When I was young, I always thought that I would grow up to be a princess. I had no knowledge of what science was other than an extremely dull subject in school that I was made to sit through. I did not care how organisms worked nor did I care that an electron was negatively charged. Possibly the only enjoyment I received from science was that I was able to eat some of the projects that we would do. My father always told me that one day I would grow up and want to be a nuclear physicist. I had absolutely no idea what that was, but I highly doubted it. Just the name was enough to make you nauseated. Physics was for ugly girls. I thought that all scientists had crazy hair and couldn’t remember where they parked their cars. When I was little, I had a dream of becoming a missionary to people who didn’t know who my religion. I thought that science was a subject in which we discussed how photosynthesis worked…and honestly, I did not care one bit.
As I grew older, I found that science was intriguing. I learned that it had been science that inspired Newton to find a formula for gravity, for Darwin to discover the origin of the species, for Einstein to begin his work on the Theory of Relativity. I learned that without these concepts, humans would be little more than animals with capabilities to walk upright. People assume that science is only organisms and formulas and theories, but it is so much more than that. It influences our everyday life and every decision that we make. There have been many decisions in my life that science has played a role in, but I will only discuss two of them. My decision to give up religion for science and my decision to major in physics and math are the two decisions that have effected my greatly.
When I was growing up, my father was very much an evolutionist. Don’t get me wrong, he believes in God, but he does not believe in religion. My mother on the other hand is highly religious and from the time I was born until the eighth grade my brain was instilled with Creation. For me it was “Noah’s flood” that had created the Grand Canyon and the oceans across the earth. During middle school I went to a private Christian school which taught me everything from Bible study to Creation. It was part of our curriculum to learn about evolution; but it was also a part of our curriculum to think that evolution was ridiculous.
My teacher constantly talked about how Darwin’s ideas were silly and no one should have taken him seriously and how it was his fault that people were non-believers. I started questioning that; I didn’t see how someone’s “crazy” theory could make you a non- believer. I picked up the book “The Origin of the Species” and I realized that Darwin actually made sense. He explained how people started to evolve over generations by natural selection. For me it explained how species changed over time, how our food resources are limited, and how people are the dominant species. I started talking to my dad about Evolution vs. Creation and he informed me that it is not an either or, but a lot of things did not happen how they were stated in the Bible. Soon the decision of high school was coming up. Was I to stay at my highly religious middle/high school or was I to broaden my horizons and try my luck at a public high school?
I decided to go to the public high school. It was a tough decision for me because I was stepping out of my comfort zone. However, my mission was to become a veterinarian. I wanted to someday go to the veterinary school at UC Davis. UC Davis is highly competitive to get into and they hardly accept outside veterinary students. So I knew that I would have to have really good scores in high school and my little private high school would not do the trick. I began my freshman year at Galena High School. I had one week to make the decision to go to a public high school. I procrastinated up until the point where my dad informed me I had best make a decision or I wasn’t going to high school. I didn’t even think about it, I just decided that I wanted a change and I was going to Galena high school and I was going to shed the rest of my religious upbringing. I guess this decision would be a decision that I made with my gut. I didn’t really weigh the pros and cons so much I just decided that it was time for me to move on.
Once I was well on my way in high school, and I started to understand the different sciences, I realized that I really detested biology, chemistry was frankly dangerous; and life science was more than enough information than I cared to know about, well, anything. All I wanted to do was get through those sciences with the highest possible grades. I started to learn all about the different sciences and not one of the appealed to me. I did not enjoy any of them. Then, my junior year, I was stuck with the greatest teacher I have ever had. I had run out of science options by my junior year and I started the subject that I dreaded most in the world…..physics. I just knew that the class was going to kill me. I had heard horror stories about physics my whole high school career. People told me not to take that class. I didn’t even like the way the word “physics” sounded. It was just a terrible subject that for some reason I had to participate in. Well, physics wasn’t required, but I think that in order to excel, you have to push yourself to the limit, and try to go beyond what your capacity says you can do.
The beginning of my junior year I trudged along to my dreaded physics class. When I sat down in my class, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. My teacher was phenomenal, he showed us the how, the why, the what. He was tough, but he would stay after school for hours to help us with our physics homework. He was challenging, but he loved physics so much that it was contagious. I had never had to work so hard in a class in my life, but it was worth it. I studied for hours on end until I understood the material backwards, forwards and sideways. I had gone to the library and checked out a couple of books on nuclear and quantum theory. The theories very much appealed to me and I really wanted to study the subjects. I decided that when I go to college I would get my degree in physics. I learned that I would have to do a lot of work in order to become a successful physicist. I would have to get my bachelors, which I decided to turn into a duel math and physics major so that I can offer a little more competitiveness when I apply to MIT. I am planning on doing my PH D in Nuclear Physics, however, I really am fascinated by all fields of physics: quantum, astro, magnetic, particle, everything. This decision was easy, but it took a lot of thinking about and discussions with my advisor before I could even make a decision about how and where I wanted to go with this. My physics teacher inspired me to like physics, but I made the rest of the decision to study it for the rest of my life.
My father was right; I do want to become a nuclear physicist. Without realizing it, my whole life has been centered around science. I have used the scientific method to make decisions every single day. I chose to walk away from my private school. I knew that I needed the culture and the education. I couldn’t rely on people who couldn’t see past their religion to actually get me into a college. I had to carefully weight my decision to not be religious and follow my heart concerning science. My mother has not quite forgiven me for my decision, but she realizes that my life is my life and my decisions are what is going to define me. My physics teacher my junior year influenced my life so much. He is the one that pushed me into this subject that I never in my wildest dreams thought I would like. Of course I wonder what my life would have been like if I had stayed at my Christian School, but I am glad that I chose the path that I did. I do not think that I would have found my passion for physics at that school…I think I would have been on an entirely different path.
Science is my life. For me, every big decision I have made has been centered around scientific thinking. Not only in choosing my majors, but just in everyday life. I don’t think that people realize that they use the scientific process without even knowing it. We have to analyze our decisions as well as we have to think our processes through. From my upbringing, and my past in science, I have learned that science isn’t the study of just molecules and DNA signs, its what we walk outside everyday to see. Science is everywhere and people should embrace it. My definition of science is that is a rational approach to everyday life. All science does is embody the natural constituents of the universe and like I said before, without it, we would be no more than a animals with the ability to walk upright
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