Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development. (100 to 250 words)
33% of life is sleeping. 20% is driving to places that actually mean something. 30% is waiting around once you've got to the place. 10% is tedious human and biological formalities like shaking hands, going to the restroom, eating, etc. And 7% is fun, meaningful experience. My question: how do I make the 60% of boring experience interesting, non-boring, and, for lack of better words, meaningful?
When I began to read Feynman’s Lectures on Physics and novels like Gravity’s Rainbow, I found my answer. I began to realize that the world of physics that exists inside textbooks is the same as the world that I live in now. I began to realize that the seemingly intangible abstractions of science were really the most fundamental building blocks of the world around us.
Physics became that thing turned common and mundane daily tasks into the mysterious and truly wonderful adventures. I began to wake up dreaming of light particles. I washed my face feeling the tickle of water molecules against my cheek. Places as boring as a DMV office suddenly became supercharged with the magma of the stars: I could wonder at the quantum mechanical interactions of telephone waves, or I could dream of gravitational parabolas as kids threw a ball back and forth.
Learning science is like learning a new language. It is a whole new way of seeing and experiencing and interacting with the world.
That idea is powerful to me.