It was an early morning after coming home from closing at my
minimum-wage-earning café job when I first remembered that I loved science. I
had no homework (well, I did, but I was willing to forget it)and no further responsibilities
for the day other than eight episodes of Doctor Who with my name written all
over them. That was the goal: get home, check Facebook, Doctor Who all night
long. Sleep if for wussies. Inevitably in my “check Facebook” part of the schedule,
I got sidetracked to one of my favorite meme-carrying websites. That took me to
a two-minute clip of Bill Nye, the science guy, talking about traveling the stars,
curiosity, and exploration. From that point, Doctor Who was priority number
two, because my master and idol, the only man who made science make sense, was
talking. The Science Guy was back, and I was ecstatic.
Now, remember I said I had to remember my love of science. Any Doctor Who fan knows that memories
can be forgotten but they’re usually right there right below the surface,
waiting for the trigger that brings them back to life. When I was a kid,
science was one of my favorite subjects. I never had to study for a History or
Science test right up through about fourth and fifth grade. This was a bad
habit to get into, because pretty soon I was upon Biology and I didn’t know an
electron from a neutron. Looking back on that, I probably still don’t. So, my
brilliantly apathetic brain and I just decided to give it up for dead there,
bury ourselves in the magical world of Harry Potter and The Hobbit, and forget
that science existed, let alone science homework. (Note some redundancies, yet?)
Then my step-mom gave me this book called The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Go
buy it if you don’t have it. In it, I found the term ‘Anthropology’ and science
found me again. Social sciences are easy for me to understand; I can rattle off
a lecture on cultural paradigms faster than you can spell
antidisestablishmentarianism. Anthropology is sociology, psychology, history, religion,
osteology, and statistics rolled into one beautiful ball of multi-national,
time-defying yarn for my inner kitten/three year old to play with. So science
and I started to become acquainted again without me consciously realizing it,
but this was just my toes in the end of the kiddie pool.
Back to Bill Nye. The science guy is part of a YouTube production
called “The Big Think” where a dozen scientists have come together to discuss
and lecture on their various fields. After watching Bill Nye’s current seven
episodes, I was left with this empty place in my brain where more Bill Nye
should be. To fill the void, I watched a 42 minute lecture by Theoretical Physicist
Michio Kaku called The Universe in a
Nutshell. Some barrier in my mind exploded, and I was on the verge of tears
at being reunited with my old forgotten friend, Science.
I began to wonder what had kept us apart for so long, and
with a slow, creeping chill I realized that it was my education. It was the
difference between the dryly captioned graphs and pictures in textbooks and
Bill Nye’s use of color, humor, and reliable objects, yes, but it was perhaps
also the grades. I am a curious person, but a terrible student because I have
an irrational, mortifying fear of getting information wrong: Anything from a
person’s name to a quote from a popular movie can send me spiraling into a very
carefully concealed panic attack. I learned from people like Bill Nye and Steve
Irwin more about the world than I have from any classroom and what I learned from
them stuck with me to this day: Partly because I wanted to know, partly because they didn't grade me on it
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| These guys don't judge you on you marks, they deduce your worth... WITH SCIENCE. |
All I’m saying is, if text books were twenty bucks, I’d have
a shot at being a Theoretical Physicist.
