Current location:	Humanoid
Current mood:	excited
Entry tags:	quest

The irresistible call of physical reality
This much-belated post is for everyone who saw this and did a double-take. I am, in fact, taking eight credits' worth of freshman class/lab, while working full time. And will continue in that key, until I have a respectable education.

But do not search my skull for railroad spikes! Kissing sweet good-bye to nearly all of my free time [1] (and every penny of discretionary spending) for the coming few years is a decision for which I had better have a solid explanation. And luckily, I do.

A Computer Science degree is a gateway into the Irredeemable Suck. As a field of research, and as a profession. I've had enough.

The computer is a tool. And I have learned that the existence of a toolsmith is ultimately one of misery and frustration.  Most of one's time is spent working around the inadequacies of others' creations - whether you realize it or not. So I have come full circle, back into the physical-reality business. Three summers' worth of full-time lab internship (pre-college) [2] had given me some idea of what sort of destination to march towards, as well as certain skills, which, to my pleasant surprise, have not gone anywhere.

The five-second sound bite regarding why bio wins: I can forgive evolution for generating rampant inelegance and gratuitous accidental complexity. I cannot forgive people. They have minds, and ought to know better.

The pleasure to be had in understanding what makes the real world tick is enormous, though I have had but a small taste thus far. Focusing on clean physical facts after having devoted years to cramming my head full of poorly designed human abstractions feels like a lung-full of fresh air after a nauseating eternity in a dungeon.

Anyone know of a good organic chem text?

My summer will be an interesting one.

[1] This post was originally began on Feb. 10...

[2]

My old bench. NHLBI, summer 2002