Walking through Boston yesterday afternoon, I had a rambling conversation with a female friend about body image. At first, we were totally engrossed in our discussion, and we hurried through the crowded streets, paying little attention to our surroundings.
We talked about what makes us each feel attractive or unattractive. Amazingly, we had almost nothing in common in this regard. I tend to feel most attractive after I've been exercising - right after a long bike ride, or a good swim, especially if I've taken a shower. That's when I feel the most confident. To my great surprise, she feels least attractive right after exercising. She said that no matter how well she's performed, she always feels as though she isn't in good enough shape and needs to do better. A constant pressure to perform better. It was surprising! Neither one of us had expected such a radical difference in perception, especially since the two of us have similar intellectual opinions about body image and women's health.
The two of us also have markedly different relationships with food, and with clothing. Both of us have struggled with food in the past; she with an eating disorder and I with a debilitating stomach condition. She now finds that she feels compelled to eat on a schedule, no matter what, a compulsion that developed as she recovered from her eating disorder. This habit now leads her to feel that she has, yet again, an unhealthy obsession with eating, and it worries her. Complicated!
I, on the other hand, being relatively free of pain only recently, tend to eat very erratically. It was only last year that eating any food at all was sure to cause me significant pain, and I dreaded eating, although I was very hungry, uncomfortable with my uncontrollable weight loss, and tired of having a fearful relationship with my lunch. Now that eating rarely the problems it once did, I find myself quite pleased with the ability to skip a meal, eat early, eat late, or otherwise get off schedule. This, however, sometimes triggers the very condition from which I was celebrating my freedom. Although I eat almost no junk food (I may be relatively pain free, but I have far more limits than most people) I could do with a few more rules. Again - complicated!
The contrasting relationships that my friend and I have with clothing was something that I also thought about as we walked along through the crowd. My friend is fond of dressing up. She has the flair of a thespian and can assume beautiful poses and expressions. She feels beautiful when she puts on her best clothing. I, on the other hand, am not particularly fond of dressing up. Sometimes, the idea appeals to me. But when I wear nice clothes, I don't feel beautiful. I feel self conscious and awkward, unable to sit or move in the ways that I normally do. I do not have my friend's flair as an actress. I can do impressions of people - pretty good ones - but they're not glamorous or even attractive. She's a graceful, poised dancer; I move with power but little grace. I feel the best in a plain tank top, plain shorts, and bare feet.
Each of us has a full set of strong opinions about the body image problems facing young women today. We are both keenly aware of the pressure that girls feel and we both try to of reject those pressures in our own lives. But, as this conversation made perfectly clear, our conscious rebellion hasn't entirely worked. We are carrying around all sorts of neuroses. Our daily lives are constantly impacted by these various inadequacies that we carry around with us all the time. The choice between a t-shirt and a low-cut blouse can take me an hour, and several tryings-on of various outfits, which surprises even me, given that I am usually dressed in under a minute. Every meal can present a difficult decision for my friend, a woman who is fully aware of the necessities of good nutrition. Both of us grew up in supportive, loving families. How did this happen? How do we start over? Will either one of us ever believe that we are beautiful? Perhaps the problem is trivial; we are MIT students, it doesn't much matter what we look like. Our friends are people we trust not to judge us by our appearances. Neither one of us depends professionally on good looks. But on the other hand, we are not women who want to live in shame of who we are, and the fact of the matter is, both of us, in complex, different ways, feel ashamed about our appearances.
By this point, we had gotten on the subway and off again, and were walking through a busy commercial area. My thoughts drifted towards the environment I was in. For a young female, walking through any major city without a male means that you will certainly get some "looks", regardless of how conservatively you dress. The best thing to do, of course, is ignore them entirely, lest you give the lookers (who are almost exclusively men) any ideas. However, I think this attitude of oblivion has given many men the idea that women do not notice their stares, or are not bothered. I have found that men in groups are especially unpleasant; they seem to feel as though being in the company of other men gives them the right to stare with impunity, as if their manliness leaves them no choice.
Beyond stares, a female is likely to hear a few cat calls, and observe a few rude gestures. I've complained about this already. Unfortunately, there is very little one can do to avoid this behavior. Almost anything that a female does can attract unwanted attention. Case in point: when I wrote the entry that's linked above, I could not, for the life of me, figure out why I kept getting catcalls while biking to and from my violin lesson. I later figured out that it was the shoulder bag that was the problem. I would bike with my violin on my back, and the shoulder bag, of course, over my shoulder. The placement of the strap was drawing unwanted attention to my chest. The ironic part is, I bought the shoulder bag specifically so that I could wear my violin on my back, instead of using the case's shoulder strap, which is very uncomfortable and only makes the problem worse. I just couldn't win. A heavy parka helped, and so I wore one, long after I needed it, until the heat was unbearable.
As we walked through the city, I understood more and more why my friend and I still struggle with body image despite our most sincere efforts to cleanse our minds of Seventeen Magazine ideology. We really are seen, all the time, as anonymous people who happen to have breasts and hips and long hair. It's almost impossible for us to hide behind our clothes; short of spacesuits, we're clearly women. And when we're anonymous, we are not treated with the kind of respect to which we've become accustomed in our personal relationships.
It would be naive to demand that no stranger on the street ever think a sexual thought while looking at my friend and I. Although it's certainly a bizarre and uncomfortable reality to ponder, I think it's probably safe to say that strangers on the street are probably thinking all sorts of sexual things about other strangers all the time. That can't be helped, and as far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly fine. But I do think that something destructive begins to occur when those thoughts, which I'll hastily attribute to the human condition and neglect to explain, are made public. When I feel the eyes on me, when I must remember not to smile at any men because it could give them the wrong idea, when I hear the catcalls... when I am actually molested on the train (this has happened, and it was disgusting).
These actions are so often brushed off as "normal human sexuality", or worse, "boys will be boys". Everybody agrees, of course, that it's never OK to molest anybody else on a train. If the victim is brave enough to speak up when it happens (I wasn't, and I'm ashamed of it), the others in the train are likely to stand up for the victim. But nobody cares if a man stands on a street corner making catcalls. It's not a taboo. No one will stop him.
And that's how I think it happens. My friend and I have learned that it's our responsibility alone to deal with the way these men make us feel. We should be confident and strong and love our bodies no matter what. Our body image problems are our own fault. We should ignore those men. We should accept that there will always be men like that, and that we can't do anything to change that.
It undoes my careful self-conditioning. The crawling, dirty feeling that remains on my skin after an unpleasant encounter overwrites the confidence-building talk I gave to myself in the morning. I feel ugly. I feel exposed. Yes, I have lots of personal battles to win, and those are my job to fight. But being treated by strangers as if my purpose is to be an anonymous sexual object in their world is not my battle. It's just one I choose to fight.
May 29, 2008
May 23, 2008
all grown up
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
This is the sound of relaxation. I have just finished 4 years of MIT. Everything is squared away: no more projects, papers, exams, problem sets, forms, meetings - nothing except graduation, which, admittedly, requires that I get up very early, but that's really the only inconvenience. On every other day, I can wake up whenever I want, stretch, and decide to go back to sleep, or embark on some crazy adventure. It's a beautiful existence.
