Some Poorly Constructed Thoughts…

This is probably going to be my nerdiest post and the one most loosely connected to DukeEngage, but I haven’t been feeling so hot and I’m at that weird in-between where you can’t sleep but you’re too tired to do anything else.

So here’s the deal: I kind of miss Science. And by kind of I mean a lot. A few months ago I was beginning to feel really burnt out with school. That’s when I decided that I would strongly consider taking a year off after college before going to graduate school, which is still something that is quite probable. But along those lines, I thought DukeEngage and my following semester at UCL would be a great test run. It isn’t a complete respite from academia, but I thought it would be a good chance to fully immerse myself in subjects I hadn’t really focused on yet. You know, exercise some different parts of my brain. I’ve been here a month and I’m already a little concerned.

I always thought that what I liked about Science, or rather what I thought set it apart from most of the humanities, was that it’s concrete. It’s very methodical- there are experiments and controls and you must have a definitive measure of your results; even the credibility of your answers is determined by its statistical significance. Of course this is an over-simplification but you can see where I’m coming from. I always thought Literature did a much better job of appreciating subtleties and the social sciences were way bigger on nuances, both of which I think are beautiful and important ways of understanding the world. I can’t say much about Literature yet, but I have been rather disappointed with the intellectual experiences I’ve had with other people so far, Mr. Schleifer’s talk being the only notable exception. Of course I’ve learned new facts, but I’ve found the actual use and discussion of that information very uninspiring. There will be an argument for one side of an issue and an argument for the opposing side and people just talk all day about the bases of the two arguments without, it seems, acknowledging the fact that if both sides are legitimate and made by intelligent people, then there are strong foundations for both and grey cannot be resolved into black and white so easily. It appears to me that some people have trouble letting things sit and working in a realm of that grey. I know this isn’t always the best thing to do, and I definitely acknowledge that I am often guilty of what I am accusing others, but I suppose I just expected something else from people who claim to prefer working in subjectivity. I realize this makes me sound extremely pompous and while, to an extent, that may be well founded, a lot of it is just my inability to articulate exactly what I’m talking about.

On the other side of the same token, I’ve found that there are quite a few subtleties and nuances in my field that I’ve taken for granted because of the people I am surrounded by in class. Everyone I talked to about my subject functioned under some basic premises: a confidence in scientific experimentation, a knowledge base, and a general feel for how the discipline works. I didn’t expect people outside the subject to carry the second of these premises, but it’s the third that really irks me. I find that I’m surrounded by intelligent people with whom I cannot have a conversation about the field that I love. I mean, I deal with that quite often when I’m not at school, because science, especially neuroscience, is a very specialized area. But this amount of deprivation, particularly when I have so much academic respect for my peers, is really getting to me, and I’m beginning to feel like other people just keep talking in circles about stuff I already know. I’m 100% aware that that’s not true, but I’m feeling a serious lack of intellectual conversation. Not only do I find that disappointing, but I’m worried that after a few more months of this I’m going to get pretty rusty with my ability to think in a scientific manner. The worst part is that I just know I won’t have the willpower or time management skills for a self-motivated study of neuroscience when I’m studying English and Art History at UCL.

I feel like I’ve offended almost every non-science major I know in this post and I apologize for that; it’s completely unintentional. I’ve tried really hard all my life not to be academically elitist, and I suppose I’m just frustrated with how difficult that is in a subject I’m so passionate about.

Also, for anyone who cares (A.K.A. parental units), I’m really not that ill. I’m beginning to feel better already J

Ma’Salaama!