#this is what reading burke and sartre and touching grass does to an overwhelmed bio major

[homeostasister]

I’ve been losing motivation in school lately and thinking a lot about why I want to go into biology research anyway. I’ve come to this conclusion before and I’m sure I’ll have to come to it again, but for me it’s ultimately a matter of being able to appreciate living things. I may gain and lose interest in specific subjects, but life will always matter to me. I could say it’s because we’re all alive together in this confusing, dangerous world, and for all we hurt and exploit each other, we all share a common history and a common goal, and all life deserves respect and appreciation, and that would be a nice sentiment, but it’s not the reason I like life. If it were, then it would be dependent on a single perspective, a single model of the world. But the models are what we build to explain and communicate our experiences. They do crosstalk with and influence our perceptions of those experiences, and they are instrumental in our ability to do anything productive with them, but they can only justify action in and of themselves so long as they are believed unquestioningly—and I think no belief should be beyond questioning. The reason I get invested in learning about life is the same reason I get invested in anyone or anything—because, in one way or another, I can relate to it. I can share the calm contentedness of a purring cat. I can wonder at what it would be like to be a bee, or an ant, or a wasp. I can take comfort in the steady, patient presence of a tree. I can be inspired by my own immune system’s ability to adapt and remember, and to strike a dynamic balance between self-defense and tolerance, while warily admiring the strategies which pathogens have developed to subvert it. And I can look at any living organism and know that, for all our differences, we share the same fundamental building blocks; we share a common ancestor and were shaped by common patterns and processes. And this is why I want to study biology—because primarily, I love life. And I don’t have to go into research, even if it is what I’ve decided to pursue and what I’ve been working towards since high school. Because life is always there, and I have always found ways to appreciate it. And I have set myself on this path, and given myself the chance to pursue a career in microbiology research, and I only got this far because, for better or worse, I did build myself a scaffold of unwavering belief—but I could not have maintained it if it did not rest on a foundation of fundamental identification with and appreciation for life. I don’t really know whether research is the best path for me anymore. I have a lot of respect for science as a tool for understanding the world, and I’d like to believe I could contribute to that work. I know it won’t be easy. I hope it could be worth it, and for now, I’ll do what I can to maintain that hope and work towards realizing it. But no matter what I decide to do, I want to be able to keep learning about and appreciating life, in whatever form that may end up taking.