Things I want for myself

At the urging of my bestie, Bean, I've taken up the notion to blog.  Actually, by all accounts, it's a sound practice for those of us who romanticize about becoming denizens of the world of the published word.  But why do I aspire to fall in to these ranks?

I find science fascinating - it has and always will be my friend.  But I think the true beauty of science lies in the sharing of it.  Actually, I find that to be true for most things in life.  If we were all islands, what would be the point?  No no, we are meant to share and partake of and rejoice in and engage on the things that surround us on a daily basis.  Though we may not initially realize it, science is a lot of it.

For the last six years, I have been a labrat, spending my time hidden away behind closed doors, chilling out with bacteria I've convinced to perform the lion's share of my work.  It's been a blissfully amazing experience - and conversely one of the most frustrating of my life.  If we take the definition of insanity to be the tendency to repeat ones actions over and over, anticipating a different result, then graduate students are crazy, myself included.  There is so much we don't know, can't see... so many layers of complexity all building up to our macroscale world.  And so we toil, each day, repeating the same experiments, attempting to steal sweet victory from the universe in the form of a novel result, one with particularly meaningful implications.  Once these results are obtained, we write them up, publish them in specialized journals, far away from the eyes of most of the public.

But science is cool!  It really is!  The way that the world around us works is almost magical.  It flips my geek switch, makes me want to help others see the world through the periscope of science - I get gabby and chipper and a little bit giddy.

So here is my goal: to secure for myself a place in the world where I can enlighten those souls sitting tentatively on the sidelines of science, awaiting a chance to jump in.  I love science and I love writing and I love teaching... this is gonna be good.