I’m totally ashamed by my last post. What an asshole to think I’d be able to reduce my social interactions in the last month in a 3-paragraph post and a shitty picture of my room. I’m writing this post (a really long one) to make it up for that last one.

Heres’ the deal. Every time I make a new friend, it kinda tells me a little bit more about myself, and it feels like I’m in need of that right now. Before I came here, I had a pretty solid image of who I was, or thought I was. And now, between the days without eating, excessive drinking, late night studying and constant exposure to everybody’s existentialist ideas, that image is starting to slowly fade away. Is that a bad thing? I don’t know. I don’t think so, to be honest. I’m not done creating myself. It’d be very stupid to think you can stop reinventing yourself at 25. I sometimes feel that’s what Donald Trump did, but whatever.

So, even though I should be writing an essay about the SCOT methodology (sociologists’ mumbo-jumbo, pay no attention) I will actually devote some time to divide my latest social interactions in two main groups and I will explain how that has taught me something about my self.

Group #1. The guys I see every day, every time. The people I live with. The majority of them are german and are studying something related to art. (that is, visual or plastic arts). They’re much more visually creative than me, and they’ve managed to build up a pretty colorful and alternative house. Their paintings and drawings are everywhere! And should I mention we live in what used to be a night club? That means there’s literally a bar next to the living room. And we take it a little bit serious. Beer is one of the house commodities, so we have to make sure there’s always beer in the house. We have a system, which of course includes dish soap, oil, napkins, etcetera, I’m still trying to get my head around it. These guys are part of the underground art scene of my current town, they help organize the best underground electronic/hardcore/techno parties, and contrary to my previous belief, German people are actually super friendly. Though it would be fair to mention that sometimes they forget I don’t speak German and I cannot understand a word when they’re speaking to each other. To be honest, I feel sort of like a loser. I do. I get home so late from being at the Uni all day and I’ll go straight to my room to keep reading while they’re watching German Talk Shows or just plain drinking and having a good time. They must think I’m a nerd, and I’m starting to realize I might be one. It doesn’t feel that bad when you realize it’s the only way to achieve the kind of life you want to achieve, but sometimes I’ll forget about it, come home, and feel like the loser. On one hand is nice to have some distraction at home and realize party is just outside my room’s door.

Group #2: My classmates. They are VERY smart, and I’m still a little bit afraid of speaking my mind, not only at class. They have such different backgrounds and some of them will refer, multiple times during a discussion, to books they’ve read in their life and I’m just trying to deal with the fact that I’m the worst and less disciplined reader of the whole class. My thoughts and opinions are not garbage though, and these things we’re discussing in a “sociological approach to science” class, I don’t agree with it. They have this theory(?) or programme that says all scientific knowledge is just a social construct. And just is the word here, because I don’t mind wrapping my head around the idea that there are some social components that can influence some of the interpretation of the scientific evidence, but, and I’ve said this to them many, many times: a physical law, is a physical law. And I’ve been engaging in a lot of discussions with friends, who are, of course, sociologists. I will not address every point of our discussion, I believe that deserves a post on its own, but my point now is they must see me as this square-head, narrow-minded engineer. I just explained to them the Pi tattoo is in my arm because I truly believe math is the language of the universe (shout out to Galileo). And I want a second tattoo of the cosmological model of the origin of the universe, Lambda Cold Dark Matter, which of course is the scientific approach to explain the universe and its origin with Physics. I’m not narrow-minded, I just think you should accept scientific knowledge as the objective truth of what can be observed in nature.

And this last thing going on in my mind has really started to make me wonder if I’m in the right master programme. I wonder if all of this parts from the idea that science is a social construct. The impact has been that strong. And I think that, after all, I’m not interested in staying in the lab, or computing complex theories as theoretical physicists do. I’m also not interested in designing rocket ships, I just want people to take science as their source of objective knowledge to draw public policies with it. Going to a philosophy/sociology inclined programme seemed like the right way to go. Who knows if I’m in the right place, but I’m holding my ground.

Scientific Knowledge = Objective Truth of Observable Universe =
Foundation for Global Policies  

Do you have a better idea of who I am because of this post? I kinda have. We’re making some progress. I hope the words for my assignment will come to my mind as fast as the words for this post did. Thank you for reading through my nonsense, next time I’ll come up with something substantial and useful.

Update: I obviously changed my mind. But this post is not going anywhere, it’s a cute reminder of where I come from and I’m not ashamed of that.