This luxurious life is one perk of having finished my undergraduate degree. Another perk is the respect it commands. People are very impressed by an MIT degree. Generally, I'm treated like an intelligent person in conversation these days, even when the people I'm talking to are much older or more accomplished than I. When I meet new people, they generally ask me about my interests, not just my classes. We find common interests and discuss them. Very nice. As it should be.
Compare this to how I was treated 12 years ago, when I was 10 years old. Now don't get me wrong, I was certainly never mistreated or abused by the adults in my life! But virtually every adult that I met asked me the same 3 questions: "How's school?" "What's your favorite subject?" and "How old are you?" At dinner parties, I was not invited to be a part of the main conversation. (Not that this is unusual - children generally aren't.) Very few adults inquired as to what my interests were or considered that I might have anything in common with him or her.
This sucked, and not just in retrospect. I attended countless dinner parties and felt very left out indeed; I wasn't much interested in watching cartoons (or whatever) with the younger children, and although reading on my own often suited me, sometimes I wanted to be a part of the conversations that the adults were having. Not just because I wanted to be "grown up", but because I had something to say. (Is that really so surprising? Children may think differently, but they certainly don't spend all of their time thinking about toys or food. There's depth, if not the vocabulary to describe it. And even as, say, a 17-year-old, when I definitely had the ability to articulate my thoughts, only very rarely was I considered an adult.) Due to the boredom, I was almost always ready to leave hours before my parents were, and I did my fair share of moping near the door and hanging on my mother's arm and whispering "can't we go yet", much to her annoyance.
I remember promising myself, as a young child, that I would never, ever become the sort of grown up who treats children as understudies, practicing to take over the role of a good adult some day. I was terrified that one day I'd wake up and find that I'd lost all memory and respect for the experience of being a child. One particularly hard day at school, I shut my eyes, crouched on the edge of the playground, and told myself over and over that I'd never forget how it felt to be treated as though my feelings were merely the side effects of the disease of childhood, to be brushed away and ignored.
Now that I'm 22 years old, with a completed college degree, I can stop worrying about what sort of adult I'll grow up to be. As a child, I imagined that when you became an adult, there would be some sort of ceremony, you'd solemnly receive your Adult Status, and you'd promise to stop trying out silly accents, stop loving plain noodles with just butter and salt, and stop crying when you hurt yourself. You'd be Different. Well, thank goodness that's not true. I still love plain noodles with just butter and salt, I still cry if something hurts bad enough, and I love silly accents just as well.
Happy as I was to realize that no cosmic force will prevent me from loving childish things for the rest of my days, some aspects of my transition to Official Adulthood have been disappointing. I am now 100% sure, for example, that my feelings now are not any more important or valid than they were when I was 10, or 5 or, 1 year old. I know more facts, and I'm wiser, but I'm not a different person - I'm the same person I always was, I just get more respect. I feel like shouting back through time, at my little 7-year-old self, huddled on the playground, not to worry, because I will not forget what it felt like to be that age. I was living life, not preparing for it. So are all children. And every adult was once a child - they must all have had this realization. Why, then, are children treated as though they are monsters in need of taming? Why is it acceptable to ignore the desires and feelings of children in favor of the staunch routines and rigid boundaries we are taught we must impose? It seems as though adults have collectively given up on trying to communicate with children. We are not so different, me and my 10-year-old self. A little respect goes a long, long way.
The day after I get my degree, I'll be having a little graduation party, and I've invited the people who probably care the least about my degree. Ironic, isn't it? But these are the people who took me seriously, right from the beginning. They will tell you that I am the same person I always was, and that my interests, though they've certainly developed over the years, have remained remarkably constant. They know this, because back then, instead of talking over my head about Things Children Don't Understand, they spoke to me directly, as an equal. The fact that I've gotten a degree from MIT doesn't change how they treat me, because it doesn't need to. They never needed any special reason to treat me with respect.
Now that I've finished, now that it's summer, now that I'm free and my mind is wide open, I find that the support that has meant the most to me over the years has nothing to do with any of the respect that I have won by being a student at a prestigious college. There is nothing that has meant more to me than unambiguous respect for who I am and what I'm about, regardless of age or accomplishment. Should you ever get the chance to offer this to a child, take the opportunity - the child, and the adult he or she becomes, will never forget it.
This is the sound of relaxation. I have just finished 4 years of MIT. Everything is squared away: no more projects, papers, exams, problem sets, forms, meetings - nothing except graduation, which, admittedly, requires that I get up very early, but that's really the only inconvenience. On every other day, I can wake up whenever I want, stretch, and decide to go back to sleep, or embark on some crazy adventure. It's a beautiful existence.
This luxurious life is one perk of having finished my undergraduate degree. Another perk is the respect it commands. People are very impressed by an MIT degree. Generally, I'm treated like an intelligent person in conversation these days, even when the people I'm talking to are much older or more accomplished than I. When I meet new people, they generally ask me about my interests, not just my classes. We find common interests and discuss them. Very nice. As it should be.
Compare this to how I was treated 12 years ago, when I was 10 years old. Now don't get me wrong, I was certainly never mistreated or abused by the adults in my life! But virtually every adult that I met asked me the same 3 questions: "How's school?" "What's your favorite subject?" and "How old are you?" At dinner parties, I was not invited to be a part of the main conversation. (Not that this is unusual - children generally aren't.) Very few adults inquired as to what my interests were or considered that I might have anything in common with him or her.
This sucked, and not just in retrospect. I attended countless dinner parties and felt very left out indeed; I wasn't much interested in watching cartoons (or whatever) with the younger children, and although reading on my own often suited me, sometimes I wanted to be a part of the conversations that the adults were having. Not just because I wanted to be "grown up", but because I had something to say. (Is that really so surprising? Children may think differently, but they certainly don't spend all of their time thinking about toys or food. There's depth, if not the vocabulary to describe it. And even as, say, a 17-year-old, when I definitely had the ability to articulate my thoughts, only very rarely was I considered an adult.) Due to the boredom, I was almost always ready to leave hours before my parents were, and I did my fair share of moping near the door and hanging on my mother's arm and whispering "can't we go yet", much to her annoyance.
I remember promising myself, as a young child, that I would never, ever become the sort of grown up who treats children as understudies, practicing to take over the role of a good adult some day. I was terrified that one day I'd wake up and find that I'd lost all memory and respect for the experience of being a child. One particularly hard day at school, I shut my eyes, crouched on the edge of the playground, and told myself over and over that I'd never forget how it felt to be treated as though my feelings were merely the side effects of the disease of childhood, to be brushed away and ignored.
Now that I'm 22 years old, with a completed college degree, I can stop worrying about what sort of adult I'll grow up to be. As a child, I imagined that when you became an adult, there would be some sort of ceremony, you'd solemnly receive your Adult Status, and you'd promise to stop trying out silly accents, stop loving plain noodles with just butter and salt, and stop crying when you hurt yourself. You'd be Different. Well, thank goodness that's not true. I still love plain noodles with just butter and salt, I still cry if something hurts bad enough, and I love silly accents just as well.
