It's still Friday morning for a few more minutes
"You know why a peacock struts? Because it can't fly."
- Dr. West's grandmother
---------------------------------------------------------------
I am at home trying to read about Biostats. I got a 102 out of 120 on my take-home for it. I put all my stressing energy and as much brain energy as I could into that test for a week. What did it do? It brought me up from withdrawing from the course! I couldn't believe I even passed that test. Damn. Now, strangely, I am really excited about learning how to do all the statistical analysis tests for biological data. I was mad at them because they were beyond me and so I was ignoring them. Then I fell behind and the test was nearly impossible. Fortunately, one of the grad students in my lab is a stats instructor and is much closer to the learning curve than our national expert professor, so I got to borrow some better texts from her (did you think I was going to say that she gave me the answers?). The book I am reading now (or, I guess, taking a break from) is a godsend! It is what is making me actually want to know this shit. Too bad it's like 300 pages and I read slow and doesn't cover the material we will be learning from here on out. Guess I'll be stuck with my nose in another book coming up.
My mentor changed our project direction a bit. She decided it was too hard to do right now and that she needed to think it out a bit more. I guess you could say it was sweet of her to have such high opinions of our brains. The other mentoree who was working with us dropped out. He was a math-head and couldn't handle all the biology. I don't blame him. We are doing some pretty weird shit. Most of us aren't even convinced that the ecological theory (that my mentor wants us to model with computers) is even true. Add to that the fact that it's eked out with a shit-load of retroactive mathematical carbon-fiber "oops" patches and you have one very hairy, interdisciplinary mess that will take a lot of skills to learn. So, my mentor and I are still learning Matlab (the computer program) which is fun but kind of funny because it is giving me flash backs of when I was taking programming at De Anza. I remember doing assignments that required flow-charts and hours of penciling, erasing, typing, and hunting for errors when the compy simply said "sorry, it's not working" as your big result. I remember thinking, you know, this is kind of fun, it's kind of like doing cross-word puzzles. But even though it has more applications than cross-word puzzles, do I really want to spend 8 hours a day doing this shit? And I did what I have learned to do oh-so-well, I changed my major. Well, what's the take-home message here? My mentor, Gretchen, said that programming for her is tons of fun and that she could do it all day. But she doesn't. God, we spent most of our time just looking up web sites and help catalogs to see if there were any discrepancies between our primer's version and the latest version we were operating. Is this scavenger hunting AND cross-word puzzling in the bio lab? Did I have to figure out what I really really really finally want to study only to delve into it and realize that I still get to do all the things I was interested in along the way? Did I just pass the neck in the hour glass to pop out on the other, equally huge side? Is this the answer to my major-switching problem? Is this what it has taken me 10 years to find out? WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME THAT BEFORE?
Would I have believed them?
Hmm, well, suddenly I am excited. Kind of like I was feeling earlier when I felt like I wanted to learn all about the class I was about to drop. This is one damn strange day.
Oh shit. I had a library book due yesterday. The one I was reading instead of biostats, "The Excitement of Science." Guess I'll have fees to pay. Dammit.
So Gretchen wants us to do a survey of all the species diversity estimators that are out there. I guess there are a buch of mathematical estimators to analyse field data from trying to count how many species there are at a site. They all have different facets, including what data you found each time you went out, what you are looking for, what you expect to find, blah blah blah. But there is no way for a scientist to determine which one to use and why, or, if they can all be used, which answer is "best." Until now. Ta-da! We are going to look at that so that other scientist will have that handy resource at last. It sounds pretty fun because it will be like doing an experiment only on estimators instead of on a more traditional subject. And, we will probably have a paper to publish when we are done. How about that for an undergrad? Hot damn! I still want to learn about Metapopulations, though (the project we're postponing) and would love to model them, too. I guess I just need more intro than she expected. That's fine. The whole lab is learning about Metapopulations and so as we learn about them collectively Gretchen will be able to assess when is the right time to think about modeling them again.
