The Downside of Education

I have nearly survived my second day of school, and I am reveling in the new knowledge gained--I can now find the true dip of any roadcut I happen across. Of course, I live in Hawaii, and such few roadcuts as there are happen to normally be overgrown with ninety thousand different plants, thus obscuring the rock which is probably just basalt in any case.

And therein lies the problem.

Who (besides me and other geology majors) care about the dip and strike of formations? It's not good party talk fodder (unless among fellow geologists) and when you mention it to other people, their eyes are bound to glaze over by the time you get to "roadcut" out of their brain's self-defense system activating. Especially if you've attempted to talk geology more than once to them already.

While other people admire the sunset for it's sparkly colors, I also think about the proton-proton chain and nuclear fusion and the inevitable expansion of our sun in 5 billion year's time, by which date humanity will either have been wiped out or have gotten off the planet. While other people see a stark landscape of jagged lava rock, I see basalt and olivine and sulphuric deposits

That's the thing about education--the more of it you get, the less you are like other people. A person who's wandered the seven seas will be different than the person who has never been more than sixty miles from home. A person who has sat through a single class of any topic will be different from the person who never had a class of that topic.

I'm fairly certain that changing isn't a bad thing. But I find myself having to think about my words so that I can arrange them to match the corresponding level of knowledge of the person listening. If I don't I'll have to repeat myself anyways when they go, "Huhwhat?"

The sun just shines, mkay?