it's not arson, it's SCIENCE!

delight of the week: mr franks got himself up in an ill-fitting frock coat and a powdered wig to deliver faraday's Chemical History of a Candle in character. many things were set on fire (with mr donahue standing by, armed with a fire extinguisher) and a delightful time was had by all, and i want to get my hands on some copper oxide, because it's AWESOME.

when i was in middle school, i wanted very much to go into the sciences; physics was my main area of interest. when i was in eighth grade, though, i was told that i'd never manage it, because i wasn't good enough at math.

i changed schools between seventh and eighth grades, and was put into pre-algebra. i didn't do terribly well at it, but at the time i wasn't doing terribly well at any subject. i'd transferred on the advice of a psychologist after an academic assessment, who for some reason thought that public schooling would offer me more freedom and flexibility than i'd been able to find in public school. "more heterogenous learning environment", i think she called it. that was some shaky fucking logic, but i was 12 at the time, and learning that gym was not a required class at the public middle school played a big part in my agreeing to transfer. (naturally, of course, the only real difference between the schools was scale: there were just as many bullies, proportionally, even though they had more targets.)

so anyway, toward the end of the school year, we were filling out our schedules for our freshman year of high school. we were encouraged to think about what subjects we'd like to focus on through all four years, and i decided i liked science best, and found physics intriguing.

the high school advisors sent over to meet with us, however, informed me that i would not be taking the classes that i wanted to take. i had been tracked into pre-algebra, which meant i'd be taking algebra I as a freshman. which meant that i'd be taking geometry as a sophomore, and algebra II as a junior, and pre-calc as a senior. which meant i would never get to calculus, let alone AP calculus. which meant i would not be majoring in physics. ever.

they laid all this out for me, right then and there. i had just written my big end-of-year research paper on quantum mechanics. i was obsessed with carl sagan. i was already looking at colleges, looking specifically at their physics and astronomy programs. i read every pop-science book i could get my hands on, and pestered my mother into subscribing to Popular Mechanics for me. i dreamed of going to a real school, studying things i loved. that was how i got through every day. i was thirteen. and they told me that i'd never be a physicist, ever. because i hadn't taken the right math class in eighth grade, and besides, my grades were too low anyway.

i cried through the entirety of my lunch period, that day. and i gave up. on school in general, really. i had no incentive to apply myself more to my studies. i'd apparently already failed.

i'm only just starting to realise that i can do science. and not only that i can do it, but that it's fun. and not only that i can do it, and that it's fun, but that i'm good at it. that i like it more than literature and more than philosophy and more than art and more than communications and more than all the other things i've ever thought about doing when i grew up. and i'm remembering that i've felt that way for a long, long time.

so when i get out of undergrad, that's what i'm going to do. fuck you, Mrs. Gionowitz, wherever you are, and fuck all your colleagues as well. i'm twenty-six years old now, and no one gives a shit what classes i took when i was thirteen. no one ever fucking did.