Greetings All,

My name is Melanie Weltner and I am a freshman here at Penn State and am currently undecided.  I am very open minded but also extremely indecisive.  Additionally, I have this really bad habit of trying to convince myself I like things that I just do not like simply because well, I want to like them. For instance I LOVE onions, I mean I love those bad boys and I LOVE cheese so naturally when I came to realize that French Onion Soup existed I wanted to like it.  I ordered my first cup of french onion soup from Panera Bread because I had worked there and was on break.  To my surprise I completely despised the taste and was immediately frustrated because I thought “Well I like onions and I like cheese I NEED TO LIKE FRENCH ONION SOUP RIGHT??!?!!”

image found here

I ended up continually trying to eat it and eventually one day I started to enjoy it.  Obviously I was thrilled and have tried to make myself like many things that I desired to like since then, but unfortunately there are some thing I cannot even force myself to enjoy.  Turns out science is one of those things. I literally signed up for this class for two reasons the first reason is because my adviser on orientation day saying “This is a science class for people who do not like science.” Automatically I thought dang this class will be right on the money for me then and even if it is not I can just suffer through for the semester. The other reasoning was when I was reading the course description I was curious if this class would challenge me intellectually and provide me with the answer of why which I always wanted when it came to science.  To my surprise, this class has actually made me hate science less already and we’ve only had a few classes.  I think what caused my dislike for science was how clear cut all my science classes were through middle school and high school.  There was never any critical thinking involved just constant note taking and quizzes about things I did not even retain or sometimes even understand completely.  There was never any reasoning on why or how or what led up to the discovery in science, it was more so this is the answer because this is the answer which does not compute well with me.  My whole science career,whether it was chemistry or earth science, I never felt it was fully explained and I was not able to grasp the concepts and when I would ask for assistance or more explanation, I’d get a more detailed but ultimately similar response of the answer is this because it just is.  Basically I do not plan on going into any kind of science field, not only cause of past experiences, but mostly because at the end of the day I am much stronger when it comes to English or the arts.  I actually took a test in high school that tells you if you’re right brained or left brained or maybe in between.  I for one tended to be more right brained which means I am more inclined to excel in areas like the arts or English and tend to be more creative and intuitive.  Whereas left brained people are more logical and calculated, not to mention better at math and science. There is more information and banter between if this theory is a myth or not, either way it helps me justify more to myself on why science and I may not have any chemistry.