Ninth
grade science was biology – another regents class. I had decided by
this time that the most personally challenging course of work for me
would be medical school. I set my goals based solely on the challenge
and not at all on what kind of contribution I could make to the
medical profession or because I was such a great humanitarian.
Although, after a lot of soul searching years later in college when I
admitted to myself that not only were my motives for wanting a
medical career stinky poor, but I did not even have the smarts that
it would take after all, I stuck with my biology major because of my
curiousity about this thing called life and my love for living things
(not exactly contribution-making or humanity-loving – but close).
And
it took many more years to realize this follow-up point although I
think I had always known it – choosing the sciences to prove to
myself how smart I was was really the lazy route. I took classes
where memorization got me the high grades – any class where I had
to think for myself or express and defend an opinion – well I
avoided those – I knew my skin was too thin (and still is) for
criticism, and the critiques and the forcing to think would paralyze
me rather than spur me on – I would have felt dumb and been unable
to move on. History, or any of the social studies classes, economics
(? yikes oh my gosh no way!), or creative writing were spurned with
the excuse that my science classes were more important – but really
I knew I was running away from them because I couldn't grasp the
material. Because I was able to skirt these areas of study, I was
never taught/trained to write well or to really think on my own. I
could blame the schools or the teachers or even dinner table
conversation at home growing up – but essentially I blame my own
laziness for this void. As Jimmy Buffet says, it's my own damn
fault.
But
I have no regrets for my study of biology – perhaps, being the
believer in fate that I am, I had to go through all of this to get to
the path I now travel.
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20150723 Brain Paths
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