i want to love science like a little kid again
Sometimes, when I hate college and the city and it feels like nothing is going well, I think about how happy my kid self would be if she found out what I'm doing now.
I'm studying science! That's arguably the coolest thing I could ever do with my life! Almost every day of the week, I'm putting on my lab gown and gloves and tying my hair back so it doesn't get in the way of some sciencey things. I'm working with tissues and reagents and microscopes, and really, this was all I ever wanted as a kid. Okay, maybe I had more dreams of being out in the field instead of being in the lab, but I'm close.
I'm living the dream: if I so choose, I could be a real scientist1, whatever that really means. I could work with genes. I could work with cats. I could work with cat genes, like those scientists who found a new cat color. Really, the possibilities are endless. But I'm not.
I feel kind of bad that I've lost the way I used to love science. I guess it's to be expected. It's been around ten years, give or take a few, since I first realized I wanted to do this. I've spent my life since chasing after it, and now I'm so deeply into it that I don't know any other way to live. Instead of just being a fun thing that I did because I wanted to, it's my whole future. My childhood, my teenage years, and now my twenties. It's not my whole life, but it's pretty damn close.
It's been a wild ride. I learned to stay up late doing chemistry and physics worksheets in high school. It's almost 1 a.m. now, and I'm writing this while finishing up a huge 40-page environmental impact manuscript with my groupmates (my part's done, just grabbing a moment to myself). I'm more than halfway through college, and I keep thinking about what I'll do after I graduate.
I need to choose a path soon, but I either make decisions right away or not at all, and I've gone way, way past the right away option. What the hell am I going to do with this degree? I thought I knew, but I've been thinking more and more about that little girl from ten years ago, and now I'm not so sure.
Research and other science and technology related jobs don't pay well in a country like mine, but it was what I wanted to do as a kid, before I even knew what the word meant. I knew I wanted to work with the things out in the real world: animals and plants, the rocks and the ocean and the mountains. I wanted to be like those people who made documentaries, or those people who got interviewed about their work and taught kids like me about nature. I always wondered how you could become one of those documentary narrators2.
But right now, all I am is some girl who's struggling to do well in school and take care of herself at the same time, and I can't really summon much enthusiasm for my studies. Does it get better? I really don't know how to live. I just want to have fun with what I do again.
When do you earn the right to call yourself a scientist? Is it when you publish your first paper? When someone else calls you a scientist? When you start getting paid to do studies? Do I count as a scientist right now even though I'm just a lowly undergrad? Who knows?↩
It's still one of my pipedream jobs, even though I've learned I have a narrating voice for print.↩