musing

[firstfrost]

Something that ironrat said a month ago: "Two things that MIT taught me about myself while I was there are that 1) I am not a discoverer (which is to say, scientist) and I am not a creator (which is to say, engineer)." I think there's an implied 2 there, but I didn't post this to pick on his grammar.

Every so often, I encounter something that is so right, so perfect, that I keep coming back to it. Rarely, it's art, or music, or poetry (Some of you may remember being dragged by Soprafina to stare at the illegible text that I finally bought. Amusingly, none of you seem to remember my favorite poetry excerpt, except maybe for jadia, who has no idea why I'm bringing it up). Sometimes it's a thought, which this one is.

I'm not a scientist. I figured that out partway through grad school, but I just thought that it was because I was junk at it. It's not that I'm a bad scientist, it's that I wasn't ever that character class at all, but just didn't realize it. I'm an engineer. I want to create things. I want to create worlds and NPCs and javascript bus maps and sweaters and cassoulet and wikis and perl scripts that run poetry puzzles and photomorphs of people I know...

I'm not just a failed scientist, or a goof with too much spare time on her hands. I actually have a label!

This pleases me very much.

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

Hm... This speaks to me too, but I'm less sure than you of what character class it makes me.

I think of myself as "not an engineer" because I'm not a *tinkerer* or a *fixer* or a person fascinated by how things work; and also I'm not very good at spatial and physical stuff, and am more interested in people than in things. However, I'm definitely a "creator"--I don't create all the same things you do, but most of what I choose to do involves creating things (especially if you count something like a performance or a story told as a finished product = creation, and I think I do). And I'm happier in a job where my task is to produce products than, say, provide services or take care of problems or organize processes. But unlike you, I don't habitually create *everything*, or even imagine doing so; if I want a thing, my instinct isn't necessarily to make one, and if I want something to happen, my instinct isn't necessarily that there must be a tool I could create to solve the problem.

Like you, I am less a discoverer than a creator. I like solving puzzles and problems, but not obsessively; I like learning stuff, but I don't so much like searching the universe for knowledge, I prefer to have it presented for my consumption. And I'm less interested by "how it works" than "what happened and what it's significance was"--though I do have some interest in how it works.

I suppose it would be easy to label myself a "storyteller," but...it might be too easy. Hm.