When I came to work with the good people at DecoScience it was and still is as a photographer/administrative assistant/all-around-worker-bee. I had previously been working as a medical laboratory assistant so I had some biology knowledge with medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, and very basic chemistry in regards to the human body. Needless to say, I soon found out how little I actually know about the wonderful, wide world of chemistry.
I have known my coworker Dana for many years as we have worked together before and took the medical laboratory assistant studies together as well so I could hold a conversation with her and not feel completely lost when she spoke about what she was working on. Coming to DecoScience was a whole different animal though. It was not just Dana but a team of chemists who really know their thing and enjoy talking about all things chemistry. Lunchtime conversations would inevitably end up on the latest research or theoretical ideas about this and that. For the most part, I could follow along all right but would not have anything to add because I just did not have any basis to do so. The weird thing was sometimes it felt as if they were even speaking a foreign language and every once in a while, I would actually glean a small moment of understanding if fleeting.
Let me start by saying, I am not a stupid person but I really started to feel like a fish on a bicycle. Many times while these conversations were going on around me I would start to drift off mentally. They would be speaking about the orientation of the molecules, the double bonds of something or other, or how one alcohol is better to use in such and such because of whatever. I would be thinking, wow, I have no clue, what is wrong with me, is that a squirrel outside threatening me with a pine cone? etc. It is a strange thing to think that in day to day life, you feel pretty competent and knowledgeable and then you are out into a world where you are completely out of your element. It amazes me that these chemists have so much information in their individual brains regarding elements, compounds, chemical formulas, and how they relate to each other. I am amazed by the amount of knowledge they hold. Although I have always had an excellent memory (up until the last year or so… not too relevant today…I digress…it’s what I do), but it is not that kind of memory, so I am in awe.
Now, you would think that putting me into this new situation at the ripe old age of 48 may cause some angst at my ignorance, but no. The good thing about being such a chemistry newbie is that things that they, “the chemists”, may take for granted, I find fascinating. My fascination at watching something as small as the interface between oil and water and the way that small drops of food colour will balance at that interface until they cannot hold their integrity any longer and break through their encapsulation to spread out through the water below. How often do you look at a bubble and see all the prismatic colours that dance around its surface? Do you ever look at a spider’s web after a rainfall and see all the tiny crystal -like drops along the threads of webbing? There is science all around us and it only takes a moment to see it.
Sometimes we are so busy living our lives that we do not take the opportunity to really see the world around us and all the truly amazing things there are to see. I have always held the belief that there is never an end to learning and when you feel the most lost is sometimes the best time for learning, if you are willing to try. As a word of advice from me: take the time, see the world for all the wonders it hold and lessons it can teach, and watch the squirrels…they are planning to take over the world.
–Janice Willson
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