Happy as I was to realize that no cosmic force will prevent me from loving childish things for the rest of my days, some aspects of my transition to Official Adulthood have been disappointing. I am now 100% sure, for example, that my feelings now are not any more important or valid than they were when I was 10, or 5 or, 1 year old. I know more facts, and I'm wiser, but I'm not a different person - I'm the same person I always was, I just get more respect. I feel like shouting back through time, at my little 7-year-old self, huddled on the playground, not to worry, because I will not forget what it felt like to be that age. I was living life, not preparing for it. So are all children. And every adult was once a child - they must all have had this realization. Why, then, are children treated as though they are monsters in need of taming? Why is it acceptable to ignore the desires and feelings of children in favor of the staunch routines and rigid boundaries we are taught we must impose? It seems as though adults have collectively given up on trying to communicate with children. We are not so different, me and my 10-year-old self. A little respect goes a long, long way.
The day after I get my degree, I'll be having a little graduation party, and I've invited the people who probably care the least about my degree. Ironic, isn't it? But these are the people who took me seriously, right from the beginning. They will tell you that I am the same person I always was, and that my interests, though they've certainly developed over the years, have remained remarkably constant. They know this, because back then, instead of talking over my head about Things Children Don't Understand, they spoke to me directly, as an equal. The fact that I've gotten a degree from MIT doesn't change how they treat me, because it doesn't need to. They never needed any special reason to treat me with respect.
Now that I've finished, now that it's summer, now that I'm free and my mind is wide open, I find that the support that has meant the most to me over the years has nothing to do with any of the respect that I have won by being a student at a prestigious college. There is nothing that has meant more to me than unambiguous respect for who I am and what I'm about, regardless of age or accomplishment. Should you ever get the chance to offer this to a child, take the opportunity - the child, and the adult he or she becomes, will never forget it.
May 18, 2008
weather vane
I was sitting on the porch in an enormous, decrepit easy chair when a cold front moved in. One minute it was still and warm, and then edge of the front crept over my bare legs and the wind started to blow. The sky dimmed and the smell of wet soil rose up.
When the weather's like this, I want to run late at night, cool air sliding across the back of my neck and feet pounding. Rain's not bad, either, if you're feeling stormy. There's something a little bit wild and desperate about running in the dark, with the wind and rain chasing. It gives you something to run from, something to fight. A challenge to rise to. It's a dangerous feeling.
Tonight, however, I will not be running; I will be reading through class notes, an experience which is, to the restless soul, the mental equivalent of listening to a voice speak in monotone in a language you do not understand, for hours. Tomorrow I will get up early, squint in the sun as I bike across campus, and immerse myself in my very last exam.
When it's all over, it'll be noon. The weather report tells me it'll be very windy, cloudy, with a bit of a chill. Stormy weather; dangerous weather; but nothing else will speak for the restless soul.
When the weather's like this, I want to run late at night, cool air sliding across the back of my neck and feet pounding. Rain's not bad, either, if you're feeling stormy. There's something a little bit wild and desperate about running in the dark, with the wind and rain chasing. It gives you something to run from, something to fight. A challenge to rise to. It's a dangerous feeling.
Tonight, however, I will not be running; I will be reading through class notes, an experience which is, to the restless soul, the mental equivalent of listening to a voice speak in monotone in a language you do not understand, for hours. Tomorrow I will get up early, squint in the sun as I bike across campus, and immerse myself in my very last exam.
When it's all over, it'll be noon. The weather report tells me it'll be very windy, cloudy, with a bit of a chill. Stormy weather; dangerous weather; but nothing else will speak for the restless soul.
Apr 30, 2008
in the boat of myself
Late at night, thoughts mill around in my mind like skaters on a pond. They drift across the ice, an endless kaleidescope. I'm there, weaving amongst them like a ghost. I can glide and breathe, spotlight on one skater, then another, blades glinting in the bright light. My own private peace.
And then without warning, a monstrous noise, the ice cracks, I slide beneath the surface, and I'm drowning in chill nothingness, this vast lake below my thoughts.
Or maybe it's not quite so instant...
Maybe you've felt it. Have you ever been on the edge of sleep, only to feel the bed disappear from underneath you, heart in your throat? Have you ever reached for a doorknob in the darkness, and found that you misjudged its placement, and stumbled forward? Have you ever woken up from a dream, reaching for something that wasn't there?
When I'm very tired, I'll lie in bed in the dark, mind pulsing with nervous energy and racked with exhaustion. I'll begin to think of all the things I have to do the next day. Must write this paper, must turn in this form, must email this person, must practice the violin, must clean the rat cage, must pay the library fine. I try to organize it all. Look, I tell myself. It's ok. You have enough time to get all of this done. Here's how it'll work. See? Now you can relax. Just push those thoughts away - admire the empty pond, look at the fresh dusting of snow - tomorrow is just another day. Take your life one day at a time.
But once the pond is empty, my mind is dangerously open and there is nothing I can do to stop the demons from arriving. It happens so fast. They melt the ice with their hot footsteps, and I'm breathing carefully, keeping everything steady. Why, they ask me, are you so worried about that library fine? It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. YOU don't matter. I brace myself. I've seen THESE fellows before. I'm here because I'm a human being and I'm a student and I'm learning what I need to know to do what I want with my life, I tell them. It doesn't help. Anything I say sounds petulant and defensive. The ice is melting and I feel a strange mix of hot tears and cold apprehension. Why? They ask me. Why are you living? What point is there in your life? You are a tiny, meaningless accident. Your life will be forgotten as soon as it is over.
And the ice cracks the minute I must admit to myself that I don't know the answer to any of those questions. There is a physical sensation of falling, my heart jumps and my mind grasps blindly for anything to hold on to, followed by a painful loneliness that blooms when I realize I'm truly lost. I have so many answers, but none to the questions that really matter. Ask me why and all I can give you is an answer I've constructed to keep me sane. I have no idea why I'm here, but I want so badly for it to mean something.
I can't replicate this sickening fall if I've been sleeping well. My mind is protected from those horrifying absolutes, most of the time. But a lack of reserve power, brought on by exhaustion, gives me these glimpses in to the world below my little skating pond, a vast, endless well. I try to live with that endlessness, but I don't think my mind is built to handle such things. I need something to hang on to, some assurance that I deserve this consciousness I've got.
The will to return, to pull myself out of the void, out of that hole in the ice, is just as strong as the will to breathe. I can't help it, no matter how much I want to live with the reality that I'll never know these answers. I fight my way back to the surface and haul myself on to the ice, cold and shaken. From the surface I can see clearly again, but I know I'm seeing only my little pond. Somewhere below lurks that huge loneliness.
I decide that I will make my existence worthwhile, somehow, instead of waiting for an answer.
-Rumi
And then without warning, a monstrous noise, the ice cracks, I slide beneath the surface, and I'm drowning in chill nothingness, this vast lake below my thoughts.
Or maybe it's not quite so instant...
Maybe you've felt it. Have you ever been on the edge of sleep, only to feel the bed disappear from underneath you, heart in your throat? Have you ever reached for a doorknob in the darkness, and found that you misjudged its placement, and stumbled forward? Have you ever woken up from a dream, reaching for something that wasn't there?
