SiOWfa16: Science in Our World: Certainty and Controversy

Hello my name is Darby Smith and I am a Freshman here at Penn State. I joined this class simply because I am in the Division of Undergraduate Students and at orientation I answered my advisors question of “Do you want to major in anything science related,” with a hard no and he signed me up for this class right away. In fact, during the basic flood of small talk that took over most of my conversation during the first week of freshman year there was a lot of people asking what I am interested in majoring in. I have never had much of an answer to that inquiry except for the fact that I do not want to do anything related to science.

This evident pure hatred for science accumulated in my mind after many years of science classes throughout grade school and high school. I cannot fully claim that these teaches are “bad teachers,” but I think I can claim that they lacked real life examples that related to what they are teaching in the course. Therefore whenever I thought of science, my brain linked it directly with pure memorization and numbers, and I knew that I preferred critical thinking.

After attending my first SC200 class my perspective about science began to change. Something that really stuck out to me was when Andrew explained how scientists that are doing important things like researching climate change and cancer treatment are never really recognized by the outside world. It clicked in my head that some of the most valuable careers in our society are purely science related and they require a great deal of critical thinking. Before this class I thought that If I wanted to realistically end up with a good job and make a decent amount of money I would have to graduate with a business or a law degree, and now my mind is more open to the importance of science majors. In fact, when researching about the recent increase in demand for STEM jobs found in this article here. I realized that if you work hard and become qualified in a STEM major, you actually have a better chance of becoming successful in the future. It is still not likely that I will follow through with a major in the science department, but after that first SC200 class I am definitely more appreciative of the world of Science and all it entails.