(no subject)
I'm in Boulder, Colorado. The mountains are lovely and the weather was warm. Then today a glorious rain poured upon me and through my wet field I felt a fond nostalgia for hiking in the rain with my mother when my little brother was a baby. And today I got to stroll along the beautiful, beautiful Boulder Creek with Diane, a grad student at University of Washington who I met at this conference that I came here for, which was on energy efficiency.
And one thing I learned in all of this is that I am pretty bad at empathizing with people. This comes as kind of a surprise to me, because I had fancied myself as being pretty good at empathizing with people, but it turns out that that was all a vain fancy. Specifically, I realized that I am completely incapable of understanding how it is that people can have different taste from me. I don't really understand how someone could not enjoy certain things that I truly enjoy, and vice versa--how they could enjoy something that I don't. Take, for example, two topics that were discussed at this workshop--solar cell fabrication, and spectroscopy. Which one sucks? Which one doesn't?
If you ask me, solar cell fabrication is mostly boring, and spectroscopy is mostly really exciting. Sure, both activities have their not fun aspects to them, but thinking about how things interact with light is so much more fun than thinking about how the boiling point of your solvent or your band structure affects the morphology of your film.
I didn't realize this two years ago; there were many things I didn't realize two years ago, like, for example, that mojitos are delicious and that chocolate-flavored alcohol is a perversion of both chocolate and alcohol. But now I know.
However--and this is where I lack empathy--there seem to be people who like chocolate-flavored alchohol. And solar cell fabrication, and also synthetic chemistry. They really, truly enjoy these things. And they think spectroscopy is boring. And they don't want anything to do with optics, or with stat mech--not because they can't, but because they don't want to. I'm not really sure what kind of weird synapse-connection linked the excitable portion of these peoples' brains to areas that, in my brain, seem to be a dark void, but I'm grateful that these people exist and love to do things that I think are sucky but important--and also, to some extent, I'm grateful that not everyone wants to compete with me for getting to do the things I want to do.
I started being successful in college classes when I started assuming that everyone is basically the same intellectually. But I think I'm beginning to learn that beyond college classes, there's a great deal of value that comes from realizing that people are different. I used to resent using that term because to me it always implied that some people just suck more than others, and this offends my delicate sensibilities. And I don't think I'm completely comfortable with just saying that people are different, and that this is a good thing, and leaving it at that, because it's easy to ascribe laziness to "differentness." But, truly, people have different interests, are excited by different subjects, and enjoy thinking about different problems. And that is a truly great thing.
And one thing I learned in all of this is that I am pretty bad at empathizing with people. This comes as kind of a surprise to me, because I had fancied myself as being pretty good at empathizing with people, but it turns out that that was all a vain fancy. Specifically, I realized that I am completely incapable of understanding how it is that people can have different taste from me. I don't really understand how someone could not enjoy certain things that I truly enjoy, and vice versa--how they could enjoy something that I don't. Take, for example, two topics that were discussed at this workshop--solar cell fabrication, and spectroscopy. Which one sucks? Which one doesn't?
If you ask me, solar cell fabrication is mostly boring, and spectroscopy is mostly really exciting. Sure, both activities have their not fun aspects to them, but thinking about how things interact with light is so much more fun than thinking about how the boiling point of your solvent or your band structure affects the morphology of your film.
I didn't realize this two years ago; there were many things I didn't realize two years ago, like, for example, that mojitos are delicious and that chocolate-flavored alcohol is a perversion of both chocolate and alcohol. But now I know.
However--and this is where I lack empathy--there seem to be people who like chocolate-flavored alchohol. And solar cell fabrication, and also synthetic chemistry. They really, truly enjoy these things. And they think spectroscopy is boring. And they don't want anything to do with optics, or with stat mech--not because they can't, but because they don't want to. I'm not really sure what kind of weird synapse-connection linked the excitable portion of these peoples' brains to areas that, in my brain, seem to be a dark void, but I'm grateful that these people exist and love to do things that I think are sucky but important--and also, to some extent, I'm grateful that not everyone wants to compete with me for getting to do the things I want to do.
I started being successful in college classes when I started assuming that everyone is basically the same intellectually. But I think I'm beginning to learn that beyond college classes, there's a great deal of value that comes from realizing that people are different. I used to resent using that term because to me it always implied that some people just suck more than others, and this offends my delicate sensibilities. And I don't think I'm completely comfortable with just saying that people are different, and that this is a good thing, and leaving it at that, because it's easy to ascribe laziness to "differentness." But, truly, people have different interests, are excited by different subjects, and enjoy thinking about different problems. And that is a truly great thing.