Rain

21 Apr 2009

It rained really hard on the way home today, and as the defroster in my dad’s car is broken, we were mopping the windshield with a sweater every few minutes. It was awful driving weather.

The actual day at Brown was really nice. I met some really interesting faculty, and learned a lot of really cool stuff. Since the program was designed for admitted students, not just those who are already comitted to the school, as I am, there was a fair amount of courting, which was annoying, but expected. Also, now that the students have been admitted, and the school is essentially trying to woo them into giving the school their money, the control shifts to the parents, who start asking all sorts of ridiculous and non-productive questions. At a certain point, it seems as though they don’t even really care about the educational component, they are just looking to put people on the defensive, because that is fun. It can be easy to fall into the trap of wanting to hear yourself talk when you are interested in something.

Anyway, I had a really good time despite all of that. Not only did I have some excellent conversations with various faculty members (chiefly in the Geology department), but I was fortunate enough to start a conversation with a senior who then offered to show me his thesis work, which was on historic wind and temperature changes in East Africa. It had all sorts of cool charts and studies involved, and he had a lot of interesting stuff to say about the department and the way science in general works at Brown. The main thing I gained today, from him and others, was a really good sense of how to navigate the departments and resources once I get there. I am really looking forward to begininning in the fall.

The conversation I began to have with some of the Geology faculty and continued somewhat with that student was about public policy. One thing they pointed out, that I agree with, is that Geology is very much a study of how humans can interact with natural cycles. In this way, it is extremely applicable to public policy. Or rather, public policy is extremley applicable to it. There is an abiding notion in politics that the best way to become, for instance, a statesperson and work in international relations is to study political science, and government, and stuff. I would agree that it’s important to understand how governments work, but if you’re going to go work for one, as, say, a broker of international environmental policy, you had better understand how nitrogen cycles work. Scientists are in a unique position to set and influence public policy, based on their formidable understanding of the way things work. Policy needs to be set based on scientific truths, not the other way around. If you decide what your policies will be and then look for science to back them, that is bad. It is data mining, and it is just general quackery. Science necessitates conclusions, and sometimes painful ones. Governments need to respond to that by setting policies that are based on scientific truths.

More and more, I am getting interested in some kind of intellectual property law, or something of that sort. For that reason, I am considering doing some kind of engineering major (perhaps Computer Engineering, which seems to be a strong division at Brown), and then going to law school, perhaps earning a Master’s degree in Engineering as well. Having a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering makes it easier to find work, which could potentially help me pay for law school and graduate school. I also really want to teach high school math, so I am definitely considering some kind of math major as well, perhaps dual.

Also, if I work hard on my investment plans for this summer, I could enjoy a lot more financial flexibility in the future in terms of education and career.

Things are starting to come together.