Damnit, Jim, I'm a theologian, not a physicist.

[kiya]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was a physics/astronomy major.


I had a knack for math and putting together systems, which got me a reputation summed up by the fellow student in my English class during exams senior year, who saw me shuffling a tarot deck and said, "But you're Science Girl!"

Science never fed me. I was good at putting pieces together, but it didn't satisfy my soul like the writing did. I did it because I was expected to, mostly, even after I got to college and had the option to stop doing it and do something else.

I had submitted my life-force to expectation so long that I didn't know what else I could do.

It broke me something fierce. And I suspect I might have had a breakdown freshman year of college no matter what -- I was a burnout case when I got there -- but pursuing a major where I saw no point to the work I was doing didn't help.

I don't think I could have ever been a scientist. I didn't have any questions I wanted to pursue, problems that excited me. I could do the undergrad stuff that I got to perfectly well, see how it all fit together, had an intuition for the answers, more or less, but it didn't make me happy. Maybe I never got to the science that might have fed my soul.

But I don't think I could have done anything with it without loving it. Without the joy in working through the problems, learning about the world, digging up answers. And I didn't have that.

I love knowing things. I don't love finding them out. When confronted with a problem in science, I poke at it until I can intuit an approximate answer, and then it stops to interest me. (otter3 may recall seeing this.) I love knowing things, putting them into larger patterns, playing with them, nudging implications, tweaking the universe a little, but I don't have questions to pose.

I wrote a few days ago a lengthy ramble about astrophysics and metaphysics and the spiritual significance of the black body curve. It mattered to me. It fed me to write it.

It will never make a peer-reviewed paper.

That's okay.

I can shake my tail in other ways.

(Inspired by some homework and my writing my submission to the Feminism for Freaks antho.)

Comments

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was a physics/astronomy major.

I had a knack for math and putting together systems

That explains a lot about you. :)

[kiya]

And thus I do systematic theology and we're all happy! ;)

[thastygliax.livejournal.com]

Well, at least that background helps you to understand teinedreugan when he's talking shop. So not a total waste of time. :)

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

I had submitted my life-force to expectation so long that I didn't know what else I could do.

I'm only just now figuring out what this one is like. I'd been inside it so long I couldn't see it.

I still haven't quite figured out what to *do* when I'm not just doing what's expected. It's hard.

I like systems. Complexity makes things interesting. I eventually moved from engineering to psychology because humans are more complex than anything, and therefore even *more* interesting. But it was really just another variation on the expectations.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" has always been the most baffling of all possible questions.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I resonate a lot with both this and the original post. Thank you very much to both of you.

... Art Girl...

[gitsh01.livejournal.com]

Actually, I always saw you as an art girl.

The girl who made little ceramic elephants in art class. I still have the one you gave me in the bottom of my jewelry box.

The girl who pondered the toilet-bowl-turned-aquarium art exhibit and declared it existential.

The girl who had a knack for drawing, a way with words, and an overall general gift for creating... for setting a scene, a mood, or a tale...

The girl who invented games during lunch, along with Biff and Beth, inventing rules as you went.

Beth Biller always was the science girl to me... last I've heard of her she's become an astronomer down in New Mexico and was working on her PhD. But it's been awhile since I heard of or from her.

I've not heard anything of Biff or Kumquat since High School, and I lost track of Ben Dover in college.

It didn't surprise me in the least to discover you became a writer. It always seemed to me a natural extension of your talent. I admire those who have a gift with words, who can evoke a scene and transport a person elsewhere... it is not a simple task, and one that requires not just skill, but talent.

Shana, the computer nerd... who grew up to become a video game computer nerd...

Re: ... Art Girl...

[kiya]

I suspect you saw closer than a lot of people did, there.

I need to get my studio put together. Then I can make more little elephants. ;)

Re: ... Art Girl...

[crystalpyramid]

Huh, I know people who know Beth Biller, because they went to college with her.

I love the metaphors physics and math give me; the process of doing research, not so much.