Dissociated Thoughts

Journalistic Intentions - Scientist

Written for: "Journalistic Intentions"  February 2022
Prompt: “I think I would have been much happier being an actual scientist.”

I thought and even said things similar to this while teaching, and even now I sometimes regret choosing to teach science rather than continue my research on botanical genetics.

There is a peace that came to me while in the lab, a sense of pleasure in my work that I have yet to find in any other discipline I ventured into (with the exception of mowing lawns, but we’ll leave that for later). Have you ever performed any kind of scientific experiment? For me, the bigger the experiment, the more rewarding I found it. There was fun in it as well.

When I first began my path down the road of biological study, the experiments were simple. The farther I went in my studies, the more difficult and time consuming the experiments became, the more enjoyable they were.

         At one point, we went to the local zoo to retrieve fecal specimens of the animals so we could see what bacteria lived in the guts of the animals. Just so you know, if you don’t already, when e. coli grows on Eozin Metilen Blue (EMB) agar, it takes on a most beautiful metallic and iridescent shade of green.
         In the study of aquatic biology, we had to get down into the wet of things, taking samples of the water, the sediments, and even some of the aquatic life from the areas.
         I thought herpetology would be the thing for me. After all, I husband all sorts of reptiles at home and scaled and slithery critters have never bothered me. Truth be known, they fascinate me. But that route was not meant to be either.
         I found my home among the plants. Finding species in the wild many hadn’t seen for years was a thrill. I found I had a knack for genetics, so I discovered the plant genetics lab was the place to be – at least for me. People can whine and complain about GMOs all they want, but what they don’t understand is that the food they eat that comes from plants are just that. They have been genetically modified through centuries in order to become what they are today. The corn, beans, fruit, practically all of the food plants we eat have been modified over time. But I didn’t find myself modifying plants that produce food. I was studying flowering plants. It’s a slow process, having to grow from seed and care for them daily, but it was where I found my happiness. I studied how changes to the plants’ environment could affect the way the plants responded during their flowering cycles. So much is happening on a molecular level in plants. And genes in a plant’s DNA strand can actually interact and that interaction will change some of the plant’s external function or appearance.

I don’t remember the exact time I had to consider which path to take for my future in science – but now I know that I might have made the wrong choice when I decided to teach science. When I began teaching, gone were the days of quiet study, the days of new discoveries. Science became monotonous. Each year, teaching the same basic tenets of science to a room full of teens who didn’t care about the amazing things they were learning. I became burnt out and, yeah, I think I would have been happier if I had been an actual scientist. But my health came and saved me from my monotonous hell, forcing me to retire quite early from teaching. I still dream of those labs and plant growth chambers though, those places where I was happiest.


Word Count: 619