I love science, but it doesn't necessarily come naturally for me. The logic part usually makes sense, the scientific method was an easy fit, and I never really had trouble memorizing long lists of biology vocabulary words. But despite my chosen career being Science, I still have problem with the "Math and..." part of this field. I keep hoping that, like chemistry, the more I force myself to do math, the easier it will get.
In eighth grade, I knew I wanted to be a marine biologist, even though I was always better with words than numbers. After taking Life Science in 7th grade and going to a summer marine biology camp (marsh mud!), I was hooked. I tested for the county magnet high school for math and science, and did not get in (hmmm... maybe the MATH part??). I went to a good high school and had some great teachers who encouraged me (hi, Mr. Mensh!), and forced myself to take advanced track math and AP science courses. Oh, the math. From algebra onwards, I struggled. Geometry and Trigonometry were OK. Pre-calculus and Calculus, I struggled some more. My dad tried to help me, my boyfriend tried to help me, I cried, and I dragged myself through it. I managed to get by with OK grades, but I had to work. But I still didn't get why I would need to be so good at math to have a career in science, because so far, the most math I needed in high school science classes was a little bit of algebra. I did great in my science classes without much math acuity.
Meanwhile, that mathy boyfriend of mine was getting into gaming and writing computer programs with his guy friends, which to me seemed pointless (unless you wanted to be a software developer or have a startup and make lots of money, which some of his friends were already doing). It wasn't relevant to my chosen science career.
In college, I took one calculus class (which was pretty much a review of AP Calculus I took in high school) and one intro to statistics class to fulfill my math requirements. The science classes I struggled the most with were organic chemistry and genetics, and this had nothing to do with math (more like the amount of memorization needed for all the classes to complete my double major conflicted with my social life).
Even in my masters' program, I took the required courses (including statistics and some physical/geological courses that used a little math), completed my thesis, and probably used calculus all of about 3 times. Then I worked for a biological modeler, and he did all the math. But I started seeing how really useful it could be.
If I can master these mathematical functions, and get them into computer code, there is so much I could do. I could use my files and files of data to start describing biological and physical phenomena as a pattern, and compare this to other patterns, in really elegant ways. I could predict future results. I could write papers without doing experiments. I could do virtual experiments! I wouldn't be limited by existing statistics packages that charge a lot of money and never quite do what I want them to do. I WOULD BE ALL-POWERFUL! BWAH HAH HAH HAAAAHHHHH!
Now I'm starting to sound like that high school boyfriend.
So, now that I'm doing a PhD and am hopefully going to be an academic, I need to up my skill level and challenge myself. I've been hearing people talk about the language R for a while, and when a fellow student passed along the link for a free online course starting last week, I thought I would check it out. I had looked at R before, but it didn't seem very intuitive, and I never had time to play around with it. I didn't think I would ever teach it to myself, and no one is teaching it at our institution. So I signed up for the course, which is through Coursera and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Apparently 40,000 people signed up. It's a 4-week course, with video lectures and online quizzes and assignments. I feel pretty lost, but I am working really hard at it, because I've seen how powerful R can be. I want to be that girl who can type up a command in R and make a pretty graph, or call a function with a few commands at the drop of a hat. The only remotely similar experience I have with a computer language is with SAS, and that was a long time ago. R is hard. Or maybe this course is making it hard. But once again, I feel like I am struggling the way I struggled in high school with calculus. I am trying to hard to recognize patterns (didn't I say I was good at logic? Not so sure anymore!), and spending probably 10x longer with it than most people taking this course.
I'm thinking that stretching my brain in this way is good for me, like doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku, so I will be less likely to get Alzheimer's. In the meantime, I am tired, and honestly, find Facebook and blogging much more interesting!
