The Bio Blog

I think Aristotle gets a bad rap. A lot of popular opinion includes some unwarranted scorn towards his ideas, since a lot of his science has been disproven since his death over 2000 years ago. What I like most about Aristotle, though, is that he was into everything. He was one of the fathers of modern philosophy and of the scientific method, as well as writing on such different topics as politics and biology. I like to imagine that Aristotle’s blog-bio would change every few weeks as he decided he was most interested in his new favorite topic, because, well… that’s me. Some days I’m very single-mindedly writing and recording music, followed by obsessive research on an engineering topic that came up in one of my classes, and the next day I may be immersed in a book about math history. The book is key, really, because reading is generally my default state. My family has a running joke that our conversations generally follow the same format:

“Nathan, do you have any plans for after dinner?”

“No, I’m not doing anything.”

I love fiction, science fiction, history, literature, nonfiction (math history was not a joke, that stuff is way more interesting than it sounds), and cookbooks. My college bookcase contains, in fact, one cookbook, two books on philosophy, The Iliad, a collection of Number Theory proofs, a history of Waterloo, and a Jules Verne collection. Full disclosure: just listing those books made me a little euphoric because I can’t wait to read/reread them.

I was born to two Army officers*, so I spent most of my life moving from place to place, enough so that I can’t accurately say which of my elementary schools was in which state. When we finally stopped moving around (during high school), I had already adjusted to a lifestyle of flux – You’re the new kid, you start to fit in, you make some friends, then you leave them and don’t stay in touch. It sounds sad, but it’s more cathartic than anything; I don’t ever feel like I’ve missed out on a precious set of memories or development because I made new friends every few years. I will say, though, that college showed me a personality weakness born of this moving – I depended upon being the new kid to make friends. On the first day of Vanderbilt, everyone is the new kid, and I didn’t have that handicap working for me, so I found myself less eager to seek out companionship than a lot of people around me.

A song by one of my favorite bands uses the lyric: “Now I’ve got lots of friends, yes, but then again, nobody knows me at all.” Now, I’m not so wrapped up in myself that I subscribe to the “no one understands me” school of thought (especially since it’s such an unrealistic expectation for all your friends to somehow know your innermost self), but that lyric is important to me because it represents what I never want to be. I would take a few close friends over knowing a lot of people any day, and, by that metric, I think I’m pretty successful. There are people in my life that mean a lot to me, and whose company and conversation I enjoy day after day, and… that’s enough!

*One of the biggest commitments in my life right now is Army ROTC. Serving in the military is a legacy on both sides of my family (after immigrating during the potato famine), and I suppose there’s always been a piece of me that knew I would end up walking the same path. As far as influences go, ROTC has certainly given me a sense of responsibility, discipline, and maturity (sometimes) , but I don’t feel like I’ve grown up enough yet to even consider having a real job and doing real grown-up things like being in charge of other people.

I’d actually like to close with another lyric from the same band:

                “I can’t really say why everybody wishes they were somewhere else, but in the end the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself.”

                Growing up is something I feel like I’m still working on. Sure, I live in a room on my own, provide my own food, and such, but that can’t be what makes a person an adult, that’s just understanding when you’re hungry (and satisfying your needs with Snapple and baguettes). Maybe everyone looks more grown up from the outside, though, because I surely can’t be the only one around here still 12 at heart. Maybe growing up is getting to a point where you don’t feel guilty for still being a kid inside? I kinda hope so.