Every week or so, and sometimes every day, I get this "you're kidding me!" moment where I can't believe the field of ecology is either a) doing something really stupid, or b) hasn't done something really necessary/obvious/productive yet. Ecology is this field where only agriculture and wussies have been around for decades and finally scientists are coming in and applyling the scientific method to the field. It's like a home makeover, or a seismic retrofit. It's not all junk, and a lot of important stuff has been done, but it's needing/getting a really good fix upon which to build further. How exciting is that? Plus, I get this feeling, or rather, positive evidence, that the faculty at SFSU is really on top of this criticism and contributing constructively to it. I get the sense that there is a mission at their meetings actively supporting this. It's not coincidence that I'm amazed by all my encounters with them. I suddenly vaguely remember wanting to go to SFSU because of all their bio facilities and field campuses. Well, guess I did that right.
I have been trying to figure out what I want to do in this field, or what it needs, or why I care about it. I know that at the very least, which is not least at all, I will make meaningful contributions to it becoming a scientific and useful base of knowledge.
But what about that, huh? I saw a Nova the other day where a meteorologist was choking back tears about how his team and their models accurately predicted the levies breaking in New Orleans. He was crying because the dream and goal of every field is curiosity and betterment of life. You either want to know something or you want to help something (ok, and some want fame, too). That's it in science. The ultimate, the all. And he had done it. And it got everyone nowhere. Without review and implementation of science it is useless to society. If no one is listening, or or no one is talking, or you don't have a working telephone, you're screwed. I think that's what environmental science does. That other major that doesn't have all the science requirements. Thankfully, there are a lot of interdisciplinary programs around the country integrating science and policy. On the other hand, if government shuts the door on them, they, too, will be useless.
How does this relate to public consciousness? Is nature-consciousness really important if you have a working field of science and a listening government? Yes. Those people are citizens of our society and they grow up with a nature-consciousness that affects their roles later. Nature-consciousness involves economics and animism. The whole gamut. Ooh, I see a circle!
- Dr. West's grandmother
---------------------------------------------------------------
I am at home trying to read about Biostats. I got a 102 out of 120 on my take-home for it. I put all my stressing energy and as much brain energy as I could into that test for a week. What did it do? It brought me up from withdrawing from the course! I couldn't believe I even passed that test. Damn. Now, strangely, I am really excited about learning how to do all the statistical analysis tests for biological data. I was mad at them because they were beyond me and so I was ignoring them. Then I fell behind and the test was nearly impossible. Fortunately, one of the grad students in my lab is a stats instructor and is much closer to the learning curve than our national expert professor, so I got to borrow some better texts from her (did you think I was going to say that she gave me the answers?). The book I am reading now (or, I guess, taking a break from) is a godsend! It is what is making me actually want to know this shit. Too bad it's like 300 pages and I read slow and doesn't cover the material we will be learning from here on out. Guess I'll be stuck with my nose in another book coming up.
My mentor changed our project direction a bit. She decided it was too hard to do right now and that she needed to think it out a bit more. I guess you could say it was sweet of her to have such high opinions of our brains. The other mentoree who was working with us dropped out. He was a math-head and couldn't handle all the biology. I don't blame him. We are doing some pretty weird shit. Most of us aren't even convinced that the ecological theory (that my mentor wants us to model with computers) is even true. Add to that the fact that it's eked out with a shit-load of retroactive mathematical carbon-fiber "oops" patches and you have one very hairy, interdisciplinary mess that will take a lot of skills to learn. So, my mentor and I are still learning Matlab (the computer program) which is fun but kind of funny because it is giving me flash backs of when I was taking programming at De Anza. I remember doing assignments that required flow-charts and hours of penciling, erasing, typing, and hunting for errors when the compy simply said "sorry, it's not working" as your big result. I remember thinking, you know, this is kind of fun, it's kind of like doing cross-word puzzles. But even though it has more applications than cross-word puzzles, do I really want to spend 8 hours a day doing this shit? And I did what I have learned to do oh-so-well, I changed my major. Well, what's the take-home message here? My mentor, Gretchen, said that programming for her is tons of fun and that she could do it all day. But she doesn't. God, we spent most of our time just looking up web sites and help catalogs to see if there were any discrepancies between our primer's version and the latest version we were operating. Is this scavenger hunting AND cross-word puzzling in the bio lab? Did I have to figure out what I really really really finally want to study only to delve into it and realize that I still get to do all the things I was interested in along the way? Did I just pass the neck in the hour glass to pop out on the other, equally huge side? Is this the answer to my major-switching problem? Is this what it has taken me 10 years to find out? WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME THAT BEFORE?
