I love the work I do. The fact that I get to spend large amounts of time thinking about computation and quantum theory…well I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been! And now I get to teach and yell and scream about computation and quantum theory. Yes, very lucky!
But, like most other people I know, I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I didn’t do what I currently do. Especially at times when I don’t think I’m doing a particularly good job at the work I do, I like to muse about the different possiblities. Especially on my bus ride to work. What are my favorite daydreams? Founding a new university. Writing speculative popular science books. Touring the country delivering science lectures. None of which are really that far from what I really do. Which makes me think I am a narrow minded sheltered elitist. Which then makes me think I should do something really different, like move to a ski town and open a bookstore. Or move to a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains and become a rancher. Which makes me laugh, because these really aren’t so different for the majority of people. And then I exit the bus and get to my office and read through the list of titles in the latest Physical Review Letters, and again I can’t imagine every doing anything but my current job.
O brave new quantum world!
Man, you ARE lucky!
I wonder what this dream university of yours would be like…?
I know when I’ve entertained a similar idea, I’ve wished for a curriculum that would anthropomorphise “science”… not only make the concepts of reality more visual, but also explore the imaginative possibilities…
like what do the different chemicals/hormones in our bodies feel like, exactly? what would they say if we talked to them?
These questions have always fascinated me… and so as I’ve discovered some of quantum mechanic’s conclusions (now part of pop culture… hopefully) that the observer’s “observation”/input affects what is being observed, it disturbs me that so little of that is actually explored, much less applied….
Sometimes I want to work at a bike shop, fixing bikes and teaching customers proper bicycle care.
I dream about opening a cafe at Byron Bay and devoting the rest of my life to good coffee and good surf…
(One of my annual readings of your blog, with comments probably lost to outer space.)
I always thought there should be a new university.. haven’t been any I know of in a long time (well, other than Olin, but they’re engineering), and so it feels like a lot of them are overflowing with bureaucracy.
I would work in the registrar’s office to help make them a competent and flexible system, for example. I’d much rather teach/research, of course, but y’know.