I got to babysit a bunch of half-grown crows this afternoon! The family was having a tree in our yard cut down, and the arborists noticed the nest and took it down without dislodging the babies, so I was on self-assigned crowsitting duty until the commotion died down and we could take the nest back outside. Crowsitting mostly consisted of me sitting on the kitchen floor next to the nest and feeding the babies little bits of canned cat food whenever they opened their beaks, and reading one of Stephen Hawking's popular works in the intervals. Considering my relative successes at these endeavors, I must say that if I ever pursue a second career in the sciences, I'd probably make a better ornithologist than cosmologist. (We did eventually replace the nest outdoors, in a little platform on top of a six-foot tree stump, and the parent crows have discovered it.)
There have been moments when I've thought, "Hey, I'm smart and did well in school, I wonder what I could have done if I'd challenged myself a little more? Maybe I should have taken more science courses." I do like science, but I rather waffle back and forth on how potentially good I'd be at it. I suppose I'd do all right if I stuck to things like the life cycle of sea slugs, or even the life cycle of nebulae. I understand the appeal of Exploring the Deepest Secret Workings of the Universe, but sometimes I suspect that being a primarily word-oriented thinker might trip me up in disciplines that are 7/8ths math and 1/8 highly abstracted physical interactions.
There have been moments when I've thought, "Hey, I'm smart and did well in school, I wonder what I could have done if I'd challenged myself a little more? Maybe I should have taken more science courses." I do like science, but I rather waffle back and forth on how potentially good I'd be at it. I suppose I'd do all right if I stuck to things like the life cycle of sea slugs, or even the life cycle of nebulae. I understand the appeal of Exploring the Deepest Secret Workings of the Universe, but sometimes I suspect that being a primarily word-oriented thinker might trip me up in disciplines that are 7/8ths math and 1/8 highly abstracted physical interactions.
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