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

Soprafina

[twe.livejournal.com]

The text may have been illegible, but it was kind of cool looking. (Do you actually know what it says?)

Re: Soprafina

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I know what many of the words in it say - it's medicalish. Malady / remedy / blood and the like. Some I think isn't truly words, just things that look like words.