A new appreciation of stem

I’ve already talked about on here why I am more of a “stem” girl than- humanities I guess. I don’t know what to call the other one. Stem and whatever the other one is. The non-viscous one. It’s this and it’s that. It pours over into so many categories and definitions.

I used to think that I’m very fit for humanities, and I’m not sure why that is. Because there was a lot of evidence for the contrary, always. I always took the hard AP sciences and math, and always wanted to be a doctor.

It was probably because in middle school and high school, I always enjoyed the English and history classes. In English, I liked writing (reading is fine, too, though to me, it completely depends on what you’re reading. It’s boring if the work is boring, but it can be amazing if the work is interesting and engaging). And then history, I always liked history, and thought not only that I liked it, but that I must like it, that it’s important for me, and for others, to like history, because to study and understand history always seemed like an important, almost to be a humane task.

And I think additionally it was because I was good at writing, and always had an interest in it besides even the school purposes. This blog being a prime example, but also my early interest in novels.

And it was surprising, plus a big contrast, when I would talk to classmates and they always hated writing essays in classes, whenever one was assigned, for example in AP Euro and especially AP US His we had essays constantly assigned on history readings as homework. In AP English Language, we had a lot of impromptu essays. Or just getting a prompt, in that class, or maybe Honors English of 9th grade, that would be fun for me. To receive a topic, to just think about that topic, and get some time set ahead to write about it. In AP Lang that would usually be preceded and combined with other things I enjoyed. Like a short little prompt or poem, and then that’s what our essay would be based upon. But I would genuinely from maybe rejoicing when essays were assigned, or at the very least, not stressing about it, it never seemed like a big deal to me. It was not a big stressor. It was easy, wouldn’t take long, and was even a fun assignment to me. Sure it could be a little annoying when there were a million requirements, like certain sources and citing was always my least favorite (because the formatting was annoying, and it would just take a long time) but the actual essay was never bad, and in general even with all the requirements I could usually get it done in like 5-20 minutes. Rough drafts were never hard, and I didn’t have to overthink every little word or think about how to write a sentence for 20 minutes. To me it was just easy, the words would always just flow. So I think the exaggerated contrast led me to think I was more suited to this humanities world. But it was just at weird contrast, because what was, and what I thought, because never for a second, did I actually consider pursuing that sort of path. It was always stem, stem, stem, that was my thing. It would just be weird when my stem friends would say that they’re so glad they’re in stem because they don’t have to write essays, etc, and I would think that writing essays was never that bad, even fun, for me. It just seemed like pretty much every subject in school, I could like. The math, the science, the English, and the social studies. Which is only really a strength, and not anything like a weakness.

But I’m at just 3 weeks of my new Dostoevsky class, and now I’m forever glad to be not humanities, but stem. I thought I liked reading, I thought I liked thinking. I’m not about to say that I completely hate those things now, but the full work of his we have read, I absolutely hated reading, which you can read more about in the post about him (making me hate myself). And to have to sit there in that lecture, and listen to my professor speak, feels like I’m being held hostage. I have huge urges to walk out of the classroom, or to not even show up. Because the topics are things I do not want to think about, don’t like thinking about, and it makes me sad/mad to think about. And like I’ve said before about reading, reading can be bad when you have a lot of something horrible/bad to read. That was the case. I never could just not read something and have to stop, but I had to with that work.