When I'm very tired, I'll lie in bed in the dark, mind pulsing with nervous energy and racked with exhaustion. I'll begin to think of all the things I have to do the next day. Must write this paper, must turn in this form, must email this person, must practice the violin, must clean the rat cage, must pay the library fine. I try to organize it all. Look, I tell myself. It's ok. You have enough time to get all of this done. Here's how it'll work. See? Now you can relax. Just push those thoughts away - admire the empty pond, look at the fresh dusting of snow - tomorrow is just another day. Take your life one day at a time.
But once the pond is empty, my mind is dangerously open and there is nothing I can do to stop the demons from arriving. It happens so fast. They melt the ice with their hot footsteps, and I'm breathing carefully, keeping everything steady. Why, they ask me, are you so worried about that library fine? It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. YOU don't matter. I brace myself. I've seen THESE fellows before. I'm here because I'm a human being and I'm a student and I'm learning what I need to know to do what I want with my life, I tell them. It doesn't help. Anything I say sounds petulant and defensive. The ice is melting and I feel a strange mix of hot tears and cold apprehension. Why? They ask me. Why are you living? What point is there in your life? You are a tiny, meaningless accident. Your life will be forgotten as soon as it is over.
And the ice cracks the minute I must admit to myself that I don't know the answer to any of those questions. There is a physical sensation of falling, my heart jumps and my mind grasps blindly for anything to hold on to, followed by a painful loneliness that blooms when I realize I'm truly lost. I have so many answers, but none to the questions that really matter. Ask me why and all I can give you is an answer I've constructed to keep me sane. I have no idea why I'm here, but I want so badly for it to mean something.
I can't replicate this sickening fall if I've been sleeping well. My mind is protected from those horrifying absolutes, most of the time. But a lack of reserve power, brought on by exhaustion, gives me these glimpses in to the world below my little skating pond, a vast, endless well. I try to live with that endlessness, but I don't think my mind is built to handle such things. I need something to hang on to, some assurance that I deserve this consciousness I've got.
The will to return, to pull myself out of the void, out of that hole in the ice, is just as strong as the will to breathe. I can't help it, no matter how much I want to live with the reality that I'll never know these answers. I fight my way back to the surface and haul myself on to the ice, cold and shaken. From the surface I can see clearly again, but I know I'm seeing only my little pond. Somewhere below lurks that huge loneliness.
I decide that I will make my existence worthwhile, somehow, instead of waiting for an answer.
"Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,
no light and no land anywhere,
cloudcover thick. I try to stay
just above the surface,
yet I'm already under
and living with the ocean."-Rumi
Apr 22, 2008
gypsy airs
It's recital time again.
I'm playing Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) by Pablo de Sarasate. It's a fantastic little piece. The entire thing is designed to look impressive, as well as sound impressive - Sarasate was a virtuoso violinist, so he wrote in all the most difficult-sounding things he could think of. The audience is supposed to flutter their fans and say, "Oh, my, that certainly was quite something, wasn't it Georgina?" It's the icing on the cake.
It's not the deepest thing I've ever played. If the Beethoven concerto is a bottomless well, this is a very attractive puddle. It's all pomp and circumstance, but it's also damn tricky. It is composed entirely of phrases, which, if they were merely a little part of another piece, you might think to yourself, "I better watch out for this line. It's kind of tricky. If I get nervous, I might flub it". Practicing, therefore, mostly consists of playing the runs and flying spiccatos so many times that your hands do it even if your brain is busily thinking about how long it is until dinner time.
So, Beethoven it's not, but it's still a great piece, and it deserves more care than just technical precision. It's not a very personal piece, though. You can't really play it from the heart - to do that, you might as well stand up and explain that you've got an ego the size of the Pacific. It's way to blustery for sincerity. So the decision I've come to is that it must be played almost as a soundtrack for somebody else's life. I can use the grandeur and over-the-top glamor that way.
'Course, I can't tell you who it's for, because that would ruin the magic. But the piece does lend itself nicely to a story. It starts out in a rage, then lingers around some seductive business for a while, gets all mournful, and then goes absolutely nuts in the scramble to the finish. A very interesting life indeed.
I'm playing Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) by Pablo de Sarasate. It's a fantastic little piece. The entire thing is designed to look impressive, as well as sound impressive - Sarasate was a virtuoso violinist, so he wrote in all the most difficult-sounding things he could think of. The audience is supposed to flutter their fans and say, "Oh, my, that certainly was quite something, wasn't it Georgina?" It's the icing on the cake.
It's not the deepest thing I've ever played. If the Beethoven concerto is a bottomless well, this is a very attractive puddle. It's all pomp and circumstance, but it's also damn tricky. It is composed entirely of phrases, which, if they were merely a little part of another piece, you might think to yourself, "I better watch out for this line. It's kind of tricky. If I get nervous, I might flub it". Practicing, therefore, mostly consists of playing the runs and flying spiccatos so many times that your hands do it even if your brain is busily thinking about how long it is until dinner time.
So, Beethoven it's not, but it's still a great piece, and it deserves more care than just technical precision. It's not a very personal piece, though. You can't really play it from the heart - to do that, you might as well stand up and explain that you've got an ego the size of the Pacific. It's way to blustery for sincerity. So the decision I've come to is that it must be played almost as a soundtrack for somebody else's life. I can use the grandeur and over-the-top glamor that way.
'Course, I can't tell you who it's for, because that would ruin the magic. But the piece does lend itself nicely to a story. It starts out in a rage, then lingers around some seductive business for a while, gets all mournful, and then goes absolutely nuts in the scramble to the finish. A very interesting life indeed.
Mar 31, 2008
science education
I'm going to graduate from MIT in a few months. My imminent release in to the Real World (out of the frying pan and in to the fire, really) has got me looking back on my scientific education so far. As it turns out, until I came to MIT, my schooling contributed almost nothing useful to my body of scientific knowledge - an interesting observation indeed.
I should define by what I mean by "nothing useful", or, in other words, I should state what I consider to be useful knowledge. It's actually a difficult task. Since a lot of scientific knowledge builds upon previous knowledge, I don't want to trick myself in to thinking I learned nothing in school, if in fact I was learning basic principles upon which later learning depended. So I'll have to dig deep in to the memory banks and figure out where I learned about truly essential stuff, like the scientific method, gravity, careful observation, the existence of cells, and so on. Once the absolute basics are accounted for, I can define useful knowledge more precisely: knowledge which, at some point after learning it, I needed. For example, when I was one or two, I began asking my parents how electricity works. (There's a note in my baby book that says I was "quite good at remembering explanations of what it does", although I still had to ask all the time, apparently!) It has mattered many times in my life that I understand how electricity works. So that information is useful. (Incidentally, it's also something I was never taught in school.) On the other hand, I learned about grasshopper anatomy in high school biology. I still remember it, but it's never mattered.* That doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be taught - but I think it's reasonable to assume that at least some of the things you learn in school ought to be useful later on, or else schooling has failed to accomplish its goal. The question is: did they fail?
*One might say, at this point, that learning grasshopper anatomy was a vehicle by which I learned deeper scientific lessons about comparative anatomy, dissection, and so on. I've considered this possibility, but I must conclude that the only reason I learned about grasshopper anatomy was because it was tested on the New York State Regents exam. The content was certainly not presented in any way which would lead me to gain greater understanding about comparative anatomy or anything else.
