Scientific Me

      Science and I haven’t always gotten along. We started out just fine; in elementary school, I loved science. I would always volunteer to participate in the annual science fair at my school, and would spend a lot of my own time at home doing the work for it. I didn’t really think of it as work though, because to me, I was just having fun learning about my environment and world. In third grade, I remember doing the classic salt and ice cube experiment for my project. I was fascinated to find out that salt actually lowers the freezing point of water, and I was so excited to share it with the judges at the fair. I vividly remember presenting my findings to the judges, explaining everything perfectly, and receiving a lot of positive feedback. I was so sure that I was going to get first place, and I remember being so upset when I didn’t even get an honorable mention. This experience stuck with me because it was this day where I think I started to become less and less interested in science. I (ridiculously) saw myself as a failure for not placing in the science fair that year, and I never participated in it again after that.

My excitement and passion for science picked up again in seventh grade, when on the first day of school, my teacher told us that we were going to be dissecting a bunch of animals that year. Seventh grade me was so excited to get the chance to do that. But, as the year went on, we didn’t dissect a single thing. I was upset and felt a little lied to, but that changed when on some day in the spring, my teacher told us it was time to dissect! I couldn’t have been more excited as I wondered what we would get the chance to dissect. My excitement quickly turned into disappointment though, as I realized all we would get the chance to dissect that day was a pickle. We cut it in half, took out its seeds, then stitched it back together. It was probably the most boring, unexciting dissection you could possibly do. After that day, we never got to dissect anything else, and it made me mad. After all of these promises, all I got to dissect was a pickle? I think this led me to be not so enthusiastic about science for the rest of my school career. It also didn’t help that from that year, all the way through my senior year of high school, I hardly did any experiments in my Science classes. We would just take notes, watch videos, and prepare for the regents exam at the end of the year. This caused me to end my high school career with somewhat of a disdain for science, which is something I still somewhat have today.

After reflecting upon these past experiences, I found a few patterns that probably caused me to feel the way I feel about science today. When I was excited about science, it was usually because I was doing a bunch of experiments. I don’t learn too well just reading textbooks and taking notes, so when the last six years of my science career consisted of solely that, I struggled and didn’t enjoy the subject at all.  In grades kindergarten through third, pretty much all we did for science was cool experiments. This is why I loved it so much, and why I always wanted to participate in science fairs and things of the sort. I loved discovering things though experiments, as you could actually see what was happening, rather than just reading about it. I also liked the sense of accomplishment that came with conducting and seeing the results of my own experiment. I feel as though a lot of students feel the same way as I do. Science isn’t a subject meant to be taught through textbooks; it’s meant to be taught through experiments and exploring.

Another reason I think I didn’t enjoy science was that I didn’t think I was good at it. After I didn’t get the recognition I (selfishly) thought I deserved from my third grade science fair, I got turned off from the subject. I didn’t think of myself as a scientist after that point, and I carried that negative attitude around with me for the rest of my schooling. I never took any science classes as electives in high school, even though I had plenty of opportunities to do so. I didn’t even think twice about it, which tells you all you need to know about my attitude at that time. I didn’t see myself as successful in the subject. Looking back now though, I really wish I didn’t have that attitude. Science is a fun and engaging subject, and I wish I gave it more of a chance in the past. To me, science is the study of our world, and how everything in it works. With this definition, I can definitely see why students would be excited to learn about the subject, even though I haven’t gotten too excited about it in the past. I hope that I rediscover my love for science through teaching it, and I really think I will! When I’m teaching science to my future students, I’m going to keep it fun and engaging, so that they don’t up with the same negative attitude about science that I had.