Why I love Science

[Cindy Hale]

Thank you Bharathi!

What a great question AND response...

>Why do you LOVE SCIENCE?
>
>For me, there are two basic categories: 1) really
>understanding how something -- practically anything
>works and 2) the sheer thrill of understanding
>something before anyone else -- maybe anyone else
>in the entire human race. 

My mom still reminds me that when I was a kid I told her "I am like a 
sponge"  because I just absorbed any new information that was persented to 
me, especially if it was biological in nature.  I still LOVE finding out 
new things either by my own discovery or by reading others.  My favorite 
periodicals are Science News and Discover since I can get a quick fix on a 
lot of different subjects.

I do also love to be in an environment where other people share this 
interest and where eyes don't roll when lunchtime table talk revolves 
around decaying wood or the discovery of early hominid fossils.  I just 
came from one of my last (sadly) graduate seminar classes where we are 
discussing subnivean ecology and associated plant and animal adaptations.  
I will very much miss the joy of having twelve people sit in a conference 
room and play with ideas.  I am hoping that I can recreate it somewhere 
else in my life.

The part of me that loves science is the same part of me that loved every 
new thing I saw when I was a child.  The part of me that could be marveled 
and filled with joy to find a new bug or a special waterfall or frogs in a 
mucky pond.

It is fun as a adult to take that same creative and curious wonder and tune 
it and channel it to do work that (hopefully) enriches and adds to the 
quality of human life as a part of the whole continuum of life, rather than 
as a seperate part, isolated from the rest of life.

There you have it.
Cindy Hale
University of Minnesota-Duluth
The Natural Resources Research Institute