Branching Out

During one of my low points during COVID, I read Martin Seligman’s book, Flourish.  The book was a bit uneven, but I was intrigued enough to take the online VIA (=Values in Action) Survey of Character Strengths.   According to the test results, “Curiosity” was one of my top personality traits.  On some level, of course, I knew this, and I knew that one of the ways that COVID was hard on me was limiting my opportunities for interacting with people and having new experiences.  Yet seeing an actual computer test confirm this, and reading Seligman’s advice to lean into character strengths (just calling it a “strength” was a bit of a reframing this trait) was motivating.  It really helped me focus on finding an arena to exercise my curiosity, that involved getting off the couch and maybe even out of my house.

This next part might sound odd to many, but that arena, I decided, was going to be organic chemistry.  I took orgo in college, as a requirement for what I thought was going to be my major, biochemistry.  Chemistry had long fascinated me; the ways in which chemicals interact – again and again and again – eventually leading to the support of life and consciousness filled me with wonder and awe.  Note to the young, though: There is no wonder and awe in university courses on organic chemistry.  I was intrigued by the course material during this year-long class, but it never came close to the questions that really motivated me.  Working through a seemingly endless list of one-off reactions was not awe inspiring, at least not in my book.  My motivation slipped, my effort slipped, and my interest waned.  The truth is that had there not been grade inflation – even then – I would have been in danger of failing that course.

There was also a separate lab section and, alas, I fared no better.  I would enter the lab once a week in the afternoon, and emerge some four hours later into often the rainy or cold dark, having conducted an unsuccessful experiment and still able to smell the chemicals on me.  The atmosphere of the lab itself (and the class) was more one of desultory panic than wonder.  By the end of the year, I had practically given up, reducing the explanations of my failed experiments to something along the lines of, “The flask was probably dirty.”  That I passed at all was an act of compassion (or more likely, now that I am better immersed in life from the other side, instructor laziness).  My interests drifted elsewhere, as did the course of my life.

Now, over thirty years later, I decided that I wanted a redo.  I am not sure about what exactly drove this desire – maybe some combination of masochism and pride, but it is not something I wanted to devote a whole lot of self-reflection to.  In person classes at Brown were just beginning again, and I decided to attend the second-semester organic chemistry class.  (I am fully aware of and acknowledge the extraordinary privilege that I have in being able to do this, without cost).  The professor, a wonderful man named Paul Williard who had thought that he had seen it all, was bemused.  I didn’t take the tests for grades (although I did work through some of them on my own), but I did the homework and regularly attended the lectures.  My constructive role in those lectures, as I saw it, was to ask the stupid questions that the undergrads were afraid to.

The teaching of organic chemistry has not changed much, at least not the class I took.  My headspace, though, had.  I allowed my interest and curiosity to drive me, not requirements or grades.  “Fun” might be a strong word, but the material did keep me engaged and interested.  Still, I realized that actually learning this stuff in this the classroom was not quite enough for me.

This is the part where Professor Paul goes from wonderful to extraordinary.  He invited me into his lab.  This was lab work as I never knew it, far from my college chemistry class.  Tedious and full of failure and frustration for sure, but also full of wonder and discovery.  I spent months just picking up basic lab techniques (and I have many more to learn).  A failure led to database research, new knowledge, and a new approach, over and over until we finally got it.  “It” was usually quite small, just a piece of the process that allows us to move on to the next step.  Over the next two years I tried to carve out time each week to spend in the lab.  The lab became, as I put it to a befuddled colleague, my “happy place.”  During the day I was often preoccupied with my lab results, sometimes rushing off to my computer in the evening to research a result or new approach.

I have not lost interest in ancient Jewish history.  I am beginning a sabbatical this semester in which I hope to substantively complete a book on “lived religion” in antiquity – that is, how “ordinary” people thought about and cultivated their relationships with supernatural beings, often to the chagrin of the religious elites who sought to draw boundaries around their “traditions”.  I also remain deeply involved in several digital humanities projects, including my Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine database.  But I am already looking forward also to returning to the lab in January.

My goal in retaking orgo was simply to retake orgo.  The idea that I would end up in a lab, and that that work would become so interesting for me, was not even a glimmer.  The thought not only that I would get to do lab work but even get results that I could publish was inconceivable.  But there you have it – my first published organic chemistry paper.  The discovery is of minimal importance and the journal is not “top shelf” (although it is peer reviewed), but simply being able to get to this point and to make a new contribution to human knowledge – however tiny – is deeply satisfying.

We all know the platitude that the journey is often more important than arriving at the destination.  For me, on this journey, this represents a rest stop.  I can hardly wait to get back on the road.