• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Why Are You Interested In Science?

Forever

Permabanned
Joined
Aug 30, 2013
Messages
8,551
MBTI Type
NiFi
Enneagram
3w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Excuse me if there is a thread like this before.

Please for any of you who are in STEM, or graduated with a STEM degree, why did you pick science?

Trying to rekindle a love for Chemistry/Biochemistry, I have lost it somehow from the lack of doing. (Kind of a long story)
 

magpie

Permabanned
Joined
Jan 21, 2010
Messages
3,428
Enneagram
614
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I'm not in STEM and I'm definitely not graduating with a STEM degree but there was a time when I was seriously training to be a pilot, if that counts. I was heavily discouraged from pursuing it as a career by someone I shadowed at NASA because of my health problems, so I gave it up. I don't know if this will be helpful to you, but my love of it really had to do with the actual act of flying and being in the airplane. It was a combination of interesting and exhilarating. It's a feeling you will never experience unless you get the chance to pilot one. Being a passenger doesn't even come close. The technical aspect was interesting to me as well but I don't think I was good enough at math.
 

Typh0n

clever fool
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
3,497
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Not in STEM, but I would have been had I followed what I wanted to do as a kid.

Its just that I lost interest, growing up, as a teenager. I got into other things.

I was into science because of wonder. My parents took me to the Natural History museum, I wondered about the dinosaurs. I wondered about space travel, planets, and stuff like that when I went to the musuem. I guess now I wonder about other things. I still have wonder, my interests have changed that is all...

I haven't been to the musuem of natural history since 1997...maybe if I did, it would rekindle my interest in science.
 
Joined
Jun 25, 2014
Messages
1,447
MBTI Type
*NF*
Enneagram
852
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
One can notice here and there some scientists hold some truths but... life remains a mystery no one can truly control.
 

kyuuei

Emperor/Dictator
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
13,964
MBTI Type
enfp
Enneagram
8
Because it is the future of everything.

If you want to get close to touching the meaning of everything around you, science is the gateway. "Why did my friend have to die?" "How can I prevent killing this great animal that's going extinct?" "Why is umami such a good flavor?" "How do I improve on a design like this?" "How do I make something safe for people?" "Why do these people act this way, and what is the best approach I can take to help them?" "Is it actually good or bad to spank my kid?"

Physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, sociology... Any ology.. any true study of a concept involves the scientific method. It teaches us that not only are we fallible but that we have ways of improving and growing. We have objectivity in a world of things being so subjective.

A lot of people think science is pretty boring, or cold... but it isn't. There's passion in that seemingly boring lady that hangs out with pea plants for 40 years.

Between all of the things you could put your faith and stock into.. truly great research and science is among the best. Is it extremely tedious? Yes. Is it perfect? Far from it. But.. to me, science represents the best in mankind. And the scientific method is one of man's greatest achievements.
 

Keikoppi

New member
Joined
Jun 19, 2015
Messages
99
MBTI Type
Orly
Enneagram
mia
I slightly disagree above^ Science isn't the future of literature, here's a point. And yeah, science is understanding the world (physically and theoretically). imo

I just adore this quote recently:
The scientist describes what is; the engineer creates what never was.
— Theodore von Kármán

Perhaps you can make something out of it.

NB: Not in STEM either. Suppose, you can disregard all of us :D
 

BlueScreen

Fail 2.0
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
2,668
MBTI Type
YMCA
I like science because it helps me understand more at a deeper level, and it gives me new ideas to work from and test.
 

Ingrid in grids

Active member
Joined
Sep 1, 2009
Messages
1,748
I'm finishing up a science degree now. My studies have mostly been in the biological/biomedical sciences.

Studying this stuff really just makes me feel closer to life. I love looking at living things and marvelling at their complex make-up. There's so much beauty and wonder in science. I guess I have more of an emotional (or perhaps even spiritual?) connection to what I'm studying than a lot of my peers.

I enjoy studying Arts and Humanities for similar reasons. It feels like approaching the same question or problem, but from a different angle.

Also scientific literacy is something I really value. I get frustrated by the way science is communicated a lot of the time, so in a way that's another motivation to learn more—so I can communicate more.
 

ceecee

Coolatta® Enjoyer
Joined
Apr 22, 2008
Messages
15,908
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
8w9
I have a STEM degree - Health Information Technology. I decided, after I got my AAS to go on for my BS in Health Information Management. The reason I chose it is I liked health care but I didn't want to physically deal with patients. I was already in IT, I wanted to continue that. This met all the criteria as well as being in high demand. I've never been unhappy with the job and the money is excellent. I'm considering moving toward information security systems. The only downside is I would have to actually go to work. I'm not sure I want to give up working from home.
 

Mole

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
Until the 17th century religion was the dominant paradigm, and the dominant explanation of the world. From the 17th century science became the dominant explanation of the world, and not only is it the dominant explanation, but it delivers the goods.

