Questions for the day. What constitutes a “hard” class? What kind of intelligence do I respect? What must a person do to get me to feel challenged by their intelligence? What qualities do I esteem the as the most respectable?
I went to this Micron Presentation on photolithography yesterday. My kinetics teacher offers extra credit to go to these meetings, so about thirty of the hundred people there were from my classes. As the speaker did his thing, I looked around. I don’t think 10% of the people present payed the least bit of attention to what he was saying. Bush loving girl (BLG) happened to be sitting several seats to my right. She spoke to some dude for the entire time and was loud enough to be distracting though I’m not sure if anyone else noticed or cared.
Later I commented to my HW partners that no one seemed to care about that presentation. They concurred. “I don’t think anyone in our class actually wants to do chemical engineering.” The all want to go to law school, med school, or do distantly related biomedical and nuclear engineering. I guess that’s not a bad thing.
This morning a few comments were made before class started. True to form, BLG announces, “Yeah, I went, but I didn’t pay attention.” So you’re proud of your apathy? “The guy was talking about that photo-litho-graphy stuff. I don't know what that is. I talked to my neighbor the whole time.” No [insert expletive]!! of course you "don't know what that stuff is" that's the whole reason why the dude was explaining it and why Dr. Lewis wanted you to be present. Had you payed attention, you might have learned something. Good work on insulting the presenter and creating the extra distubance. Before I just thought you were stupid; now, I sincerely don't like you.
I get tired of people not caring but going through the motions anyway all the while declaring to the world how proud they are to be indifferent. At the same time, I need to remember these people are college juniors. How are they supposed to know what they want?
Right now, every one seems infatuated with biomedical engineering. “It’s how your body works. What could be more important?” I am now gladder than ever to be a physical scientist. I’m a dieing breed, but you know, perishing in my uniqueness only makes me prouder.
2 comments:
Does it matter whether or not the intelligence is in your field or not? How do you decide, whether it's in your field or not, if you respect it?
Everyone should be impressed by my mad music analysis and partwriting skills.
I've found that the people I revere the most are the ones who excel in technical areas I find difficult. So once again, it's the physical sciences I appreciate the most. I respect the good biologists the the proficient in the soft sciences, but ultimately, I don't think I'm capable of respecting them as much because I don't grasp their worlds. If I can acknowledge something as "difficult," I can respect it.
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