"Tenuousness at best."

I almost cannot contain my excitement at the moment.

I've been in a constant spiral of uncertainty for the past few weeks.  I found myself twirling my pencil in class, pretending for brief moments between lecture slides that it was my theoretical bachelor's in science.  Then, in flickering instants of terrorizing ambivalence, I transformed it into a degree in the humanities and sought any noticeable change in ease of hypothetical mind.  Each idea seemed equally plausible, yet neither seemed altogether preferable.    

I've always assumed that I'd find a lab somewhere and do what scientists presumably do.   

 Study and make bad puns?.

There are two immediate problems with this.
1. I don't know how much I'm meant for a lab.  I can't envision myself at this point creating experiments and dealing with potentially unexciting, unsatisfying results.
2. Goddammit, I just want to write.

Note: There is, however, no immediate problem with that pun.

Regardless, I'm an uncomfortable hybrid of literary and scientific tastes.  I saw a line scribbled on a wall last year that read, "I'm too creative for my science classes, and I'm too scientific for my art classes."  Vandals can be quite elegant, it seems.

I wrote a few days ago about my chemistry professor's suggestion that I consider technical writing. Not my thing.  But, what about science writing?  I offhandedly googled it today, and what I read left me in this current state of precarious excitement.

"By far the most important qualities needed by a prospective science writer are a fascination with science and a talent for writing clearly, accurately and with an interesting flair. Science writers must also possess a drive to continue learning throughout their professional lives, because unlike the case in many journalism specialties, each new science story can present new concepts and a new vocabulary to master. Also, like other journalists and PIOs, science writers will also increasingly have to learn to work in multimedia, using text, graphics, video and audio to communicate their stories."

I don't think that could possibly sound more like me.  A quick search for graduate programs turned up a hit at MIT, as well.  

The potential to be able to keep science near while simultaneously working to make it more accessible to the public is a very enticing thing for me.  I read so many articles with misleading information, and I think we could very much benefit from a stronger connection between scientists and the rest of the world.  All I need to do is look at the rest of my Genetics in the New Age class.  They find some of the articles to be very boring, and they don't get the full picture from some of them.  "They don't have to be boring!" is the thought bouncing around my mind.

I'm very serious about my writing, improving it and otherwise.  To me, failure to provide context is an unforgivable offense.  For instance, one of our class debates centered around unintended consequences of transgenic studies.  One paper cited a group of scientists (as if they were crazy) that grew functioning legs on Drosophila where antennae should have been.  The article somewhat implied that the researchers did this for funsies, and the class reacted negatively as such.  But the lack of context ignored the fact that this was probably more of an important study on homeotic gene expression than a case of scientists trying to play God.

 "Lolz! Alright, now let's do some real science."

Suggested solution? Become a writer.  At least I could work to decrease the rate of incidence  of misinformation at a microcosmic level. I would love to assist in responsibly spreading knowledge to others.  When so many people seem to stray from logic, I could work to bring it closer.  I may even be able to incorporate my love for philosophy (specifically, bioethics and epistemology).  This might just be the thing for me.  I'm heading over to my professor's office hours to discuss potential resources tomorrow, but we'll see what happens.



Also, here is the song that inspired the title of this post. This performance is beautiful, and I love Andrew Bird.

 

"Tenuosness at best was all he had to say when pressed about the rest of it, the world that is."