Update

It's been a while since I did a general update, so here we go.

 

I finished the first draft of the novel at the end of August. I don't know why this one's taking so much time but by now I've resigned myself to this fact. At the end of September, I started on the first edit. It's going--you guessed it--slowly. I'm slightly over ¼ through, with everything else that's been going on, including nursing the cat who thought he could take on a car. I'm hoping to have the edit done by the ned of November, which is waaay later than I'd hoped, but it'll have to be. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Then, this month I've started my studies. 

 

I've always had a passion for both physics and astronomy, but thanks to a super demanding high school teacher [1] I ended up studying my third passion, literature. But I never stopped liking science or wondering if I'd made the right choice. Recently I got back to is through taking some EdX courses, but, though they are very good, they are all entry level courses--so I get to study the same intro-level stuff over and over, and by the time it gets interesting, the course ends. 

 

Then I met Tricia Sullivan, a great writer who's now getting her PhD in astrophysics. And we started talking. And I started thinking. And then I signed up.

 

And now I'm doing Open University [2] course towards a degree in Astronomy or Physics (the paths diverge in second year and I haven't decided yet). I'm excited, if a bit scared. I haven't done any math since I left high school... Part of me wonders if I'm having a mid-life crisis… But the rest is just super excited that I'm finally doing what I always wanted.

 

I don't know if I'll succeed. But at least I'll have tried… So--yeah?
 

 

[1] My high school physics teacher was great in one way--he approached teaching science as if we were in graduate school, not high school. However, he was not only demanding, he made everyone feel like an idiot. And I believed him. I was 15. I had the best grades in his class--but I was convinced I was a failure. So I gave up.

 

[2] Open University is an established and respected British university that delivers all the courses almost entirely on line (with some day sessions). Of course, they don't offer the courses where you need hand-on experience. No medical school there. But sciences are well represented, and their astronomy students do lab work through telescopes all over the world.