Seth

Some physicists happily divorce their field. They leave before their heart is broken convinced that they could never really care for the sub-sub atomic, that they could never find such abstraction fulfilling. Biology treats them better anyway.

But Seth won’t love the one he’s with. This professor of mine loathes my department, our field, and anyone who dares show interest.

My senior year, Seth was sent to meet and recruit applicants from his alma mater; I was one such applicant. He was supposed to be selling the program, but all he could talk about was how nice it was to be back and how much he wished he could stay.

He scheduled his elective course for first-years during a required first year course. He protested the time change by not showing up.

Half an hour later, someone found him. He had been in his office but we hadn’t been persistent with our knocking; the lights were off in his windowless room.

He entered with creases on his cheek from the papasan chair cushion on his office floor and a chunk of hair sticking horizontally from the side of his head with There’s Something About Mary - esque determination.

But at the APS meeting, Seth looked great for his ex. He was in pinstripe pants and really nice shoes, and even in their best plaid flannel, no pure physicist could compete.

In front of the rest of the faculty, he asked me which program it was I visited at UC San Diego.

“Physics.”

“Really – and you met with – but you still didn’t. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to. . .”

I just had to let it go.

As I Was Coming From Van Nuys

Perhaps the most frustrating of hypothetical pursuits is the search for just the right come-back long after the moment has passed.

I was on the rapid metro, and he kind of looked like Bill O’Reilly. With a much larger stomach. His sunglasses afforded his eyes a privacy that made his expression obscene. And he was far too well dressed for the way he was sitting.

He accused me of speaking “woman-eze,” a dialect characterized by indirect responses. He had asked if I had a laptop in my bag. I said, “Not with me, no.”

Fifteen minutes later, more people had boarded, and I had become re-immersed in my mp3s. I received a few comforting but uneasy glances, and I realized that he was talking about me.

“She’s part of the counter-revolution. But it’s genetic.” His wife had a 160 IQ, but that damn second X-chromosome kept her from being a provider. “They can’t do math. They can’t do science.”

“They care too much about how they look. Like you.” He turned. “You color your hair, you’ve got lipstick; you dress well. My wife dresses me.”

I do nothing to my hair but wash it, and my clothes were all hand-me-downs from friends, and. . . fuck it, yeah. Sometimes I do wear lipstick. And that’s so beside the point.

I tried to summon a laugh but, “You’re so off, it’s amazing,” came out with only a weak snicker. I was full of ammunition, but shooting blanks.

What else could I do? Spout off my resume? List every female scientist I know? Challenge him to an integration bee?

I’ve been replaying all day. Suggestions are welcome.

To You, Richard

Worries have a way of mating to produce illegitimate offspring, but the genetics of a little success bred with anxiety are much more bizarre.

I’ve read that even the great Feynman felt like an imposter at times, and thought up the following response to mounting optimism:

On being offered a job at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study:

"They must have expected me to be wonderful to offer me a job like this and I wasn't wonderful, and therefore I realized a new principle, which was that I'm not responsible for what other people think I'm able to do; I don't have to be good because they think I'm going to be good. And somehow or other I could relax about this, and I thought to myself, I haven't done anything important and I'm never going to do anything important.”

So, he let himself once again “enjoy physics and mathematical things. . ."

. . . and won the Nobel Prize for what he did while he was there.

Bring It On!

When he quoted the Lord’s Prayer, I didn’t let on that I thought of John Candy imploring gold medals to be won and Godspeed through turn seven.

I nodded that with our increasingly secular government, our country is far from a Heavenly Kingdom.

But, his real hook was hurricane Katrina.
Considering Europe’s floods and last year’s tsunami, don’t I think that this all has to end soon?
Jehovah Is Coming.

I thanked him for my copy of Watchtower, “Natural Disasters: Are They Getting Worse?” (Yes? And inside I can learn why we should rejoice?)

