Biochemistry is a BITCH

Indeed

It’s been a long time since I last wrote. It’s not that my life has been uneventful. Quite the contrary. In several posts I mention a certain Boyfriend. I must inform that Boyfriend is no more. He shall be now referred to as Ex#3. A few days later I found out that a dear friend had died.  Then I lost my job. And found a new one. And Ex#3 has a new girlfriend.

I have been meaning to write, about dopamine and serotonin, about STeve and developmental biology and god, and about my new students, about astronomy and how i have the time of my life when I’m teaching biology… but I can’t. I can’t focus at times, and I’m perpetually tired, or jittery or simply… blah.

This is what happens when your brain biochemistry goes awry. This is when you come to realize that this is not mere sadness, and it’s actually affecting your job and your life and your friends and that you might need chemical help just to get trough the day. This is also when you realize that the moment you lay hands on that prozac your chances of ever dating Tom Cruise have gone straight to hell. So be it. I like Christian Bale better.

One reason to leave your job…

My first job, before I even finished high school was at a museum. I was a guide and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it for more or less 5 years. You get to work with people, teach them something and learn stuff in return.

My second job, before I even finished my bachelor’s degree was as a teacher. To me, it was almost natural, after all, I’ve been doing something quite similar for 5-odd years. So I presented my resumé and was promptly hired in my old high school. It was all fun for a semester. I LOVED my students and had more fun than I thought I deserved. I also had some panic attacks and at least one crisis that I can recall. Those were good days.

On my second semester I started teaching biology (I started out teaching environmental science). We got to the ever so amazing topic of evolution, and one kid blurts out: “Miss, do you believe in God?”. That is not the issue here. “Do you believe in evolution?”. It’s not a matter of belief. “Do you have values?”. Again, not the issus here. “My religion teacher says that evolution did not happen to humans”. “What!!??” That did it.

After much tongue biting,  many mentions of Gould’s NOMAs, and one confrontation with the aforementioned teacher who cites PHYSICISTS as her main source of information on evolution,   I finally came to my boss and gave a long heartfelt speech about how my beliefs and ideas, and those of the school that I worked for (it is a strongly religious institution)  clashed with what I thought was my responsibility as a teacher to impart sound scientific education, at least about biology.

I taught environmental science once more, and by the end of that semester I found out that I was denied teaching a summer course, and was also denied tenure, besides having seniority, and being a specialist in my field. Whether there were issues of favouritism or not, I cannot say, nor if my not yet belligerent atheism played a role. Truth be told,  I started feeling more and more uncomfortable, and I realized that my attitude towards religion, and science and education got me to a dead end in that school, although this might not have been an explicit issue with my employers. Also, I was being told to use the same material everybody else was using, and since I’m big on academic freedom, and learning for fun, I categorically refused, which resulted in yet another clash with my coworkers and boss.

Thoroughly offended at my being ignored for both a tenure and a summer course, and after some serious “soul searching”, I up and left my resumé at the rival university’s highschool, and after a long summer waiting to hear from them while in bed with Dick, I finally annoyed them enough to hire me.

This new gig is not only one mile from my house, but also the university is strong on academic freedom, is secular, and has among it’s principles that the teachers have to be passionate about learning. I’m in fracking hea-ven. I love my kids, I’ve started an astronomy club that is successful in spite of the less than perfect skies and the only downside is that I’m teaching chemistry… but I really have fun with it and I’m trying my best. I swear.

And that’s how I left my job

Nerds and Freaks and Geeks, oh my!

Today was the first day of school, and as I was hearing my new student’s presentations, one of them confessed that she ran away form her former high school because she was surrounded by freaks, and geeks. Being a proud and out geek myself, I started a wee argument on the issue… Apparently, being a geek is seen as a bad thing nowadays.

So, just for clarity’s sake, I visited reference. com, and looked up all those terms that are used to refer to the intellectually inclined. Since that first search did not conform to my hypothesis, I tried wikipedia. Here, the definition was broader, and though it did mention the word’s negative connotation, it included the more mainstream, popular definition of the term.

It’s funny how meanings evolve. I’m ill equipped to talk about epistemiology (I’ll channel Tolkien whenever i want to talk about that), but I want to think I can at least deal with evolution. The term geeks, as the term gay , or queer has had it’s original meaning changed by the same community it describes.FYI, I’m not equating being geek oto being gay. This is just an excercise on the evolution of language. You can stop ranting now.

The term gay, meaning “happy, carefree, festive”,  once so inoffensive as to be used in a disney cartoon, has been used by the homosexual community to define themselves since at least the 1920’s, but it only became mainstream a few years ago. Now it’s used as some sort of badge of honor, cause of pride, and is also the P.C. way to refer to those who love members of the same gender.

