk joined the fray, and then there were his ideas to take into account. Then my poor time management caught up with me at last . . .
Coriolis,
Thanks for stopping by! I tried to answer your question in today's post.
Thank you for sharing your story, too. I'm always interested in how others wound up going into science. And I'm glad you gave the humanities a chance! :)
An acquaintance of mine also earned a B.A. in English from Cal. Today, she works as a pretty hard-core physicist for NASA. Life is weird.
Hi ScientistMother!
Dudette, I'm so glad I'm not alone! I'm so pleased I managed to write something that resonated with so many people.
Miss Outlier,
Welcome to the blog! I had found yours via Candid Engineer.
I probably should regret posting this series, but I don't. I like to put everything on the table. Bald honesty is such exquisite torture. . .
So long as I'm not whining and boring everyone to death, that is. Not that my preventive measures always succeed. :)
Congratulations on beginning grad school and making it into engineering! Wow. You're a wonderfully determined person.
I hope I "inspired" a series of your own on any mental health issues you want to discuss. I don't know about you, but, in real life, I not infrequently encounter academics who dismiss the idea of depressive disorders out of hand, because psychiatric definitions don't sound sciency enough to them.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a mathematician. One day, he told a quick little story to a little girl. The girl begged him to write it down. So he did, adding to it as he was writing it down.
He then published it under the pen name Lewis Carrol. The story was Alice in Wonderland.
Writers can without any doubt be great scientists and also scientists can be great writers.
I'm working on a Bsc in math right now... people ask me all the time why I'm not studying literature or writing due to the fact that I read and write all the time.
Because maybe I think Math is more interesting than those things, maybe I'd rather just read and write on my own and not be pressured into learning it academically?
I hate the emphasis that Universities place on the difference between Arts and Sciences
I hate the emphasis that Universities place on the difference between Arts and Sciences
I strongly relate.
I think it's wonderful that you've actively maintained your interest in reading and writing even though you're earning a math degree. For all anyone knows, this makes you a better mathematician. People should leave you alone about it instead of expecting you to conform to some boring stereotype.
When I was an English major, I discovered that I didn't enjoy the academic study of literature at all. I liked least the pressure to interpret any given work in the context of the postmodernist paradigm. It felt as if what mattered most to these scholars was the business of purposefully obfuscating ideas to impress one another. I'd rather keep my relationship with novels more personal.
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