So. Like everybody else, I really started learning about science the day I was born, since one really can't help but learn while living, but in this post I'll be looking at the more concentrated chunks of scientific education in my life - momentous occasions in my learning, if you will. Where did it all begin?
When I was 7 or so, I was given a copy of the Dorling Kindersly Science Encyclopedia. It instantly became my favorite book. For years, until I'd read it cover to cover several times, my parents would come in to my room in the middle of the night to find me asleep on the open book, lights still on. As far as I can tell (and actually, somebody has commented on the Amazon page saying the same thing), the encyclopedia covers everything that is generally taught in grade-school science class. It also covers a whole lot more - there's a lot of detail in there that I didn't see in school until high school, at least.
Because of the encyclopedia, I can say fairly certainly that although my school did present some interesting and/or important science topics in class, very few of them were new to me. In first grade, I did learn a great deal about astronomy because my teacher (whom I loved - I have very few complaints about first grade!) had me draw charts of every constellation in the night sky and memorize them all - and to this day I can see that drawing in my mind every time I look up at the sky. In third grade, my teacher assigned me an "independent research project" while the other students did I-don't-remember-what (this will be a theme in this post, you'll see) and I learned a lot about puffins and presented my findings to the class, which was fun. But other than those two things, I don't think I learned anything in science in grade school that I hadn't already read. And furthermore, the amount that I learned in grade school was a *tiny* fraction of what I had read. So that encyclopedia was one major teacher.
(Not every kid likes reading a science encyclopedia, obviously, but this post isn't about every kid. Just me.)
In fourth grade, a friend of mine mentioned that her father, a mathematician, had taught her how to do a word problem with algebra. I had heard of algebra from my encyclopedia, but I didn't know much about it, especially since neither of my parents know any algebra (they're musicians). That afternoon, during recess, my friend showed me that you could use letters to represent numbers, and then move them around in equations. Similarly, another couple years down the line, another friend of mine (with a mathematician father again!) mentioned the quadratic equation in a sort of off-hand way one day. I asked what it was, and she told me - just like that. I have a feeling that a lot of learning goes on this way - under-the-table conversations between peers, fueled by curiosity - even when schools think that they've done the teaching.
The third way I remember learning a lot in grade school was from my parents. My mother especially has always been very interested in nature, and she taught my sister and I to identify birds, trees, and bugs. We never had lessons of any kind - we just went to parks a lot (especially this one), went to museums, and went walking in the woods. I never felt like I was being forced to learn anything. I was just having fun.
The encyclopedia, conversations at recess, walks in the woods - the three most memorable ways I learned in grade school. None of them happened in the classroom. Moving on to middle and high school... did school take over as my primary informant as the subject material became more and more complex? Did I find school indispensable?
Nope. I'm actually going to leave school classes out of this bit almost completely, because the only important thing I actually learned was how to identify minerals. Almost everything I learned came from a string of obsessions that I had, in to which I would throw my self whole-heartedly until something new caught my fancy. The first obsession was ham radio, which isn't particularly typical of 10-year-old girls, but hey. I took my operator test, which required me to know how antennas worked, which required all sorts of other knowledge about energy and waves and electricity. I was so in to it - and then all of a sudden I was in to dolphins and marine biology - much more typical of young girls! I had dozens of books on dolphins. I wrote letters to children's magazines about the plight of the Indus River Dolphin. It was my thing. And then in a flash my thing was astrophysics. I read Kip Thorne's "Black Holes and Time Warps". I rented Carl Sagan's video series about the cosmos (think "billions and billions") and was glued to the screen. I was terrified of nuclear war. I stared at the sky all the time and begged my parents for a telescope (it took 10 years, but I got one for my 20th birthday)! I was fascinated by black holes. Eventually, an awesome organization in Ithaca called The Learning Web set me up with an internship at Cornell's Spacecraft Planetary Imaging Facility. My job was to work with a cool guy called Rick on organizing all of the pictures that came in from orbiters and satellites. Which meant that I got to hang around with astronomers and play with the computer and use Adobe Photoshop, which I thought was the most exciting thing in the whole world. Even more thrilling was when the group allowed me to come to the midnight party that they held when the Pathfinder touched down on Mars in 1997. I showed up in my pajamas, having already slept for some time, and the grad students gave me grape juice and let me sit in the front so I could see the TV. It was incredible.
That same year, I was assigned a "research paper" in my 8th grade earth science class. I was supposed to research any topic of my choosing, write a paper, and present to the class what I had learned. I wrote a paper explaining what black holes are (with an analogy to a trampoline, which I think was actually moderately clever), how they form, what they look like, etc. I had a blast. I wrote this 8-page paper that I was really proud of, and I made a presentation to give to my class. I got up there and talked for my allotted 10 minutes, after which my teacher told me... that I wasn't allowed to present on topics that nobody understood. I was absolutely crushed, mostly because the entire point of my paper had been to explain black holes from the bottom up.
After I worked at SPIF, I got more and more interested in particle physics. I read Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", a book about string theory. I didn't understand any of the math in it, but luckily the internet could offer some insight. I even wrote Brian Greene a letter asking him some questions, but unfortunately he never wrote back, though I waited for a response for months and months.
Eventually I got involved with the Learning Web again, and they set me up with an internship at the Cornell Wilson Synchrotron. I worked for a guy called Rafael, a retiree who'd gotten bored with retired life after only a week, and who'd returned to lend his considerable expertise to the operation of the particle accelerator. He was one of the people who helped build the synchrotron on the first place, and the only person still working who knew its deepest darkest secrets, so he was invaluable, but since he was technically retired, he didn't have specific duties. Which made him a great mentor - he had plenty of time to show me around. The facility is absolutely incredible. If you've ever been inside a particle accelerator tunnel, you know how cool it is - enormous bending magnets, cavernous detectors, massive boxes of electronics - it all looks like some fabulous science fiction paradise. I was a little out of place there, granted, being the only person under 25 around, and one of only 2 females, the other being a professor in her 60s, but physicists are known for being kind of aloof, and nobody seemed to mind too much.
Rafael had been a well-known lecturer in physics and electronics, which was absolutely to my advantage. When I first started working for him, I didn't know enough physics or electronics to build anything useful for the sychrotron, so he had to teach me. Which meant that I got private lessons in two-hour chunks from this guy. It was a great way to learn, especially since my new knowledge was immediately applied in the context of the project I was working on.
Later on in high school, when it came time for me to start taking normal physics classes, I found that I just didn't have any patience for sitting through dry, boring lectures with no fun projects in sight (neither did anybody else, I bet). I had also already taken calculus at that point, which made it a bit silly to take the physics class that my school offered, which attempted to bypass the calculus with long-winded, fuzzy explanations that obscured the math. So for the last couple years, I actually took physics, and later math as well, from a distance-learning program called EPGY. It worked out pretty well, because I could work at any pace I wanted, and it let me leave school after only 2 hours of morning classes.
Since I'm getting a degree in bioengineering, one might wonder why so little biology has appeared so far in this overly-lengthy narrative. It may just be blatant cynicism, but I think the reason is actually directly attributable to one person: my 9th grad biology teacher, whom I won't name.
