The path

I am a science geek. I love it, I think about it all the time, and I try to consume as much information about current scientific efforts as I can.

I was listening to one of my favorite Podcasts, Brain Food by Kyle Butler, and I wondered what this young college student was going to do with his life after university. I was impressed by the way he explains things, speaking to people with no scientific background in a way to keep them interested. I wrote him a letter telling him that I thought he could be the next Carl Sagan.

It reminded me of my Thermodynamics instructor in college. He was 23 and a graduate student, surely taking the teaching job in order to help pay for grad school. Possibly destined to be a professor and teach, or maybe he was headed into industry. I can't remember his name and it never occurred to me back then to go ask him, but I wish I had. He taught beautifully. He made what was supposed to be a "weed out" course, that you should be happy to limp away from with a C be a fascinating and engrossing course that seemed to open up the world to new understandings and possibilities. His strength was that he had just learned the stuff himself. He remembered what it was like to struggle through the thick wooded undergrowth from ignorance to knowledge in this subject. He had the road map. He was an excellent guide. Often, a person that is so far along in a subject has no idea how to explain it to a novice. That is frustrating.

Also, instructors of all courses at all levels fail to explain why you need to learn something. They don't tell you where you're going and why you want to be there. This is essential.

The path of knowledge is not an easy one. It is a struggle to cram new thoughts and ideas into your head (least of which is tossing out the old ideas that were wrong). If you don't know where you're going, why would you want to even make the effort?

Would you get in a car and drive for hours and hours with no destination in mind? Just hope when you get there that there was something worth getting to? That's crazy. You'd be the fidgeting kid constantly asking: "are we there yet?"

It's easy to see how expectation mapping helps. When I was a kid, I watched the first moon landing on TV. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to learn all about science, because science was this magical vehicle that took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon on Apollo 11 (poor Michael Collins, watching it from just a few miles away in his Command Module). This is a classic example of being shown where you're heading and gladly packing up and making the arduous trek to get there. Millions of people went into science and engineering. Everybody was excited. We could do anything we put our minds to.

It still gives me goosebumps and sends a thrill up my spine to think of it.

We CAN do anything we put our minds to.

You just have to know where you're headed before you set out.

I was lucky in school. When I didn't understand why we were learning something, I just ate it all up on faith, figuring it was going somewhere good. I was like the kid in the back seat that just knows Dad wouldn't take me on vacation to somewhere bogus, there must be something cool at the end of the long drive. I was lucky to feel that way. In the end, almost everything I've ever learned was for the betterment of my general knowledge, direction, or motivation.

I've often dreamed about being a teacher and making my students feel that way. Maybe I will do that one day. Life is long enough to do many things before the final destination.