Then, he found out that I go to school in LA.

“Ohh, that must be exciting! They had a few earthquakes last year didn’t they?”

“Umm. . . yeah I actually felt a small one during one of my final exams, it was a little scar-”

“I’d like to be in one sometime; not a really big one but – just to experience it once. And out there, they really know how to deal with it. I heard they’ll fill their bathtubs with water in case the power goes out.”

“Well, my parents do that here if there’s a thun-”

“Because they can lose power for days, and if your bathtub’s filled with water at least you can use the water to flush the toilet. They really think of everything. – Well, nice to meet you!

The Witness at my door was just kid from cushy suburbia wanting to be Eminem.

A Good Excuse

Applied math is one thing:

“. . . so, I duct-taped cardboard scraps on the fan I bought – for $15 – from e-bay. . . but it kind of just fell apart”

“Well, I had all this static in my experiment, so I bought dryer sheets and rubbed them all over my apparatus. It didn’t help, and now whenever I walk into lab I get a headache from the Downy fresh smell.”

Biologists have white coats, pipettes, and million dollar grants.

As much as Erin (duct-tape) and I (dryer sheets) enjoyed speaking fluid dynamics when our pre-med friends got too excited about proteins – there was a deep sense that we were doing playground science for our senior theses.

We comforted ourselves with the idea that there was far too little time between the due date of our manuscripts and graduation for our department heads to do much more than skim everyone’s abstract. We spent the final Saturday before the thesis deadline at Fenway.

I hoped my advisor didn’t notice my sun-burned nose as he detailed his summer plans for the project.

I described my meeting to Erin:

“He wants to make it a paper, he even said, ‘Heck it’s summer, we’ll send it on over to ------, see what they say.’ I’m quitting science if my thesis gets published in ------.”

And recently I learned:

There’s a new satellite journal, ------- Physics. The editors think the paper’s interesting; the reviewers think it’s publishable. It hasn’t been accepted yet, and it’s not ------ herself. But, my conception of science has been sufficiently debased to warrant, at least, some time off.

The Risible Lift

I try to stifle competitive urges.

And, I’ll think I’ve killed them all – until I get on the elevator.

Here in the med school, the first one on doesn’t ask where the others are going. He selects his floor, steps back, and we can make our move.

If we get on at one and someone hits two, a sheepish blush says “I fold.” Fifth floor cardiology says “beat that” seventh oncology says, “Oh, I will”. But as the round closes and oncology smirks, the tech from the ER yells “Hold the door!” And her cart full of samples with biohazard labels beat the clipboards any day.

Record Labels

Revealing that I’m a physics major from “Boston” has never been a good ice-breaker. But I fare far worse when initial impressions are based on musical taste.

I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from the time in 4^th grade when my best friend asked who I liked to listen to, and I said the name of the only musical artist I could think of – Raffi.

Four years later, I studied before a reunion with that old friend. When the question was posed I answered confidently, “Boyz II Men”

“Ugh, R and B?”

I’m sure she could picture the townies cruising among our blinking traffic lights blaring “Down on Bended Knee” after the snow birds had gone to sleep.

In the era of free Napster, I downloaded indiscriminately and found a band I really liked -- HIM. But they play Finnish “Love Metal”.

I roll my eyes at Bryan Adams’ “Baby I’d die for you.” -- It’s a little dramatic. But I’m somehow fine with “Join me in death” -- honey – pentagram, 666.

But I won’t be known as a romantic, and certainly not one prone to tragic emotional debilitation. So, without a real answer to the question I say Weezer, but apologetically, to acknowledge that they’re a little too popular. Or, in a complete cop out I’ll cryptically say I’ve been buying movie soundtracks recently, so that I can smoothly transition to my aversion for Natalie Portman’s acting via the obscene Shins advisement in Garden State.

And I’ll admit, for those of you who have been paying attention, that I sometimes still get Baby Beluga stuck in my head.