So not to understand science means not to understand the modern world. And not understanding science means not being at home in the world.

So I am interested in science to feel at home.
 
Joined
Sep 18, 2008
Messages
1,941
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
512
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
*in the lab, it's 10:40pm and I'll be here till 4am*

I gained an interest when I was probably about 8 years old, when it was first introduced into our primary school syllabus. The reasons why I'm interested in science now are very very different from the reason why I started off interested. Suffice to say, I was always very much a physical learner, and early science education in my country involved (more than memorisation with other subjects or practice with math) working with our hands, and explaining what we observe.

From primary through high school, doing science was always effortless for me. Particularly chemistry; I enjoyed the elegance of the models, and for the most part, I liked it because it was easy. In college, that's when my understanding of the connections between each field deepened, and the "interest" came from finding connections between different concepts and applying it to the real world. I always sat on the border between chemistry and biology, and graduated with majors in both. My graduate degree was also multi-disciplinary (most are these days), with some cell biology, genetics, structural biology and hardcore biochemistry in the mix. My postdoc training right now is in immunology, with a lot of biochemistry and some genomics/bioinformatics.

If you ask me why I'm interested in "science" in general, I wouldn't say that I'm more interested in it than say, politics, literature, sociology and the law - they're all fascinating in their own way, and explain the world in different ways. I read widely, not only in fields that I work in, and try to relate everything to my experience of the world.

In the context of my "classical" scientific training as a researcher, I'd say that the potential to look at an existing paradigm, and re-define it, is what keeps me "interested". I like to look for gaps and bridge them, or flip our understanding on its head. When studying the syllabus in college, it could be a bit dry, but what often helped was searching out the meaning behind each concept and its implications. I didn't really memorise much in college, that tends to kill interest.

When my graduate students stress out about picking a thesis topic that they're "interested in", and say that they don't want to do something boring, I always tell them that it's never the topic. I picked all of my supervisors/bosses almost at random and have never worked on a "boring" project. There's always something interesting if you're not limited by your existing assumptions about the topic, and whatever you pick will evolve into a different animal along the way anyway.

That's also why I love to teach and lecture - if you can convey the underlying meaning behind the jargon/concepts and relate the topic to the daily lives of students/patients, it can literally change the way that they look at the world. I get chills when I see their expressions change in a single moment when their understanding *clicks* - it means that a whole new world has opened up to them.
 

Mole

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
Science has shown that many of our beliefs, held for millennia, were delusory.

And science has shown that because we are meaning creating animals, we prefer any meaning to no meaning. And science has dealt with this proclivity by using the scientific method to winnow out meanings that describe reality from meanings that are delusory.

Opposed to science is the whole panoply of advertising and propaganda, and the whole panoply of ideologies, from religions, to cults, to secular ideologies, such as national socialism and international communism.

Interestingly, advertising and ideologies appeal to us emotionally, while science appeals to reason.
 

á´…eparted

passages
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
8,265
I have wanted to be a scientist before I even knew what science was. I the perverbial annoying child who always asked "why?" though I never did it to be annoying, I did it because I genuinely wanted to know the why behind almost anything I came across. My mother always tells me a story of when I was maybe 2 years old in the car and she says to me "Oh honey, look at the pretty bird outside" and I respond to her in a robotic voice "Mom. Look at the pretty air conditioner unit". Apparently I had a fascination with vents as a child.

When I got a bit older I became fascinated with weather. It was this huge grand thing that effected so much around us. When cartoons weren't on, I'd watch the weather channel for hours at a time. If I even heard the slightest rumble of thunder, I'd instantly turn on the weather channel waiting for the severe thunderstorm warning red ticker to appear at the bottom of the screen with it's trademark low-fi beep. Commence much jumping on the couch, running outside, and praying that I'd see a tornado. I was so into storms that my dad bought me educational/informative videos on tornados (my favorite weather thing). I digested it like know ones business, and I wanted to become a storm chaser. It was a sign that I would be a blue-collar scientist who wanted to be hands on with dangerous things. I had tornado posters in my room, and I even made a tornado model using dry ice and a fan box that was the talk of the school when I handed it in as a science project. To this day I am extremely fond of weather, and if for some reason I end up living in the midwest I'd become an amature storm chaser as a hobby.

As I got a bit older I was still too young to really dig into the nitty-gritty of weather, and while I still loved it, I became fascinated with rocks and minerals. It started with looking at my mothers and grandmother jewelry. I loved all the pretty colors, how simplistic yet complex they were at the same time, and I wanted to understand more about them. I had a rock and mineral collection. My grandmother would take me to this place called edmund scientific that had all kinds of minerals and stuff. I got books on it, but eventually I did get a bit bored with it around 10 years old or so. That's when I asked a very fated question one day: "...what are these MADE out of?"

