Thursday, October 13, 2005
Tempestuous
I just have this urge to post this since no one really ever cares or bothers listening to whatever rants i have. So, instead of bombarding your ears with my whiny cries, allow me to blind you with my atrocious jottings.
I speak at the speed of 300 words/minute whenever i get really pissed or angry at something or someone. And the only group of people ever so privileged to see that incredible human feat of mine are my poor lab mates. Not that I have anything against them ( let us just skip that part, shall we) but sorry, we're just not gonna click no matter what. I'm not sure which part of my pathetic mug shows you that i do not have the mental capacity of handling a single experiment or to make a simple suggestion, but i guess you guys simply have the gift of making someone feel like she's the lowliest, most useless 'thing' to have ever roamed the earth. Bravo. Or maybe, nature made us in a way that four girls will never make a great lab team. We're just too...'female' for our own good. (Forgive my rants if any of you happen to stumble upon this blog of mine. Oh well, now you know why i always look as if i could bite someone's head off whenever i'm in the lab, don't you?)
It's always times like these where i wonder if i'm really even made for life science. Frankly, I'd rather graze my wrists with a blade, drive an icepick through my aorta or heck, fug william hung for all i care, than to wear a lab coat, have my eyes permanently plastered to a microscope and be called Ms. Life Sciencer in 2 years' time. I think (no, change that to 'sure') i'm better off doing english literature than staring at rat livers all day long. I'd rather be learning about iambic pentameters than to bother about ionic interactions and pH meters. It sucks being stuck in the wrong place, wrong course with the wrong people. I regret not following my own instincts and passion and went ahead with english lit instead. I regret being such a wuss, an invertebrate for allowing myself to be persuaded into changing majors earlier on. I'm such an idiot.
Sure, life science's great, but what's the fun in competing with 500 other people whom you know will be stuck with you in the same lab somewhere in biopolis 25 years down the road, complaining about that hot date that you've missed because you've been so busy trying to formulate a glow-in-the-dark rats to 'facilitate the extermination of these pests'. We work too hard just to have our fascination and awe of the wonders of life stripped off with the advent of a few mathematical formulas or random biological breakthroughs. The lives we save, nonetheless, cannot be disputed, but at what price? By the killing of a 10000 mice just to save a single human being? Is the centrality of the human consciousness really more superior than that of animals?Read J.M. Coetzee's Lives of Animals and you'll know that that parallels the atrocities committed towards humans during the Holocaust. Well, that's what the english lit people think and which i undoubtedly agree. The 'science people' will never get it.
Which boils down to the larger picture : science and the arts will always be at loggerheads with each other. And here i am, trapped in the eye of the storm.
