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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. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.)
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.)
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