How I Ended Up with a B.A.

A lot of people talk about "defining moments" in their lives; where it all became clear and they made a critical decision, turned their life around, [insert optimistic fluff]

I can point to a couple of those in the route I chose to take in my college education. I mean, how did a kid that did Knowledge Bowl [Captain my senior year] and Science Olympiad in high school, and seemed destined for some sort of hard science degree in college (not to mention the obvious-- Asian!), end up with a liberal arts degree?

Two anecdotes.

I had a great friend in high school, Warren, who was one of the popular kids. His only quirk was that he was a serious conspiracy theorist. I'm talking "Big Brother is out to get me" -type stuff; he had read all kinds of books. One day he came with me to my computer networking job (like I said: nerd) because he wanted to see what I did. Apparently, I did something to impress him...although I didn't know until later the extent.

I walked into class the next day and a mutual friend of ours, Neil, came right up to me.

-"Dude, you'll never believe what happened with Warren in CWP (Current World Problems) last period."
-"What'd he do this time?"
-"We got onto some topic and everybody was yelling back and forth the room at each other. This went on for a couple of minutes and in the middle of it all, Warren stands up and yells: 'It's not going to matter. You want to know why?! Because when we grow up, and Josh D [we'll leave my last name out of this] owns all of you, you're all going to be nothing but a bunch of barcodes. So you'd better get used to it!' It was unreal. The class was speechless."

So was I.

-"...So, Josh. When you take over the world, I've got a spot as a favored minion, right?"
-"Uh, sure, Neil. Yeah."

I decided then and there that if I continued on my nerd/science track, I would end up being a dictator. I wasn't going to let that happen. That set the stage for my complete break with science. The complete break would come a few years later.

*****

I took Chem 105 my sophomore year at BYU. While I don't doubt the professor's PhD status (ok, I sometimes do), our ability to learn was severely hindered by his completely Battlefield Earth teaching. Almost every single concept he "taught" to us could, in his mind, be demonstrated by blowing up a hydrogen balloon at the end of class. Apparently explosions and mayhem are really solid, proven pedagogical techniques. Demonstration of the Law of Entropy? Redox reactions? Only thing I remember about these concepts is explosions. My roommate who had class in the same room after mine would be waiting for me afterwards, and as I walked out he would just say, "Another hydrogen balloon today, huh?" It was like witnessing the Hindenburg go down 12 times in a single semester.

One day in this class we were discussing electron clouds and orbits. The dialogue between the professor and a student went something like this:

-"Professor X [no, sorry "X-Men" fans...the "X" is for purposes of anonymity], the textbook says that the orbit is where the electron has a 99.99% chance of being."
-"That's correct."
-"So where is it the other 0.01% of the time?"
-"It could be anywhere, really. The room next door, Mars, another solar system..." I remember slamming my chemistry textbook shut. Science sure does a great job of explaining things. "...now if you'll allow me to demonstrate with this balloon. Could somebody turn off the lights...?"

I think that could be the defining moment when I gave up on science.