Reinventing yourself at 28
A little less than a month ago, I returned to America after spending two and a half months working in South Africa. It was without a doubt the happiest two and a half months of my life, bar none. I was immersed in a lifestyle I had thought I’d left far behind me, the constantly questioning curiosity of science. It had been over half a decade since I’d really set foot in an institution of higher learning, and there I was spending long days hunched over a light microscope in the herbarium at the University of Cape Town measuring seeds and enjoying every minute of it. Along with the fine detail work of seed analysis I also had the privilege to travel to some of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever been on this planet. Collecting samples in the beautiful desolation of the Cederburg, hiking into the craggy peaks of the Schwartzberg, and a whirlwind vacation across the country to Grahamstown and back: all impressing upon me the absolute wonder that South Africa had to offer.
Beyond all this talk of beauty and amazing places though, I found something else out while I was helping Hayley and her research. For so long, ever since I graduated from Wittenberg really, I’d drifted from place to place, adventure to adventure, without any real thing in the way of a guiding star. I would follow people, or an interesting idea, but the people soon left me behind; the ideas turned out to be just as mundane as what I had left behind. But here, with each tiny measurement and weight, each transect surveyed and each cone collected, I was working towards something bigger, adding to sum weight of human knowledge. I had a purpose, an ideal that I could devote myself to and not worry that it would collapse or fall away like so many had before. The idea of science, that I could help all of us to know the surrounding world just a bit better, that I could see something that had never been seen before, be the first person to know something and then share that knowledge with others, that was something that rocked me to my very core.
Upon my return to Portland, however, I was greeted with a simple, stark fact. Here I had nothing. Certainly, I had a job to which I could and did return. I had a few friends who were glad to see me and hear about how the trip had gone. But that drive? That overriding ideal? That motivation to get up and see what new thing I would learn today, however insignificant? Gone. I was facing an existence that had no point, no purpose, no reason to continue. Between the dual loss of the constant company of my now dear friend Hayley and the loss of the guiding star that her work and by extension science as a whole offered, I floundered and began to sink. It was, and still is for a very large part of my days, a source of sadness, frustration and depression that threatened to overwhelm me. Finally, however, I grabbed hold of the one thing that I could and decided to take a different action than what might have otherwise called to me.
So I’ve enrolled in a class here at the local university. It’s a basic biology class, nothing particularly challenging, but it’s a start to slowly change the course of my life from that of a 28 year old ex-English major floating through life to that of a scientist. The more I look at it, the more difficult I can’t help but think it will be. These decisions that I’m making now are ones that by all rights I should have come to a decade ago, but I have to try. As part of that I intend to chronicle my journey back into the airy world of academia and all the barriers and obstacles inherent in reinventing yourself at 28.
Beyond all this talk of beauty and amazing places though, I found something else out while I was helping Hayley and her research. For so long, ever since I graduated from Wittenberg really, I’d drifted from place to place, adventure to adventure, without any real thing in the way of a guiding star. I would follow people, or an interesting idea, but the people soon left me behind; the ideas turned out to be just as mundane as what I had left behind. But here, with each tiny measurement and weight, each transect surveyed and each cone collected, I was working towards something bigger, adding to sum weight of human knowledge. I had a purpose, an ideal that I could devote myself to and not worry that it would collapse or fall away like so many had before. The idea of science, that I could help all of us to know the surrounding world just a bit better, that I could see something that had never been seen before, be the first person to know something and then share that knowledge with others, that was something that rocked me to my very core.
Upon my return to Portland, however, I was greeted with a simple, stark fact. Here I had nothing. Certainly, I had a job to which I could and did return. I had a few friends who were glad to see me and hear about how the trip had gone. But that drive? That overriding ideal? That motivation to get up and see what new thing I would learn today, however insignificant? Gone. I was facing an existence that had no point, no purpose, no reason to continue. Between the dual loss of the constant company of my now dear friend Hayley and the loss of the guiding star that her work and by extension science as a whole offered, I floundered and began to sink. It was, and still is for a very large part of my days, a source of sadness, frustration and depression that threatened to overwhelm me. Finally, however, I grabbed hold of the one thing that I could and decided to take a different action than what might have otherwise called to me.
So I’ve enrolled in a class here at the local university. It’s a basic biology class, nothing particularly challenging, but it’s a start to slowly change the course of my life from that of a 28 year old ex-English major floating through life to that of a scientist. The more I look at it, the more difficult I can’t help but think it will be. These decisions that I’m making now are ones that by all rights I should have come to a decade ago, but I have to try. As part of that I intend to chronicle my journey back into the airy world of academia and all the barriers and obstacles inherent in reinventing yourself at 28.