On Choices

I'm crossing the grey concrete expanse of the main campus, when I walk into a concrete pole. I'm not really looking where I'm going - I'm too busy reading. My head stings, and not for the first time, I wonder what the hell I'm doing here.

I'm not the only one wondering. Recently, I've taken to dying my hair a somewhat alarming shade of magenta - yelling at me about my hair is the only thing that distracts my mother from questioning my life choices. It seems a fair trade, especially since the dye washes out, and I'm currently rather attached to my life choices, specifically my choice of major, specifically: writing.

This is the part that gets blank stares, the point in every conversation where "so what course are you?" comes careening into view and I say, sometimes nonchalantly, sometimes with an embarrassed sort of half-shrug, "21W." Half the time people don't even know what that is, or need confirmation, as though they're worried they misheard and could offend me by treating my statement as fact. "So, um... is that... [and here their voice drops] writing?" they ask.

Yes, yes it is.

Now, I didn't apply to an enter MIT with the express intention of studying writing. (Who does that?) Up until July of last summer, I was firmly and whole-heartedly a 7* and 5** major, then just a 7 major when I realized Course 5 was the devil's science. And then, in fits and starts, it struck me. I'm good at science. I'm very good at science (it's not bragging if it's true, right?). I have good hands; I make experiments work. What I'm not good at is lecture classes. I actually and officially suck at lecture classes. If they could, I expect that most of my professors would probably send me emails along the following lines:

Dear Telomere,
You fail hardcore.
Sincerely,
MIT Faculty and Staff

So there's that. Lectures and tests and your standard p-set a week format just don't do it for me the way writing does. I will happily write ten to twenty pages a week, but when it comes to learning a sheet of reactions for a 5.12*** test, my brain just shuts down.

As a scientist, I was miserable. As a writer, I'm happy, mostly. Putting it like that, of course, it seems so facile, which most major life decisions never really are. But basically, it boils down to this.

*Biology
** Chemistry
*** Organic Chemistry