Would I have believed them?
Hmm, well, suddenly I am excited. Kind of like I was feeling earlier when I felt like I wanted to learn all about the class I was about to drop. This is one damn strange day.
Oh shit. I had a library book due yesterday. The one I was reading instead of biostats, "The Excitement of Science." Guess I'll have fees to pay. Dammit.
So Gretchen wants us to do a survey of all the species diversity estimators that are out there. I guess there are a buch of mathematical estimators to analyse field data from trying to count how many species there are at a site. They all have different facets, including what data you found each time you went out, what you are looking for, what you expect to find, blah blah blah. But there is no way for a scientist to determine which one to use and why, or, if they can all be used, which answer is "best." Until now. Ta-da! We are going to look at that so that other scientist will have that handy resource at last. It sounds pretty fun because it will be like doing an experiment only on estimators instead of on a more traditional subject. And, we will probably have a paper to publish when we are done. How about that for an undergrad? Hot damn! I still want to learn about Metapopulations, though (the project we're postponing) and would love to model them, too. I guess I just need more intro than she expected. That's fine. The whole lab is learning about Metapopulations and so as we learn about them collectively Gretchen will be able to assess when is the right time to think about modeling them again.
Every week or so, and sometimes every day, I get this "you're kidding me!" moment where I can't believe the field of ecology is either a) doing something really stupid, or b) hasn't done something really necessary/obvious/productive yet. Ecology is this field where only agriculture and wussies have been around for decades and finally scientists are coming in and applyling the scientific method to the field. It's like a home makeover, or a seismic retrofit. It's not all junk, and a lot of important stuff has been done, but it's needing/getting a really good fix upon which to build further. How exciting is that? Plus, I get this feeling, or rather, positive evidence, that the faculty at SFSU is really on top of this criticism and contributing constructively to it. I get the sense that there is a mission at their meetings actively supporting this. It's not coincidence that I'm amazed by all my encounters with them. I suddenly vaguely remember wanting to go to SFSU because of all their bio facilities and field campuses. Well, guess I did that right.
I have been trying to figure out what I want to do in this field, or what it needs, or why I care about it. I know that at the very least, which is not least at all, I will make meaningful contributions to it becoming a scientific and useful base of knowledge.
But what about that, huh? I saw a Nova the other day where a meteorologist was choking back tears about how his team and their models accurately predicted the levies breaking in New Orleans. He was crying because the dream and goal of every field is curiosity and betterment of life. You either want to know something or you want to help something (ok, and some want fame, too). That's it in science. The ultimate, the all. And he had done it. And it got everyone nowhere. Without review and implementation of science it is useless to society. If no one is listening, or or no one is talking, or you don't have a working telephone, you're screwed. I think that's what environmental science does. That other major that doesn't have all the science requirements. Thankfully, there are a lot of interdisciplinary programs around the country integrating science and policy. On the other hand, if government shuts the door on them, they, too, will be useless.
How does this relate to public consciousness? Is nature-consciousness really important if you have a working field of science and a listening government? Yes. Those people are citizens of our society and they grow up with a nature-consciousness that affects their roles later. Nature-consciousness involves economics and animism. The whole gamut. Ooh, I see a circle!