Dear College of Science Faculty and Staff,
I remember a student weeping in my office. What’s wrong, I gently inquired. I’m so sad he shared, that I can’t study everything. Aha. Well, that is true, you need to pick a major – but I love your conundrum. You’re exactly the kind of curious student who will get the most out of your college experience! I think he felt better when I explained that having to make a choice now may seem constraining, but you build your learning path throughout life, choice by choice.
Choice and decision-making are crucial processes across all living systems, even bacteria. This summer I was fascinated to watch a large ant exploring whether to continue walking along a leaf or move to an adjacent pink begonia flower. It put out a leg to the flower, considered and decided to keep going along the leaf. There’s strong scholarship around decision making in relatively simple animals such as the nematode C. elegans, represented by several top labs in the College of Science (look here, here and here). Indeed, this open access review addresses how C. elegans neurons connect with foraging (food-seeking) choices.
When you choose ‘pick out or select (someone or something) as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives’, you automatically do not pick something. In any election of any kind, outcomes will not reflect the choices of everyone. It’s how things work. Different opinions result in different choices. In life, some choices are impossible to reverse, some are easy, some difficult, and in some cases, you get a future chance to voice your choice.
If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed around choices right now, focusing on what’s in your control can be helpful. There are many quotes on the topic, and Associate Dean for Research, Erin Cram provided the following, from stoic philosophy:
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” — Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5
What’s in your control can seem small, but you can embrace it, and make your personal choices carefully and to your satisfaction. You can complete and check off something on your to-do list. You can take care of yourself, and each of us can support and care about one another. We can embrace that much of our work building the Good Power of Science in the Northeastern University College of Science is under our control, and all of it is unequivocally important.
Warm wishes to everyone for a peaceful, pleasant weekend.