I fell in love this semester. Deeply,
head over heels, in love. From fuzzy-headed morning to late into the
night, I spend all my time exihilerated, and challenged by this
romance. I know that for most people, such an intimate connection
would be kept exclusive, but I can't help it. I want everyone to love
Biology.
As a child, I knew what I wanted to
be. Always. You ask me when I was four, I'd say “marine biologist.”
You ask me when I was ten, I'd say “Marine biologist. Or maybe a
seismologist.” Thirteen, fourteen? “marine biologist, or virology
would be totally cool too. But all the good stuff's being done by the
government, and I don't trust them.” A passion for learning has
been in my blood since the beginning. A childhood nurtured with
National Geographic and frequent trips to the Aquarium fostered that
passion.
But life got in the way. I didn't
drive off to British Columbia when I graduated high school, fully
prepared to rescue baby killer whales with my 4X4, Free Willy style.
I didn't even graduate. Instead, I cared for my dying mother, and
then spent the next 8 years or so trying to pick up the pieces.
I went back to school. Got bogged down
in math, which has always been my nemesis. Decided that I could love
biology from afar, admire it as a layperson, and switched to major in
creative writing instead. No more likely to make me a living wage,
but something I could, with some effort, be good at. It was, and I
hope I can say this without sounding egotistical, safe.
Something
was missing though. I would watch Youtube videos of deep sea
creatures, and harangue Kenny for as long as he'd listen about what
we know-and how much we don't know.
And he'd look at me and say “you light up when you talk about this.
Why aren't you studying biology?”
It was
scary. Math was scary. Even scarier though was the prospect of
succeeding, and then realizing that I had been wrong. When so much of
your self-identification is based on this label-Marine
Biologist In the Making-what
happens if you find out you don't like it? Far safer to write. Teach
writing. Watch video of ROVs descending the Monterey Canyon and sigh
quietly. It was way too scary to think about attempting.
I did
it anyway. This fall I enrolled in Calculus, Chemistry, and Biology
22. Three of the core classes I'll need when I transfer (all fingers
crossed) to UCSC next fall, with a marine biology major.
Calculus
was hard. Though I'd enjoyed pre-calc, (math! For the first time in
my life!) and felt good going in, it was a slog all the way through.
Chemistry I felt solid in. I'd taken chemistry before and had a good
handle on it. It was a lot of work, no doubt, but I didn't feel any
different coming out than I did going in.
Biology
on the other hand. Well, biology changed everything. Bio 22 is, as
our instructors made clear on the first day, a majors bio class. That
means that everyone in the room, for one reason or another, was a
biology major. It was (for the most part) like coming home to a
family I didn't know I had. I fit (again,
for the most part). I learned, and questioned, and absorbed
more knowledge than I'd ever had access to before. My curiosity was
piqued more times, and on more diverse subjects, than ever before. It
became a joke among my friends in the class that whatever we were
learning that week would surely be what I wanted to do research on
later. Of course deep sea jellies! Of course dinoflagellates!
I'd always been a big predator kind of
girl. But every week there was a new question, a new vein of inquiry
that I wanted to follow. From evolution to plants to invertebrates,
it all fascinated me. And every piece that I learned made me see the
world in a clearer way. This is the only way I've been able to
describe it:
Imagine you're looking at the muddy
bank of a river. All you can see is the water, some trees on the far
shore, and the mud at your feet. That's all that's there for your
eyes to focus on. But beneath
that, there are predator/prey interactions. There are all kinds of
different plants among those trees, with wildly different heritages
and abilities. There are microscopic organisms floating in the water.
There are sediments being carried by the water that tell a story we
can't see.
And
each of those elements: the predators, the prey, the plants and the
sediment; they all tantalize me with questions.
It
was good to be around people who understood. After all, that's why
most of us were in the class: we have questions. But being curious
doesn't make someone a scientist. It's just a really good place to
start. I still wondered if I really wanted to do Science, or if I
just wanted to sit in a classroom all day hearing someone talk about
amazing things. There's only one way to know for sure.
For
the last two weeks of the class, we designed our own experiments,
based what we'd learned this semester, and what interested us. We
wrote a hypothesis. The hypothesis was tested with tools we'd learned
how to use this semester. We looked at our data and formed
conclusions. Then each group presented their findings to the class.
When I write it out like this, it sounds silly. 8th
graders do science projects. But it wasn't silly.
My
friends and I were curious about the biodiversity of a man-made
substrate versus biodiversity of the naturally occurring rock. It
turned out our hypothesis was correct, and the biodiversity of the
man-made substrate was significantly lower. That was-to me at
least-utterly irrelevant. The process of questioning, hypothesizing,
and designing an experiment was far more valuable. I waded out to do
a count on the wall at Lover's Point (and got dunked in the process),
then came back and entered our numbers into a couple different
biodiversity calculators. I took the raw numbers that we had
scribbled in our damp notebooks, and made them tell me things. The
things they told me weren't earth-shattering by any means, but they
provoked more lines of inquiry. Each question leads to another...
After
each group had presented their study, our instructor congratulated us
on having done Science. I wish I could remember his exact words. It
was something to the effect of “many of you have wanted to be
scientists, but your understanding of what that means comes from
nature shows. This is what science is.”
Those
words sank into me like a warm drop of truth right through my
breastbone. I'd been wondering myself if I truly wanted to be a
scientist, or if I wanted to be the star of my own exciting nature
program. Now I know.
I want
to be a scientist.
Our
experiment wasn't glamorous. It wasn't exciting, except when I fell
in. And it wasn't particularly thrilling when I pulled together the
numbers and started to draw conclusions. It just felt right.
It felt like loving someone: good, and so natural you don't notice
right away, even though the whole world is changed. The 'aha' moment
didn't come until after he made that comment.
This
is what I want to do. Over and over. Every day.
I
don't want a nature show. I want to ask questions, and get answers. I
want to go out, get data, and make it tell me things.
So
that's the story of how I fell in love over fall semester. I can't
wait for Bio 21 in the spring!