Enter chemistry. I started to read about what elements were. I realized that they were the fundemental building blocks of everything. Atoms, elections, protons, they created such wonderfully complex things from such simple building blocks. It was enchanting to me. I got all kinds of books on the periodic table. If I went to the library I would dig up all the chemistry books and try and understand them. At that age I wasn't so much interested in the math of it, but the principles, concepts, and facts. By age 11 I had memorized nearly the entire periodic table and I couldn't get enough. I begged for chemistry sets, and my father got me one, but my mother refused (parents are divorced). She was afraid I'd blow something up or start a fire, which is entirely unfounded. Around 12 or so I began disceting fireworks in the backyard (my former step dad had a ton) once I realized it was all chemistry, and I wanted to play around with it. My poor mother had a fit when she found out and locked them in the shed, but I found a way back in.

I knew I wanted to be a chemist very early into discovering chemistry. At that age, to me it was not just learning, but also play. Yet, also scary, and therefore thrilling. When I would read about the elements, one of the first things I'd read about was "what would happen if I ate these". I was not just fascinated what they did to each other, but what they did to us, and how some of them would have no effect or be good for us, and others would be downright deadly. I'd read stories of people being injected with plutonium and be terrified, but also entranced by it. This was the early signs that I'd go into chemistry.

I was ESTATIC when we learned chemistry formally in school, but also frustrated. I knew almost all of it (sans the math) already, and it wasn't until I got to high school that I started to get to a point of learning new things. It took some fighting on my end due to poor performance in elementry school that had downstream effects in middle school and early high school, but I managed to get into honor chemistry my sophmore year. I was a bit frustrated at first because the math was rather dull (I was good at math, but I didn't enjoy doing it). When we got to concepts though: periodic trends, non-math patterns, etc. I REALLY loved it. It fit my brain nicely and I did super well with it. I got to go in science leauge trips. I remember asking my teacher to let me try demo/experiments after school, but she wouldn't let me. Though she "loved my enthusiasm". That year I took 2 math courses to get ahead a year so I could take AP chemistry as a junior. I did just that, and after a slightly bumpy start, I rose to the top of that class, and was the only one to get a 5 on the AP exam. I decided near the end of my Junior year that I wanted to get a PhD in organic chemistry. I completely aced the organic unit and it felt so easy to me. I was shocked to learn people struggled with it. My teacher identified me as a prodigy of science, and to this day I still talk to her every now and again. She also helped address a number of self-esteem issues I had. I was never the perfect or top student, but I knew far more than them due to long term memory retention, and I had so much passion. I didn't want to learn to do well, I wanted to learn because it was fascinting. I took 7 science courses in high school, and did an independent study in organic chemistry my senior year. I won the award for the most outstanding senior in science as well. Why? Because I was always tinkering. I stayed after school to run experiments to learn more. I just wanted to know.

It always came back to the itch I had as a kid: I had to know why.

Once I got to college I began to taking my courses, and that's where things got bumpy. I got to course I had to work at. They were a struggle. Within chemistry, pchem was the worst, and for a while it made me hate chemistry. It was so hard, and it actually made me not care. Which was somewhat jarring. Nevertheless, my long term plan was to get a PhD, and I wasn't going to let pchem get in the way of that. I focused on what I was good at: organic chemistry. I did research for 3 years in undergrad, and that was finally, after years and year from just a kid of longing to play with chemicals, I FINALLY got to. It also proved to be hard. Harder than I expected, but I knew it's what I wanted to. I kept going.

In comes grad school... it somewhat killed my love of science. Why? Because I have learned research is fucking hard. It's unforgiving, exacting, and requires so much dedication in the wake of so much uncertainty and failure. I realized that while I love science, I love learning, I am just not passionate about discovery. The latter is just too much of a slog for me to handle emotionally. It saddened me to realized this 3 years ago, but I still love science. I will never leave it. My career is going to take me into communcating science to the world. I plan to apply for jobs in the american chemical society. If there is one thing I have above most else, is I have a deep passion for science. It is something near and dear to my heart, and I want to pass that on to the world, and lend to young children, teenagers, and adults to feel the spark I have felt since I was little, and help us come together and make the world a better place.

I'd write more but I have to run, besides I am a wind bag and this is long enough!
 

entropie

Permabanned
Joined
Apr 24, 2008
Messages
16,767
MBTI Type
entp
Enneagram
783
science is a religion i dont believe in. Porn has more power !
 

Mole

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
science is a religion i dont believe in. Porn has more power !

Unlike a religion, science is based on evidence and reason. On the other hand, pornography is based on exploitation, repetition, and an addictive trance.
 

Andy

Supreme High Commander
Joined
Nov 16, 2009
Messages
1,211
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
I'm a professional engineer, working in industrial R&D. Want to know one of the best things about my job? The lack of repetition.
 

Mole

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
I am interested in science because I am interested in what is true.

Imagination is wonderful, and easy, but without reality testing it is only self indulgent.

And mbti and astrology are self indulgent.

So why not apply the next step of reality testing to mbti and astrology, and leave self indulgence behind, and become a mensch.
 
Top