Early on in the year, were were assigned a research project (oh no, not another research project...). I can't exactly remember what the constraints were, but I decided to test whether or not vegetables and fruits that had a bright red color had more vitamin C in them than paler vegetables and fruits. I did some very simple test (I think it involved iodine and potato starch), and found that indeed, the red fruits and vegetables I tested had more vitamin C than the others. My teacher refused to believe me. She hadn't heard of it being true, and not only was she was totally unwilling to believe that I had done a sound experiment (which is a legitimate concern in the context of a sloppy high school lab), she didn't even believe that I was telling the truth. She honestly thought I was fudging my data. We never got along after that. (Also, in her class, I was bullied pretty ruthlessly by 3 guys who sat at my table, and she refused to move my seat. So that didn't go over well either.)
(In case anybody's curious, my results were actually correct for at least one of the vegetables I tested. I had used orange and red peppers, and red peppers are now known to have 50% more vitamin C than orange ones.)
My interest in biology lagged for quite some time after that disastrous class. It only picked up when I was 16 so when I began to get interested in cancer research. When I first began reading about cancer biology and treatment, I became totally obsessed. I'd stay up all night reading. I'd download articles and read them on my laptop whenever I had a free moment - which I now realize is exactly my style. Complete immersion until I have the basics down, and I feel ready to ask questions, and talk to people, and understand the whole thing on a deeper level. (As it turned out, the way to understand things on a deeper level in the case of cancers was to get involved with the ACS and participate in the Relay for Life, which, if you haven't ever done it, is an incredible experience.)
After I had recovered from my bad introduction to biology, I started reading a lot more of it, and I got in to neuroscience and cognitive studies. And then I ended up at MIT, where I floundered around for my first year, unable to choose between physics, bioengineering, electrical engineering, and neuroscience. I feel that my education here has been very good. I certainly can't sum it up here, since it's really a whole 'nuther beast, so I won't try, but that's not the point of this post anyway.
The point I'm actually trying to make is that when I look back on my education, I find that I was incredibly fortunate to have opportunities to learn science in interesting and diverse ways. I am fairly sure that if I hadn't had the opportunities I've mentioned in this post, I would feel pretty negative about science. It would probably be lifeless and dull. I'm not even sure who I'd be today if these experiences hadn't been such a big part of my life...
Which really makes me wonder about education in this country. And if I had to answer my own question from the beginning of this post, I would say that yes, the schools did fail to educate me in science. Anybody who reads this blog knows that I have a lot of gripes about education, but I promise I won't go in to them all. Let's just say that public science education is... well, it's no fun. It takes a subject like physics - which is responsible for the Mars rover, and that magical party I attended in the middle of the night - in to an emotionless subject that exists between the cardboard covers of a (badly-written) textbook. It removes science from the forces that motivate it, all the emotion, passion, and urgency that scientists feel to discover and innovate, and isolates it in a small world of petty facts. It's sad, really - astronomy is so grand and humbling and biology is intricate and delicate and physics is full of explosions and bizarre theories... I'm beginning to think that we shouldn't separate science from science fiction, really. I don't mean to suggest that we should teach people science THROUGH science fiction - I'm all for keeping the facts accurate - but I think public science education has lost sight of the fact that science is what sends us to the MOON and builds mushroom clouds and saves peoples' lives. Where's the glory?
I should define by what I mean by "nothing useful", or, in other words, I should state what I consider to be useful knowledge. It's actually a difficult task. Since a lot of scientific knowledge builds upon previous knowledge, I don't want to trick myself in to thinking I learned nothing in school, if in fact I was learning basic principles upon which later learning depended. So I'll have to dig deep in to the memory banks and figure out where I learned about truly essential stuff, like the scientific method, gravity, careful observation, the existence of cells, and so on. Once the absolute basics are accounted for, I can define useful knowledge more precisely: knowledge which, at some point after learning it, I needed. For example, when I was one or two, I began asking my parents how electricity works. (There's a note in my baby book that says I was "quite good at remembering explanations of what it does", although I still had to ask all the time, apparently!) It has mattered many times in my life that I understand how electricity works. So that information is useful. (Incidentally, it's also something I was never taught in school.) On the other hand, I learned about grasshopper anatomy in high school biology. I still remember it, but it's never mattered.* That doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be taught - but I think it's reasonable to assume that at least some of the things you learn in school ought to be useful later on, or else schooling has failed to accomplish its goal. The question is: did they fail?
*One might say, at this point, that learning grasshopper anatomy was a vehicle by which I learned deeper scientific lessons about comparative anatomy, dissection, and so on. I've considered this possibility, but I must conclude that the only reason I learned about grasshopper anatomy was because it was tested on the New York State Regents exam. The content was certainly not presented in any way which would lead me to gain greater understanding about comparative anatomy or anything else.
So. Like everybody else, I really started learning about science the day I was born, since one really can't help but learn while living, but in this post I'll be looking at the more concentrated chunks of scientific education in my life - momentous occasions in my learning, if you will. Where did it all begin?
When I was 7 or so, I was given a copy of the Dorling Kindersly Science Encyclopedia. It instantly became my favorite book. For years, until I'd read it cover to cover several times, my parents would come in to my room in the middle of the night to find me asleep on the open book, lights still on. As far as I can tell (and actually, somebody has commented on the Amazon page saying the same thing), the encyclopedia covers everything that is generally taught in grade-school science class. It also covers a whole lot more - there's a lot of detail in there that I didn't see in school until high school, at least.
Because of the encyclopedia, I can say fairly certainly that although my school did present some interesting and/or important science topics in class, very few of them were new to me. In first grade, I did learn a great deal about astronomy because my teacher (whom I loved - I have very few complaints about first grade!) had me draw charts of every constellation in the night sky and memorize them all - and to this day I can see that drawing in my mind every time I look up at the sky. In third grade, my teacher assigned me an "independent research project" while the other students did I-don't-remember-what (this will be a theme in this post, you'll see) and I learned a lot about puffins and presented my findings to the class, which was fun. But other than those two things, I don't think I learned anything in science in grade school that I hadn't already read. And furthermore, the amount that I learned in grade school was a *tiny* fraction of what I had read. So that encyclopedia was one major teacher.
(Not every kid likes reading a science encyclopedia, obviously, but this post isn't about every kid. Just me.)
In fourth grade, a friend of mine mentioned that her father, a mathematician, had taught her how to do a word problem with algebra. I had heard of algebra from my encyclopedia, but I didn't know much about it, especially since neither of my parents know any algebra (they're musicians). That afternoon, during recess, my friend showed me that you could use letters to represent numbers, and then move them around in equations. Similarly, another couple years down the line, another friend of mine (with a mathematician father again!) mentioned the quadratic equation in a sort of off-hand way one day. I asked what it was, and she told me - just like that. I have a feeling that a lot of learning goes on this way - under-the-table conversations between peers, fueled by curiosity - even when schools think that they've done the teaching.
The third way I remember learning a lot in grade school was from my parents. My mother especially has always been very interested in nature, and she taught my sister and I to identify birds, trees, and bugs. We never had lessons of any kind - we just went to parks a lot (especially this one), went to museums, and went walking in the woods. I never felt like I was being forced to learn anything. I was just having fun.
