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The Topic of the Day is: Friday, March 16, 2007 | |
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I have been questioning why I am in physics. Part of me (a goodly part) wants to prove something--that women are capable, but also that *I* am capable. Another part of me really likes understanding how everything works and being able to plug in and connect apparently different types of knowledge. I like physics because of the times when I learn something and a little bulb inside me clicks and makes me say, "Oh, so that is how [blank] works!". Another part of the reason I am still in physics is because I enjoy discussing its ideas--talking to people about those little clickable moments. For example, I was just utterly blown away for maybe two days about the fact that electron degeneracy pressure is one of the factors that keeps certain types of stars from collapsing. Two bits of physics knowledge collided and made sense, and it was beautiful. I talked to everyone I knew about this, and got a lot of weird looks but also a fair number of smaller "oh, so that's how that works!", which were pretty fun. I guess I like to inspire those clickable moments in other people too. I sort of enjoy my tutoring sessions, when clickable things happen, but... they tend not to. Not because of my students, but because I am trying to gear my sessions away from me lecturing my students. Who the heck wants to be lectured again? They get that three to five times a week anyway. Plus, my tutees very rarely have any interest in physics so it's hard to get them excited about simply understanding things. I like to fiddle with things. I like knowing how machines work, and working with them. Part of what I like doing at my lab is plugging things in and powering them up. I don't understand them a lot of times but I like to learn what they do, and how. I like to solder and work in the machine shop, but I never do the latter enough to understand how to use the machines, and so I am timid about that and it frustrates me. I like my lab. I like the idea of doing cosmology research--I don't know about the research itself. I mean, cosmology--the study of the origins of the universe--is definitely interesting to me, and yet I realize I have no mathematical or theoretical experience with the field. That is, I've come to understand it in layperson's terms and I really like it that way. I hope to take the cosmology course offered here and maybe see if it still interests me. What I dislike is when I stare at a problem and have no idea how to start. I get frustrated if I can't start or if I get stuck (early on, or ever), and I have a tendency to give up. This shows itself in homework and exams. I tried a new method for this last exam--for every problem I classified it (a "find the potential" problem, for example), and wrote down what they gave us that I knew would help SIMPLIFY it (because that is part and parcel of each problem--they seem complex but the info given really simplifies things). I know I don't have a lot of patience, nor do I have experience with a lot of patience, nor do I have a lot of motivation. I am working on these things, but it's hard to give yourself enough time to sit down and plug at a problem when you're short on time as it is and you feel like you're not going anywhere, or that you don't even know how you'd go about going anywhere. I need to give myself more time for homework, I do know that, and hopefully when spring break gets here I'll catch up enough that I *can* give myself enough time to do homework and study and understand. I tend to get caught up in the details, and focused on little bitty things--that's why telling myself to take a step back and see the bigger picture for the exam helped. I have noticed in my lab that we work on little details--this week we run this test, next week we try that--and it seems very far away from the big picture. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing for me. I get lost in all those details, and it's hard for me to know what to do next when I don't know how steps connect. I ... don't think I want to be a professor. It seems to be simply too much responsibility. I am not a leader--I am a mighty fine follower, but I suck at leading people. So being in charge of a lab is not the thing for me. I also like the idea of being able to come home at night and have a life--read, write, visit friends, enjoy myself. I've been thinking maybe something more like career physics (industry, or work at a national lab or observatory) would be more for me. Since I like machines, I figured maybe I could be an instrumentalist. An astrophysical instrumentalist, I guess. I've also been considering other things. I *really* enjoy my women's studies courses, so much so that I'm considering getting a major in it, or possibly going to grad school for a degree in it (depends on how much time I would have). I don't think I want to give up physics, but women's studies also seems to be important to me. This feels vaguely familiar. A year ago I was positive I would become a science writer--meshing my writing and my science passions. Now I'm trying to figure out how to mesh my interests in women's studies and in physics. I guess what I can see at a distance, then, is that physics is simply *not enough* for me. I'm going to need something more--and I'm going to need a level of physics that allows me to have something more. Well that was a productive thinking session. I suppose part of my concern earlier stemmed from my nervousness (fear?) about my tests. I am still not used to not getting straight As in all my classes and not totally understanding everything that happens. I am working on devoting more time to studying, and it does help, but of late I have simply been running out of time. My own fault for not using everything so efficiently, I suppose... I want to write. *whimper* I have so much stuff to do, so much to get caught up on... but oh, I want to FEEL like writing, I want to be able to plunge myself into my stories again. ... This feels like what we're studying in WS. How to be a woman, and be an individual. How to reconcile my need for love, friendship, physics, writing, and understanding myself, understanding women. How to face down my loneliness, my apathy, my lack of motivation, my laziness, my fear, my weakness and childishness, my clingness, my brutality. How to discover my true self, under all the layers I wear (dear gods this is starting to sound like a LiveJournal entry)... how to find who I am and how to be who I am. ... aren't you being who you are just by being what you are now? Isn't you yourself? Perhaps I am myself. But I want to be me. More me, less procrastination. More self, more strength, more of what I love, less of what distracts me from what I truly enjoy. then maybe you should STOP READING YOUR FUCKING WEBCOMICS ... that I cannot deny. |
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My Other Writing Sites | |
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Webcomics | |
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Stories I'm currently working on. | |
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***Tbook1 (Time and Chaos, needs a new name, needs to be edited) ***Book of Sun (Just needs to be edited. Tis a Nano novel) ***Book of Whispers part 1 (Does not jive at all with part 2; needs to be rewritten to fit and to have less suckage) ***Book of Whispers part 2 (Needs some rehaul editing, needs some loose ends tied up, needs to fit) ***Book of Whispers part 3 (Needs to be finished... then needs to die o.o Not sure if I need a third part in the series) ***Dium's Story (Needs a point, progress, anything... needs to be integrated into Tbook1, since that is what it is a part of, mainly) ***Trio Story with Jackie and Louise (Maybe we should get together and work on this, guys) ***Demon Story (This is working out pretty good so far. I like the plot, it's a bit convoluted, and the characters are interesting) ***New Witch Story (It's only 30 pages long, dang) ***Dragon's Voices (This has SO much potential! wee!) | |
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