The Essentials – Science: A Matter of Perspective

I only began to realized what science is after I was almost done with college.  Initially, in middle and high school, I thought of science as a fun class with dissections and demos that helped bridge the periods between lunch and the bus.  Later, in college I saw science as an opportunity in which the content would provide me with a lifetime of intellectual stimulation while supplying a career that would provide for my family.  While science is those things, I found that it is also much more.

Science is more than a class or a career. Science is a lens to magnify, understand and connect the world around us.  This realization started to take hold when I ignored the advice of my professors and enrolled in four upper level biology lab classes while also working in the department in an emerging undergraduate research program.   

My advisors main concern was for my ability to keep up with the work load and that my grades, and subsequently future opportunities, would suffer.  There is no doubt that my advisers were right about the extreme workload. I remember many days that started with 9:00 am lectures and ended getting kicked out by security when they locked the building at 10:00pm, with labs, research, study, writing, eating, sleeping (a little) and thinking in between.

The pace was crazy but in the early weeks of the semester I began to realize that 1+1+1+1 class loads did not equal the work of 4, it was actually less.  Cell, Plant, Comparative Vertebrate and Invertebrate Anatomy.  All different in detail but the dialogue that developed between them funneled down to a distinct point.  My science immersion experience showed me that science isn’t just about classes, content or careers, science is about making connections.

These connections are what kept me sane and allowed me to survive the semester (without taking a hit to my GPA), but far beyond the grades I maintained, in my crazy semester I gained perspective.