The encyclopedia, conversations at recess, walks in the woods - the three most memorable ways I learned in grade school. None of them happened in the classroom. Moving on to middle and high school... did school take over as my primary informant as the subject material became more and more complex? Did I find school indispensable?
Nope. I'm actually going to leave school classes out of this bit almost completely, because the only important thing I actually learned was how to identify minerals. Almost everything I learned came from a string of obsessions that I had, in to which I would throw my self whole-heartedly until something new caught my fancy. The first obsession was ham radio, which isn't particularly typical of 10-year-old girls, but hey. I took my operator test, which required me to know how antennas worked, which required all sorts of other knowledge about energy and waves and electricity. I was so in to it - and then all of a sudden I was in to dolphins and marine biology - much more typical of young girls! I had dozens of books on dolphins. I wrote letters to children's magazines about the plight of the Indus River Dolphin. It was my thing. And then in a flash my thing was astrophysics. I read Kip Thorne's "Black Holes and Time Warps". I rented Carl Sagan's video series about the cosmos (think "billions and billions") and was glued to the screen. I was terrified of nuclear war. I stared at the sky all the time and begged my parents for a telescope (it took 10 years, but I got one for my 20th birthday)! I was fascinated by black holes. Eventually, an awesome organization in Ithaca called The Learning Web set me up with an internship at Cornell's Spacecraft Planetary Imaging Facility. My job was to work with a cool guy called Rick on organizing all of the pictures that came in from orbiters and satellites. Which meant that I got to hang around with astronomers and play with the computer and use Adobe Photoshop, which I thought was the most exciting thing in the whole world. Even more thrilling was when the group allowed me to come to the midnight party that they held when the Pathfinder touched down on Mars in 1997. I showed up in my pajamas, having already slept for some time, and the grad students gave me grape juice and let me sit in the front so I could see the TV. It was incredible.
That same year, I was assigned a "research paper" in my 8th grade earth science class. I was supposed to research any topic of my choosing, write a paper, and present to the class what I had learned. I wrote a paper explaining what black holes are (with an analogy to a trampoline, which I think was actually moderately clever), how they form, what they look like, etc. I had a blast. I wrote this 8-page paper that I was really proud of, and I made a presentation to give to my class. I got up there and talked for my allotted 10 minutes, after which my teacher told me... that I wasn't allowed to present on topics that nobody understood. I was absolutely crushed, mostly because the entire point of my paper had been to explain black holes from the bottom up.
After I worked at SPIF, I got more and more interested in particle physics. I read Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", a book about string theory. I didn't understand any of the math in it, but luckily the internet could offer some insight. I even wrote Brian Greene a letter asking him some questions, but unfortunately he never wrote back, though I waited for a response for months and months.
Eventually I got involved with the Learning Web again, and they set me up with an internship at the Cornell Wilson Synchrotron. I worked for a guy called Rafael, a retiree who'd gotten bored with retired life after only a week, and who'd returned to lend his considerable expertise to the operation of the particle accelerator. He was one of the people who helped build the synchrotron on the first place, and the only person still working who knew its deepest darkest secrets, so he was invaluable, but since he was technically retired, he didn't have specific duties. Which made him a great mentor - he had plenty of time to show me around. The facility is absolutely incredible. If you've ever been inside a particle accelerator tunnel, you know how cool it is - enormous bending magnets, cavernous detectors, massive boxes of electronics - it all looks like some fabulous science fiction paradise. I was a little out of place there, granted, being the only person under 25 around, and one of only 2 females, the other being a professor in her 60s, but physicists are known for being kind of aloof, and nobody seemed to mind too much.
Rafael had been a well-known lecturer in physics and electronics, which was absolutely to my advantage. When I first started working for him, I didn't know enough physics or electronics to build anything useful for the sychrotron, so he had to teach me. Which meant that I got private lessons in two-hour chunks from this guy. It was a great way to learn, especially since my new knowledge was immediately applied in the context of the project I was working on.
Later on in high school, when it came time for me to start taking normal physics classes, I found that I just didn't have any patience for sitting through dry, boring lectures with no fun projects in sight (neither did anybody else, I bet). I had also already taken calculus at that point, which made it a bit silly to take the physics class that my school offered, which attempted to bypass the calculus with long-winded, fuzzy explanations that obscured the math. So for the last couple years, I actually took physics, and later math as well, from a distance-learning program called EPGY. It worked out pretty well, because I could work at any pace I wanted, and it let me leave school after only 2 hours of morning classes.
Since I'm getting a degree in bioengineering, one might wonder why so little biology has appeared so far in this overly-lengthy narrative. It may just be blatant cynicism, but I think the reason is actually directly attributable to one person: my 9th grad biology teacher, whom I won't name.
Early on in the year, were were assigned a research project (oh no, not another research project...). I can't exactly remember what the constraints were, but I decided to test whether or not vegetables and fruits that had a bright red color had more vitamin C in them than paler vegetables and fruits. I did some very simple test (I think it involved iodine and potato starch), and found that indeed, the red fruits and vegetables I tested had more vitamin C than the others. My teacher refused to believe me. She hadn't heard of it being true, and not only was she was totally unwilling to believe that I had done a sound experiment (which is a legitimate concern in the context of a sloppy high school lab), she didn't even believe that I was telling the truth. She honestly thought I was fudging my data. We never got along after that. (Also, in her class, I was bullied pretty ruthlessly by 3 guys who sat at my table, and she refused to move my seat. So that didn't go over well either.)
(In case anybody's curious, my results were actually correct for at least one of the vegetables I tested. I had used orange and red peppers, and red peppers are now known to have 50% more vitamin C than orange ones.)
My interest in biology lagged for quite some time after that disastrous class. It only picked up when I was 16 so when I began to get interested in cancer research. When I first began reading about cancer biology and treatment, I became totally obsessed. I'd stay up all night reading. I'd download articles and read them on my laptop whenever I had a free moment - which I now realize is exactly my style. Complete immersion until I have the basics down, and I feel ready to ask questions, and talk to people, and understand the whole thing on a deeper level. (As it turned out, the way to understand things on a deeper level in the case of cancers was to get involved with the ACS and participate in the Relay for Life, which, if you haven't ever done it, is an incredible experience.)
After I had recovered from my bad introduction to biology, I started reading a lot more of it, and I got in to neuroscience and cognitive studies. And then I ended up at MIT, where I floundered around for my first year, unable to choose between physics, bioengineering, electrical engineering, and neuroscience. I feel that my education here has been very good. I certainly can't sum it up here, since it's really a whole 'nuther beast, so I won't try, but that's not the point of this post anyway.
The point I'm actually trying to make is that when I look back on my education, I find that I was incredibly fortunate to have opportunities to learn science in interesting and diverse ways. I am fairly sure that if I hadn't had the opportunities I've mentioned in this post, I would feel pretty negative about science. It would probably be lifeless and dull. I'm not even sure who I'd be today if these experiences hadn't been such a big part of my life...
