I think that what I learn simply from being in school is as important as what I learn in my classes. Throughout the semester, I have always wanted to make the most of my time here, but I have also been learning how to use time more efficiently. A few days into college, my cell phone battery died and my charger wasn’t compatible with my phone. I spent several hours during the first weekend attempting to manually connect the charger and the battery terminals to no avail. Then, my parents told me to just buy a new charger, so I ordered one on Amazon for about five dollars; I spent that money better than almost any other money I’ve spent in college because having a working phone has not only saved me time in trying to fix my charger but also made communication so much more efficient, and, consequently, I have been happier and more productive because I can text friends to meet for meals and group projects.
Such an effective quick fix like getting a working phone is what Richard Hamming, a late computer scientist, called a “small important problem,” or a problem that negatively affects many aspects of life but can be fixed easily, quickly, and cheaply. I’ve learned that it’s important to fix these as soon as possible. I can only fall asleep, for example, in a pitch-dark silent room, so after the first week of poor sleep, I started sleeping with the earplugs I brought for playing the saxophone, and later, a sleep mask, and these have markedly improved my sleep quality, and, consequently, my mood and attention. Another example: exercise. I much prefer to read in bed than I would to yoga at the gym, much less jog, but I found that the consequence of saving time by not exercising much, besides walking from class to class, was that I would spend more time fretting about how I needed to exercise more. I’ve only half-solved this problem so far, by scheduling out four five-minute exercise breaks throughout the day, but I anticipate that I will learn how to fit just enough exercise into my day to satisfy my mental quota, especially if I write a weekly schedule for next semester over winter break.
As far as what to do when I am not exercising, I have not made as much progress. I still have the problem that I had when I came to college, that there is so much that is possible to do in life that no matter what I am doing, I think that there is something that may be more worthwhile. I currently want to be a great scientist. Everything I have read and been told, though, about scientists in their youth indicates that they often pursue problems that aren’t immediately relevant to their best work—the work that made them famous. Wilhelm Röntgen, best known for discovering x-rays, spent much time measuring properties of different gases. Paul Berg, a Penn State alumnus who won a Nobel Prize for helping to create recombinant DNA, began his work on mapping metabolism. I don’t know where I will end up, and I know that I don’t have enough knowledge of what research I enjoy most, so I can’t figure out where I’ll end up just by thinking really hard about it. I need actual experience. I started working in the lab of Dr. Wang, by Biochemistry professor, but even there, I deliberate. Am I learning the skills I need to at a good pace? Is the work that I’m doing preparing me well for future research? Do I enjoy the work? Could it lead to important results? Can I get a publication? And I know that I can’t know for sure until I’ve done the research. Penn State professor Melissa Rolls began college research at Yale by culturing a seemingly inconsequential virus in some cells. But her supervisor found that she had an anomalous result: Rolls had discovered a new kind of virus replication. That discovery led to a prestigious publication and made graduate schools clamor for Rolls to matriculate at them. Thus, I have learned that since I don’t know where I will end up, it will be a better use of my time to think of ways to get experience in several areas that now interest me and pursue them until I can say with confidence that they either are or are not for me, rather than to simply imagine what my dream career would be. My uncle gave me this advice for undergraduate school: “Whatever you do, do it well.” I’ll stick with my lab, because I don’t yet know if it’s right for me. I’ll only stop working there if it ever becomes clear that it’s not.
However, my freshman seminar professor, Dr. Lüscher, said that we students may not have time to do everything well—to be perfectionists. I agree. In high school and in college, I simply found it impossible to do all of my assignments to the best of my ability—at least, if I wanted to sleep to the best of my ability as well. So I’ve learned that I need to ask the question, “How will the work I’m doing benefit me or others in the long run?” I believe that this blog entry helps me reflect on my semester and is worthwhile. But Rhetoric and Civic Life class has also taught me that despite how much I would enjoy spending a whole day gathering research for my passion blog (which I did to write the post on protein), that is simply not sustainable. In the long run, it will be more important for me to cut time on assignments where time can be cut and direct that saved time towards weightier class assignments, research, exercise, and pleasure, which I need to make good grades, get more science experience, stay healthy, and enjoy my life. So although I’m proud of my post on protein, I can’t do a post that detailed every week.
The part of Penn State that still is the most elusive, and hard to define, is to get a broad range of experiences. Not only do I desire to work in several labs throughout these years, but I also want to explore a range of leisurely activities and service organizations offered here. It seems that if something exists that college students can do, there are five clubs that do it at Penn State. I would like to explore as much as I can, but I don’t want to get overwhelmed or flounder in academics. Thus, I think the takeaway from my whole semester is this series of steps.
- Think about what I want to learn and write it down, but don’t worry about getting it all right.
- Set clear goals that will allow me to clearly determine whether or not I like each experience on the list.
- Schedule out enough time to fully experience each item, and if I can’t fit them all in, then eliminate the activities I think are least important.
- For a pre-defined length of time, like a month or a semester, follow the schedule as closely as possible. Record my experiences in a journal.
- Determine, using reason and emotion, what I should continue and what I should abandon.
- After the schedule time frame expires, repeat these steps with the knowledge I have learned in order to keep narrowing down which of the vast opportunities at Penn State are really for me.
