Betraying Science

I have always had a natural fascination towards science.

In fact, I was so captivated with a very scientific topic just now. I knew I was very tired, especially because I had a sleepover with minimum rest recently. Though I was supposed to have a proper sleep already by a couple of hours ago, there were way too many interesting stuffs for me to surf on the Internet. With so many thoughts pondering, I decided to write this reflective-narrative post.

Natural science is freaking amazing. She is my first true love, but I cheated on her.

Eleven years ago, never would I believe that I would end up pursuing a Communication Studies degree. Back then, I was just a nerdy little kid. I am still pretty much a closeted nerd nowadays, but nothing can beat my “nerdiness” circa the 1998-2002 period – the second half of my primary school years. Ask around my ex-classmates and they would remember me among the top of those people who excelled at science (although nobody knew that my marks for other subjects were pretty average).

When I was around six years old, I would actually prefer to go to Gramedia to read some books rather than playing games at Timezone. No, I never went to the comics section. But it was the encyclopedia series, about anything from dinosaurs to planets, that intrigued me. The very first books that I begged my parents to buy are, heaven forbid, pocket-sized biology and physics books summarizing the curriculum-approved materials learnt by high school students. Yeah, I knew about things like polip and medusa about four years too early.

Having understood such things at a young age, you can expect that I was my science teachers’ favourite pet. I accumulated a lot of extra scores by answering questions in class – which I did not need, anyway. The teacher (lovely Miss Titis, I wonder how she is doing nowadays) once called me, telling me that my examination marks were already 100 out of 100 – hence I might want to donate the extra scores to help my friends with poor results. Greedy kid I was, by the way, I kept it all to myself. And then the practicums, oh dear, like how many times I were chosen to be the group leader.

The cracks began to show on my last year at junior high school. There were some more advanced-level physics formulas that failed my brain. I kept on insisting to my teacher that I need to rationalize why the formulas work that way (example: Pressure = Force / Area is pretty coherent and understandable, I can imagine how much pressure I put on each milimetre part of an object’s surface when I push it with a certain value of force).

At the end, the teacher told me that the explanation would take a few pages of paper and it would still be too complex for me to understand. So alternatively, I was told to just memorize them. To consider the complexity of the formula and the lack of time to properly study it, perhaps plainly coding the formulas into my brain chip was a wise thing to do. Yeah, I managed to score decent marks back then.

But in the long term, it gradually morphed from something interesting I would willingly learn by myself into a boring set of numbers or values that I have to painfully memorize for no apparent reason. Just a year after resorting to the memorizing method, I scored my first ever “red mark” (meaning anything less than 60 out of 100 for raw scores or 75 out of 100 post-conversion). And it was on a science subject! Supposed to be either physics or chemistry, I cannot quite recall. But who knew that my first academic downfall was something that had always been my ultimate strength for years?

As time went by, it became more and more relevant for me to declare that “I cannot tahan science”. Perhaps with exception for biology. But even for that, I do not love biology as much as I used to. Well, perhaps with exception for occasional circumstances like tonight.

So a few weeks leading to the application submission for NTU admission, I did not even bother to visit the sub-sites for all those engineering faculties to read the descriptions. I did visit the sub-site for the School of Biological Sciences, though. Originally, I wanted to put it in as my third or fourth choice. Upon a few thoughts, though, I decided to risk it away.

With so many competitors, I knew that there was no way I could make it through if I insist to take the A-level test required for the biology faculty – in my high school alone, at least a hundred students from the 2007-2008 batch would beat me. If I risk it away, at least it would strengthen my chance for the more preferable choices: Communication Studies (obviously) and Business.

So then and there, I ditched her. I divorced her forever.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I managed to maintain a full interest on science subjects. For one, I would have registered myself for those Olympiad preparation classes instead of some student council or debate club.

PS. I did not imply that the latter two are inferior in any way. In fact, they have helped me a lot in many unimaginable ways that the former could not have done. And the former could have given me a lot of amazing stuffs that the latter does not have. I am simply engaging with the thoughts that I might have lived a very different life today.

PPS. Damn, it is 04:45 already. I only had like five-hour worth of sleep in the last 48 hours. Why do I always have to be so freaking productive (in a blogging sense) in the middle of the night?