High School Drop-Out to Physics Honor Society

As a child I had always considered school to be a prison. To me, it was a boring, worthless place, full of teachers who didn't care. I always felt that I could learn more without them. By the time I quit high school in 1975 at age seventeen, the idea that I was someone who despised school had become part of my self-image.

In the early 1990's, that idea began to change. My husband, Hal, and I decided that it was time to end our business of caring for and training racehorses. As our work with the horses was winding down, Hal returned to college. In a past stint in college he had majored in chemistry, but never finished his undergraduate degree. This time around, he enrolled at the nearby state university and quickly discovered a passion for the science of geology, finished his bachelor's degree and went on to grad school to pursue his doctorate.

For me—the high school drop-out—even considering taking a university class was out of character, not to mention intimidating. But, as I watched my husband enjoying his classes, my feelings toward school began to shift. Looking through the course catalogs that were lying around the house stirred my curiosity.

School was such a foreign place to me that I had no idea what subjects I might enjoy. Due to my life-long attraction to Hinduism and Yoga Philosophy, I enjoyed reading comparative religion and philosophy texts. And my curiosity about the natural world led me to read physics-without-equations-type books. Although I felt an affinity for those descriptions of the physical world, I was fairly certain that I'd never be able to learn the mathematics involved in understanding science in an academic sense.

I spent a couple of semesters trying different courses... accounting, philosophy, writing, geology. In the first semester of geology, I fell in love with the beautiful descriptions of the crystallization processes in rocks and chose geology as my major. The study of any science requires an understanding of mathematics, but I had never taken any math courses beyond eighth grade. So there I was in my 30s, trying to learn algebra and really struggling, but something inside told me to give it everything I had, so I kept at it.

On one hand, I had the pretty severe disadvantage of my lack of high school algebra, but on the other hand, I had an extraordinary and uncommon advantage of having studied the language of Sanskrit with a remarkable teacher, Vyaas Houston. Studying with Vyaas, I had learned the yogic technique of steady, focused attention. Western culture seems to hold the view that one's span of attention is something one is born with—a long attention span is a gift and a short attention span is cause for medication. The Yoga Sutras, a body of literature composed in the Third Century, A. D. by the philosopher Patanjali, describes methods for tapping the powerful resources of the mind.

The key to focused attention is not to try to stop the mind from its wandering altogether—this would doom you to failure, as it is the nature of the mind to wander—but to learn how to immediately notice when it wanders and bring it back to the focus point. By using this technique to its full advantage, in both the classroom lecture and in my studying, I was able to overcome my ignorance and my fear of mathematics. After successfully finishing my first encounter with algebra, I completed two semesters of calculus in an accelerated summer session.

I continued to study geology and enjoyed the introductory physics courses that were part of my general science requirement. After receiving a fellowship for a year-long, NSF-funded undergraduate research project in geology, I realized that I was much more interested in physics than rocks, and switched majors. Not only was I the only woman in the physics department, I was old enough to be most of my classmates' mother!

I thrived in the academic environment. As the realm of abstract thought and mathematics opened to me and became a familiar place, I finally began to understand what scientists meant by the phrase "the elegance of the equations." The language of mathematics allows for beautiful descriptions of the physical universe, descriptions of both subtlety and grandeur that are impossible to describe or comprehend using spoken language alone. Ultimately, I was invited to become a member of both SigmaPiSigma (Physics Honor Society) and PiMuEpsilon (Mathematics Honor Society).

I graduated in December 1997 with a BSc in physics (Summa Cum Laud) with minors in math and geology, just one month before my 40th birthday. It had been quite a few years!

During my time as a physics major, it had been my plan to go on for a doctorate in theoretical physics. The undergrad course I enjoyed the most was Quantum Theory, and I did quite a bit of extracurricular reading on the subject. I was interested in mathematical descriptions of time and causality. I started to explore possible graduate physics programs and even spent some time with prospective advisors who encouraged me in my plans for graduate work. However, our financial situation made it clear that I was not going to be able to do that, at that time anyway. Perhaps not even in this lifetime, but who knows? The world of physics and math feels like ancient history now. But one of the things I learned from my educational experience... never say never. Life can take you in amazing directions, if you're open and ready!