The term geek has followed the same path, I think, from being used as a reference to circus workers, and later a way to design those who are socially inept, generally disheveled and technophiles.

Today, the term geek is used inside the community as a badge of honor. It means that you have accumulated enough arcane knowledge in an obscure field, and that you have the nerve to apply this arcane knowledge to everyday life. It no longer means “socially inept”, since geeks are highly functional among their kind.

We are actually a very interesting and fun crowd to be around of. The trick is to be in on the joke.

Watt are you talking about?

Ah, eavesdropping. It’s never polite. If you don’t want it to happen to you, please, keep your voice down.

Last week, while having a luxurious, sophisticated dinner at McDonalds, my boyfriend, E, and I ran into a bunch of kids that were planning an astronomy thing for their camping trip, and since we are always looking for excuses to go stargazing and camping, we got into their conversation, and quickly scored an invitation for the weekend.

So we arrived to Rayones, a beautiful valley filled with pecan trees a couple of hours from home, and promptly set up both camp and telescope. I was about to point our 5 inch scope to the always jaw dropping M13, when it starts acting all weird, followed by the acre scent of burning circuitry.

Man, was that stressful. The C5 (the telescope) was NOT working, the control flashing a dim red light and no information whatsoever. Subtle panic. We continued the tour with binoculars, and went  to sleep.

By the time we got home, the telescope hospital was closed. Later, while i was taking a much needed shower, E plugged the scope to the wall, and, Oh miracle! It worked. It was aligned successfully, the motors worked and everything was good. Apparently the problem is in the battery pack, because it is not sending enough energy to the scope’s control. We’ll take it to the hospital tomorrow.

At the end of the day E gave me a thorough, totally well explained lecture on electricity and power and the difference between watts and volts and amperes. It would have been a total success if not for my being completely baffled by those things to begin with. Well, at least i now know the difference. Just don’t ask me to explain it back.

Though this is not the explanation that my boyfriend lovingly dispatched over a hot cup of coffee last night, I leave Physics for Doofuses: Understanding Electricity, for all of us electrically challenged folk.

My Summer with Dick

I spent a week in Puerto Vallarta. Unbeknownst to my very dear boyfriend, who remained here, working , I spent endless hours under the sun, and in bed with a most wonderful, intelligent, and I must admit, good looking man. His name is Richard Dawkins. And he wasn’t really there. But his books were.

In just one week I went trough “The Selfish Gene” and “The God Delusion” while “The Ancestor’s Tale” was waiting for me back home.

This is my review of my summer with Mr. Dawkins.

A lot has been said about the selfish gene, and though i know I won’t be saying anything new, I will venture this into the internets: The book is f-ing brilliant. It’s fun, fast paced, scholarly,  witty and easy to understand. It’s what i wish I could write some day, being that I long to be a science communicator. Being that I was trained as a Biologist way after the book was published I was familiar with its central thesis, that the genes use individual organisms ( uni or multicellular) to reproduce and multiply themselves. What struck me as brilliant was how clearly it was, at least to me, the ramifications of this particular characteristic of the genes from a human perspective. Not to say by this, that I though that the book justified Social Darwinism, as many an infamous character has suggested. Quite the opposite, since the book put into perspective familiar relationships and social relationships in my own life. As cultured and intelligent our species claims to be, we are still heavily influenced by our genes, and i can’t wait to discuss the brilliant book with my SocialPsychologist friend. I could easily see why the book became a science classic.

The other book I read, the God Delusion was even more palatable. Biologists seldom get into religious debates ( with the exception of me). I went to a catholic school, all the way trough high school, and quite frankly, i never quite fit in.. Too much questioning, apparently. Anyhow, I slowly gravitated towards atheism during my late teens, and finally, thanks to this book, came out of the closet as a godless scientist.

Anyways, the book brilliantly and with a lot of british humour, talks about some inconsistencies not only among the gospels and the lessons they try to teach, but also about the “unchristian charity” of some practitioners who can’t stand that other people have different points of view, and gives fair warning to the evils that spring from blinding the eyes of  reason.  It also talks about morality , a possible evolutionary explanation to religious thought, that seamlessly intertwines with the selfish gene’s theory, and in-group mentality and all those things I enjoy talking about with E, and my friend, SocialPsychologist. Also, I can’t wait to lend this book to my friend Astronomer P. He’ll enjoy it so much!

That, not-so-briefly, is how i spent my summer with Mr. Richard Dawkins.

One more thing. Mr. Dawkins, if ever i meet you, I’ll take out for some mojitos (or coffee, or ice cream) and I will have a long, deep conversation. I hope I did your work justice in this review.

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