Month: September 2011

In reading the first few chapters in this class of mine I have already been struck by the sense that as a person I am not really of my own making. We have read about the influences of family, genes and culture and the interactions of these. We have read about the influence of technology, which is often under-emphasized in discussions of development. I am a healthy, educated person partly because I received life-saving vaccines at the right time and for a low cost. I never was infected with a virus that might have stunted my growth or impaired my cognition. All the necessities of life are provided for by the many companies competing for my money. I enjoy a varied diet thanks to a safe food supply and a global transport system that brings it to my city. (Outbreaks such as the current Listeria outbreak are in the news precisely because they are so rare.) I am not a smoker partly because of the triumphs of public health campaigns legislators and attorneys general who prevented me from ever getting hooked.

In reading I have thought about my love of birds and dinosaurs and deep time and my love of science generally. This, too, goes back to reading dinosaur picture books at bedtime with my parents. At regular check-ups, my pediatrician undoubtedly extolled the benefits of reading to children and encouraged my parents to do so. The doctor was supported in this by the most recent evidence and guidelines.

My love of nature is there because of family walks by the Minnehaha Creek. My fascination with biology and medicine is there because my parents had no qualms about letting me plunge my fingers into giant puffball mushrooms and into reeking bogs in search of frogs and insects. They even indulged me in my mold collection until it came time to throw some of it out for sanitary reasons. My series of pet rats was the same kind of thing.

I write this down because one has a tendency to imagine one is a piece of clay to be sculpted as one wishes. The Enlightenment ideals I admire would have it this way. But it is worthwhile to be reminded sometimes that one is so much the product of one’s connections and influences and of the many scientists and caregivers and industrialists who came before one, and so little one’s own creation.

Young people: get an education. Go as far as you can with your schooling while the subsidized loans are available and the family and social support is there. Going back to school has made me realize how important it all is.

I have had a glimpse over the past few years of the alternative to being an educated citizen: long years of repetitive, mindless work stretching on before you, with you having no role in advancing the field. With nothing to look forward to but the end of the shift, the end of the workweek, and the end of one’s working years. A situation where the place where one spends the majority of one’s time is nonetheless the least significant and most banal part of one’s life. Each day wears on you, each day feels like another eight hours that you will never get back. The only imperative in it is to keep the routine going, to go as long as you can before your health fails or you can take early retirement.

On the opposite side of life is school and education, where you make slow but inexorable progress and advancement. Where you make the important connections and can attain mastery with the necessary diligence. It is another world entirely. And once you do attain mastery in your field of study or your degree, you are ready to apply it to your career, where you can be an active participant in the field and a leader in life. You can nourish your child-like thirst for discovery and your inborn adventurousness.

This is not to say that everyone needs a college degree or more. Many people will be fine with a high school diploma and the satisfaction of physical work, the many roles necessary in the service industry, or the joys of a domestic life. A certificate is enough for a satisfying career in HVAC or plumbing or personal care-giving, for instance. And many of these jobs pay well. But I hold that for most people, the more education, the better.

– I just finished reading “The Reapers Are the Angels” and cried when I turned the last page. Yes, it was about zombies. But it was really good. The author is a high school teacher in New York City. The focus of the story is a fifteen-year old girl, born after the apocalypse, who moves about the wasteland with a special eye to the beauty in the world and a kind of survivor’s wisdom. They really need to make a movie out of this book. And they need to cast the chick from Winter’s Bone. Except she is too old now. But someone similar.

I am reading “The Walking Dead” comics series as well, and it too has a sense of people building back up after the catastrophe, which is something the author of Reapers mentioned in an interview. Although the apocalypse has happened, everyone is able to start over, becoming raiders or wasteland doctors or hunters where they were just office workers before. Come to think of it, “Fallout 3” had the same feel, only it was a nuclear war that led to that particular horror.

– Continuing with the night shift. It is going well. I sleep from 12 to 8 or 1 to 9pm. In the morning I get coffee at the new Urban Bean on Lyndale or just make it at home and enjoy the sun coming out. The mornings are really cold nowadays.

– My abnormal psych class is going well. It is very much based on the text and is pretty straightforward. I start my microbiology class with lab and my lifespan growth and development class next week, which will require more travel. Once again they are all classes I tried to take as an undergrad but could not because the sections were always full. I bought the textbooks, too. Only 400 bucks.