Which really makes me wonder about education in this country. And if I had to answer my own question from the beginning of this post, I would say that yes, the schools did fail to educate me in science. Anybody who reads this blog knows that I have a lot of gripes about education, but I promise I won't go in to them all. Let's just say that public science education is... well, it's no fun. It takes a subject like physics - which is responsible for the Mars rover, and that magical party I attended in the middle of the night - in to an emotionless subject that exists between the cardboard covers of a (badly-written) textbook. It removes science from the forces that motivate it, all the emotion, passion, and urgency that scientists feel to discover and innovate, and isolates it in a small world of petty facts. It's sad, really - astronomy is so grand and humbling and biology is intricate and delicate and physics is full of explosions and bizarre theories... I'm beginning to think that we shouldn't separate science from science fiction, really. I don't mean to suggest that we should teach people science THROUGH science fiction - I'm all for keeping the facts accurate - but I think public science education has lost sight of the fact that science is what sends us to the MOON and builds mushroom clouds and saves peoples' lives. Where's the glory?
Mar 21, 2008
epidemic
Because it isn't published yet, I can't say much about the work I did last summer on an HIV vaccine. What I can say is that the work wasn't particularly glamorous. I spent a lot of long hours mixing and measuring tiny amounts of clear liquid in tiny plastic tubes, which isn't quite as exciting as rocket science, but hey - that's bioengineering. Things that bioengineers think are exciting are generally about as thrilling as watching paint dry.
But damn, if it works... Imagine how it would change the world. Just thinking of it gives me the shivers.
HIV is a tricky monster. It attacks CD4+ T cells. Those helper T cells are supposed to activate B cells, which then produce antibodies, which bind to the virus, causing them to be endocytosed by macrophages. So if you don't have any T cells, you don't have any antibodies, which means that your specific immune responses are... zilch.
When it enters cells, HIV unpacks its (tiny, efficient, scary) RNA genome, uses an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to translate the RNA in to DNA (all the better to mimic human genes), and then inserts itself in to the human genome. There it lurks for years.
The virus can only replicate if certain transcription factors (molecules which bind the DNA such that transcription to RNA can occur) are present. (For example, in the case of HIV, one of the factors it needs to jump out of the human genome is NF-kappa-B. Sadly, NF-kappa-B is upregulated (produced more) when T cells are activated.) When such a transcription factor comes along, the viral genome is transcribed to RNA and translated to protein unwittingly by the body's machinery. The completed virus assembles, bursts out of the host cells, and goes on to infect again.
It's awful.
HIV is only made trickier by its tendency to mutate extremely quickly. The virus can change significantly within one person, within one month (this is mostly because the virus doesn't package its own proofreading enzymes, so when it transcribes its own genome, it makes a lot of mistakes). Which is part of the reason that no vaccine has been made so far - it's incredibly difficult to fight against a mutating enemy.
Therapy for HIV basically consists of anti-retroviral drugs right now. They work in a number of ways - they can inhibit reverse transcriptase, they can inhibit some of the viral proteins necessary for viron assembly, they can inhibit the protein that allows HIV to insert itself in the human genome, etc - but all of them focus on blocking the virus from doing what it wants to do. This means that all of them are dependent upon the virus not mutating so much that it becomes unrecognizable to the drug - and that's unlikely, given how fast HIV mutates. So lots of people become resistant to treatment, and then there's very little that medicine can do.
Most of my understanding of HIV and AIDS comes from a very scientific perspective. I know a lot about HIV surface proteins. I can go on about immune response. But the epidemic hasn't come too close to my life. It started just before I was born, and by the time I was old enough to know anything about it, it was a pandemic. Friends watched friends waste away. AIDS orphans were suddenly everywhere. The disease reared up from nowhere, ugly as hell.
I've never personally known anybody with HIV or AIDS. I've never even met anybody with HIV or AIDS (that I know of - though I probably have). Sometimes it makes AIDS seem so surreal. I've been hearing about it ever since I can remember, this hellish disease, for which we have no cure. I even forget, sometimes, that the disease is only a couple years older than me. How can it even be real? How can it have changed the world so fast?
Once in a while, I get a flash of understanding. Maybe I read something (like Susan Sontag's "The Way We Live Now" - not for the faint of heart), or overhear something on the T... Today, in a restaurant, just as I was leaving, I heard a group of people make a toast to a man who had died of AIDS. In those moments I'm reminded how blissfully untouched by AIDS my life has been, and how little I really know about it. And how very, very far we have to go before it can be forgotten.
But damn, if it works... Imagine how it would change the world. Just thinking of it gives me the shivers.
HIV is a tricky monster. It attacks CD4+ T cells. Those helper T cells are supposed to activate B cells, which then produce antibodies, which bind to the virus, causing them to be endocytosed by macrophages. So if you don't have any T cells, you don't have any antibodies, which means that your specific immune responses are... zilch.
When it enters cells, HIV unpacks its (tiny, efficient, scary) RNA genome, uses an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to translate the RNA in to DNA (all the better to mimic human genes), and then inserts itself in to the human genome. There it lurks for years.
The virus can only replicate if certain transcription factors (molecules which bind the DNA such that transcription to RNA can occur) are present. (For example, in the case of HIV, one of the factors it needs to jump out of the human genome is NF-kappa-B. Sadly, NF-kappa-B is upregulated (produced more) when T cells are activated.) When such a transcription factor comes along, the viral genome is transcribed to RNA and translated to protein unwittingly by the body's machinery. The completed virus assembles, bursts out of the host cells, and goes on to infect again.
It's awful.
HIV is only made trickier by its tendency to mutate extremely quickly. The virus can change significantly within one person, within one month (this is mostly because the virus doesn't package its own proofreading enzymes, so when it transcribes its own genome, it makes a lot of mistakes). Which is part of the reason that no vaccine has been made so far - it's incredibly difficult to fight against a mutating enemy.
Therapy for HIV basically consists of anti-retroviral drugs right now. They work in a number of ways - they can inhibit reverse transcriptase, they can inhibit some of the viral proteins necessary for viron assembly, they can inhibit the protein that allows HIV to insert itself in the human genome, etc - but all of them focus on blocking the virus from doing what it wants to do. This means that all of them are dependent upon the virus not mutating so much that it becomes unrecognizable to the drug - and that's unlikely, given how fast HIV mutates. So lots of people become resistant to treatment, and then there's very little that medicine can do.
Most of my understanding of HIV and AIDS comes from a very scientific perspective. I know a lot about HIV surface proteins. I can go on about immune response. But the epidemic hasn't come too close to my life. It started just before I was born, and by the time I was old enough to know anything about it, it was a pandemic. Friends watched friends waste away. AIDS orphans were suddenly everywhere. The disease reared up from nowhere, ugly as hell.
I've never personally known anybody with HIV or AIDS. I've never even met anybody with HIV or AIDS (that I know of - though I probably have). Sometimes it makes AIDS seem so surreal. I've been hearing about it ever since I can remember, this hellish disease, for which we have no cure. I even forget, sometimes, that the disease is only a couple years older than me. How can it even be real? How can it have changed the world so fast?
Once in a while, I get a flash of understanding. Maybe I read something (like Susan Sontag's "The Way We Live Now" - not for the faint of heart), or overhear something on the T... Today, in a restaurant, just as I was leaving, I heard a group of people make a toast to a man who had died of AIDS. In those moments I'm reminded how blissfully untouched by AIDS my life has been, and how little I really know about it. And how very, very far we have to go before it can be forgotten.
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