Decision Variables

Maximize[{what you can do,
constraint, constraint, constraint, constraint},
{what you have,
what you've been given}]

            “I want you to write something before we talk next,” Becca said.

            “Is it for the blog?”

            “It’s for science!!  I want you to be the first.”

            “What if I screw it up?” I asked.

            And there’s my relationship with Becca.  It’s not the most perfect example conversation we’ve had or will have, but it’s apt.  She pushes me towards what I wish I were, I know what she means without her using the words, we’re over-the-top nerds/enthusiasts of knowledge, and I’m a bundle of insecurities (Becca might be, too, but it was my line in the conversation).

            My usual writing style is very stream-of-consciousness, which describes how I think, but doesn’t usually impress me.  I prefer to read my academic writing.  The more grammatically sophisticated, educated, fancy papers.  They still have very Kaleigh touches—unique turns of phrase, a tendency to make odd connections, and a general sense of humor about them.  Again, a good description of my relationship with Becca.

            I play some Brett Dennen (because he’s near the top of my list of stations on pandora.com and this is too serious for Britney Spears).  I almost open Word, but I hunt down a notebook instead because I learned in college that I prefer to handwrite first drafts.  It helps the words stick better in my head.  It helps me organize my thoughts better.  Which is mildly pointless if I choose to stick with stream-of-consciousness.  But I might change my mind.  It’s not uncommon for me to write two versions of something in different styles, then agonize over which to use, refine, submit for as long as it took me to write the drafts.

            Choosing is the worst.  Like going to the bathroom when it’s too cold.  I hate seeing the other options cut off to wither and die, abandoned.  Least loved.  I notice that I’m writing a bit more like Becca than I usually do (though she might not see that).  Not choosing is making a choice, too, though.  Do I use this draft?

            I have been incomparably blessed in my choices.  I chose the right college, nerdy science summer camps and archaeology activities, major, roommates, grad program, high school and “adult” friends (I’m making lots of lists, as I’m wont to do, and adding a lot of parenthetical comments, as I’m wont to do, and being very meta, as I’m wont to do).  I chose to sign up for water quality monitoring in sixth grade, which led to the President’s Environmental Youth Award; which led to the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Sciences and National Youth Science Camp; which led to Ohio Wesleyan University, which led to Emily (who chose me), Megan, Natalie, and Neill.  I chose chemistry and Young Life, which led to the Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellowship and Shannon and swing dancing as a community and Becca and Brandon.  I didn’t choose the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Agricultural Science or zoology, science grad school, or a non-percussive instrument.  So many choices.

            I come from a long line of my big and small choices and an infinite string of others’ decisions.  (I make that sentence the first of a new paragraph with a “¶“ symbol on my handwritten copy).  My sister Maggie begged me not to skip eighth grade (I did anyway; we finally started getting along because she showed she actually liked me).  My sister Kari called me at 12:30 AM, the middle of my night, to sob that her foot was broken halfway through her performance in Hello, Dolly! (I cried with her; we finally started getting along because she showed she actually liked me).  Emily intentionally pursued me freshman year.  Barry and Barb and Andy and Dez chose me for nerdy science camps.  My mom didn’t abort me (which sounds cliché, which I love and hate, but several people told her to).  Becca asked me to write between one and seven hundred words.  For science!  I wrote about myself in choppy sentences and fragments.  (What happened to my beloved complex compound sentences?)  I didn’t advance science or the English language.  But I hope I wrote something Becca will like because she is brilliant with her mathaphors and insight and hilarity and confidence and brokenness, and she honors me with her friendship and her request for one to seven hundred words.

            And I probably won’t edit this much, unless I scrap it for a different approach entirely when I decide that the “choppy confessional meta thing” isn’t good enough, because late Victorians hate the earnestness of the earlier Victorians and filling an entry with inside jokes and references doesn’t seem like a good way to start a blog.

For Science!

The following is a collection of compositions from the notebooks of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, dedicated to keeping rigorous notes on their experiments in the human experience.