thoughts on science and the science club

Science.

I used to love it. I was always a very curious child. I adored animals. I was the dinosaur kid who constantly read about dinosaurs, constantly drew dinosaurs, constantly watched videos about dinosaurs, constantly talked about dinosaurs, and occasionally acted like a dinosaur.

I also loved snakes. And a lot of other things, too. Parasitic fungi. Army ants. Ogre-eyed spiders. Greenland sharks. Dragonfish and viperfish. Ducks. Sundews. I loved them all.

I don't know what to say. Sitting at the science club meeting, watching the club leaders talk, so exuberantly excited about science. It's a whole other world. A world I used to love. I used to spend hours researching the brain and learning about different diseases and the human body. I used to want to be a neuroscientist. I still love it, I guess. Deep down, somewhere, somehow. But it's different now. I've gone too far. There's no way for me to ever return to science. It's changed, it's become something else. I love science, but not the kind school teaches.

What happened? The change was gradual. I think it started in seventh grade. That was the year after I went to CTD and learned how to write. That was the year things at home really started to go downhill, and my grades began to die. It was the year I became afraid of my teachers -- my math teacher, and my science teacher. Yes, middle-school is what killed the path of science.

A part of me, when sitting there in the classroom, looking at the other students, seeing how incredible they are, seeing the depth of their knowledge and their excitements, when thinking of how I'm too far from the sciences, wants to scream, "You murdered it! You murdered it, Mrs. Brazel! You're the one who murdered my passion for science, who turned something I loved into something I feared."

I don't belong in science club. They're there for the science. I can't be there for the people. If I were to be in science club, I'd have to be there for the science. Even if I were to stay for the people, it would never work because that spark that brings the club together, that love for science, has died.