ever wonder what education does to you? for me, 16 years of education, i ended up with a brain that cannot think, a total lack of humor and creativity and a spirit that is barely alive and does not want to know anything more
rethinking my life.
the rethinking came from a conversation i had with a postdoc today. I was telling him (ok i'll just abbreviate him BC) that i don't know what project i would be given for my honours thesis.
ME: i want a bite size project!
BC: what do you want to know?
ME: what do you mean what i want to know. i want a project.
BC: well if you don't want to know anything then you should go work in a bank. no point doing science. you only do science if you want to know something.
ME: erm. but i'm just a little person. how am i supposed to know what i want to know. and whether it'll work out in ONE year. i'd leave it to my PhD career to train up my "question asking".
BC: nah.. you'll be saying the same thing in your PhD. and your postdoc.
ME: ...
BC: there's no "little" or "big" person in doing science. only in technical competence. since you don't want to become a technician, start asking the questions now.
ME: ...
BC: so what do you want to know? come on. science is only about asking the questions.
ME: er well. i am interested in general how sensory perception works. in this lab obviuosly all i can work on is taste.
BC: ok. so what do you want to know about taste?
ME: erm. how it works? (at this moment, obviously i have honestly no idea what i want to know about taste.) receptor?
BC: no. no way you can find another receptor in a year.
ME: ok.
BC: ok. go home and come up with 10 questions about sensory perception. by next monday.
ME: ...er.. o-kay.
BC: wait, make it 5 questions about sensory perception. the other 5 questions that you want to ask that have already been answered in visual perception but not in taste.
ME: ...
BC: or you can become a technician. you know. maybe with a "professor" tagged in front of your name.
ME:...ok...
BC: Think about it. (whch another postdoc MG also told me to do, about why small tendom repeats in a stretch of nucleic acids like ACACACACACACAC is hard to transcribe/replicate accurately. ) and let me see the queations on monday.
so yeah. i ended up with this homework. sometimes i wonder if i really don't have the time to think, or just lazy. but the result is the same. no more contemplation, no more thinking. no more wondering. merely coping with school work. what is the point? maybe i really should take next year off work and devote it to thinking.
MG: how much do you sleep everyday?
ME: 5 or 10 hours. depending if it's MWF or TTh.
MG: you sleep too much.
so why does cortex have maps anyways?
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3 comments:
Hey... interesting. When asked 'what are you most interested in' during interviews, I always say sense receptors. Saying is one thing, doing is another. I planned to do a mini project on visual reception article review on my own but never pulled it off. And the problem boils down to, I have no passion in science, at this moment at least. Maybe I should go into business for master, since I seem to like money all the time. But hey, my interpersonal skills are no good. Hope everything will come in the end. Good luck!!
what the... 5-10 hrs, too much??? i need at least 9 hours for my brain to function properly... i messed up loads of stuff today in the lab cos i didn't get enough sleep yesterday. i don't think your boss wants to see his student dozing off when doing experiments. does he?
Always make time for thinking, something important always comes out of it no matter how long it takes.
Yeah...sleep is good. At least 7 hours keeps most people's brain running.
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