My Science Story

When I think about science classes when I was younger, a couple of images come to mind quickly. Dead frogs and microscopes. Beakers and petri dishes. Mr. Fohey and his Coke bottle thick glasses. What I don't remember is how I felt about science at the time. I don't really have a clear memory either way. I do think it must have been one of the cooler classes...because it sometimes involved hands-on experimentation and seeing things in a new way, rather than just reading out of a book or listening to the teacher drone on and on, but I honestly don't really remember much about it at all.


I don't think I was a particularly curious kid. I was more of a go with the flow kind of kid. I did enjoy playing outside, especially in the woods near my house. I collected crayfish from the brook because they looked like teeny lobsters, and I thought that was very cool. I had a thing for toads and turtles and always seemed to have one or the other in an old shoe box on the porch. In the summer, I collected fireflies and kept them in clear jars with holes poked in the lids. As a summer lover, one consolation I did have as fall approached was that it meant the leaves would be changing and falling from the trees. While I didn't necessarily enjoy the raking, I DID enjoy being able to jump into the leave piles when we were done. I thought of that old memory recently when I sent leaves off to my sister who now lives in Arizona. She misses the seasons we have here in New England, and I wanted to send her a little piece of home to enjoy.

Even with all of these fun memories and interests, I've never really thought of myself as a fan of science, but while thinking about what I would write for this blog, it occured to me that science is all around us, and, it turns out, now that I think about it...I'm actually quite fond of science!

I found this quote defining science that I think sums it up nicely:

"Science is an intellectual activity carried on by humans that is designed to discover information about the natural world in which humans live and to discover the ways in which this information can be organized into meaningful patterns. A primary aim of science is to collect facts (data). An ultimate purpose of science is to discern the order that exists between and amongst the various facts."

--Dr. Sheldon Gottlieb in a lecture series at the University of South Alabama

I think we're all scientists when you define it like that. Who doesn't want to discover ways to find patterns in the chaos? Who among us isn't constantly collecting facts in order to make conclusions about our experiences? Who doesn't want to understand more about the world we live in?

If you asked me even just a few weeks ago if I would have considered a career teaching science, I would have said "NO WAY!" My ideas about what "science" is were things like memorizing elements charts, looking at dead skin cells through microscope lenses, and storing dead animals in clear jars full of formaldehyde. Boring. Ick. No thanks. But now, even after having just one class and doing some quick web searches, I'm starting to understand that it doesn't have to be all about the boring and the ick. Science is cool, it's fascinating, and it can even be fun at parties!