It definitely wasn't them, it was me. I suppose we'd just grown apart but it still hurt that they'd found someone else so quickly. Someone more fun and interesting.
The feeling of getting dumped is one of the worst things. Great writers, poets and musicians have written countless works on the topic. Romeo and Juliet begins with Romeo in the throws of unrequited love. Arguably Bob Dylan's best album Blood On The Tracks is considered his "break-up" album. Nearly everyone (bar the 40 year old virgin types) has felt the sense of rejection and self-pity common to so many painful splits.
Well here's my contribution to these annals of great works. Last week I got unceremoniously dumped...by a hoard of 12 years olds! Or at least if felt like I was being dumped.
I'd been taking part in the event I'm a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here-A free online event where school kids get to hang-out with and quiz scientists. It’s an X Factor-style competition between scientists from all different backgrounds where the students are the judges. Imagine hundreds of mini Simon Cowells. Groups of scientists are split-up into "Zones" of about half a dozen and the students challenge the scientists with all kinds of whacky, irreverent questions in online chat rooms. Each half hour slot with the kids is a non-stop, carpel tunnel inducing, fast-paced frenzy of txt spk and inquisition. A whole event lasts a week and each day someone gets voted out by the students for being their least favourite scientist. Other than the education and fun aspects there's a £500 prize for each Zone scientist to win to go on and communicate their work with the public after they've recouperated and regained the feeling in their fingers.
In my case, it seemed to all start so promisingly.
Like most early stages of a relationship we wanted to know a little about each other. What do you do for a living? Do you like your job? Why do we have two nostrils?
But it wasn't long before someone else caught their eye. And as my jealousy grew, they brazenly shunned me. I would sit in the virtual equivalent to the corner of a room and watch as they would chat and laugh with the other scientist. With every new emoticon a dagger was plunged deeper in to my self esteem as I realised that perhaps I wasn't such a groovy, down-with-the-kids statistician after all.
An d soon enough I'd joined the ranks of Stacy Solemon, Will Young and Girls Aloud. I'd been evicted.
To justify my failure I've convinced myself that it wasn't a level playing field. I'm a statistician. I was in a Zone with 5 other scientist with widely varying fields. In particular, the final 3 scientist we're young attractive and enthusiastic life science types. One of them works in marine science in a lab overlooking Table mountain in South Africa and another works in the jungle doing something with monkeys. In actual fact, the answers we all gave to the question asked of us weren't so different. However, the profile of monkey hugging and swimming with dolphins was clearly better than being the guy with a really good calculator. But of course this is all sour grapes. My Zone winner won because she deserved it.
The I’m a Scientist event was initially run in 2008 and has gone from strength-to-strength. It now runs twice a year, with a smaller event in March leading up to the main June event. I strongly encourage any scientist to take part. After all, its better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment