"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Doctors. Lawyers. Teachers. Engineers. These are the most common answers. But me, I always had one solid answer. No seconds wasted for thinking. No time spent on dithering. Just one straight solid answer:
"Scientist."
***
I had always been good at the physical sciences. I was one of those who were born curious. I asked many questions. And science delivered the answers. It satisfied my natural curiosity. And back then, though I had only the vaguest image of a man wearing glasses and lab coat, holding a flask and mixing chemicals, I already knew I wanted to be one.
High school came. Then college. And my answer never wavered. I still wanted to be a scientist. That was why chemistry was my first choice. I never really wanted to be a chemist per se. I just wanted to be a scientist, and chemistry was my highest science grade at the time I was filling up the UP forms.
Then grad school came. And then my resolve began to fluctuate. At times I held on. Other times, I began to be disinterested. Slowly, that feeling grew. Until I began to abhor being a scientist altogether.
Of course, this change of heart wasn't really caused by grad school alone. I think most of it was due to the philosophical revolution I was going through at that time. But sadly, though, what pushed me to jump off this boat altogether was the scientists themselves who I encountered.
Now I'm not saying they're bad people. Not at all. They're actually great people. Awesome, even. And I look up to them because of their brilliance and discipline. I just don't like how they were too focused about their work, if you know what I mean. Too focused that some of them tend to forget to develop their other aspects. They're awesome in their own fields, but from what I've seen, they are also quite imbalanced.
I mean, some of them haven't had enough of feeding their egos. Some of them do it only for the praise. Some of them do it only for the prestige. And some of them don't like fun at all. And worse, they tend to extend that mindframe to others and expect them to not have fun too. I just thought that, being familiar with the scientific method, they, of all people, should be open-minded. But some of them weren't. The gap between what I expected from them and how they are in real life somehow dims my awe of these people.
Now I don't think some of these unwanted effects can be helped. And I think I understand a bit of that transformative process myself since I was under it for almost a decade. The extravagant expectations, the never-ending pressures and deadlines in this field... They do take their toll in one's psyche. Perhaps I was simply surrounded by the wrong types of scientists. Perhaps.
Some people are telling me that I simply lack the discipline to be a scientist. And I'm not denying that. It's true. I think that if brainpower was the only requirement, I could have muddled through that somehow. But I'm a slacker. I'm one of the worst there is. But even if I were to discipline myself and make it as a scientist, I still wouldn't be happy with what I've become. I'd be a failure as a scientist. I'm sure of it. Since I'd be too distracted with life.
If I were a scientist I think I'd spend more time looking out of the lab windows. I'd be looking outside at the people. At the sky. At the trees. And that simply wouldn't do. So I'm letting it go. I have to let it go. This childhood dream proved to be not for me.
Sometimes I do wonder why I had to go all rebellious during my grad school years. Sometimes I wish I never questioned the things they were demanding from me. Sometimes I wish I never doubted my own drives and simply followed everything blindly. I'm sure, that if only I behaved myself a little I'd have more progress in this field. But questioning myself and everyone was the scientific thing to do. I cannot be a scientist, but that does not mean that I couldn't be scientific, right?
It's funny that when I was younger, I had a ready answer to the question: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Now that I'm older, I find that, strangely, it's one of the most difficult questions that I have to answer.
And if you ask me that question now, reader, my answer would be:
"I don't know."
