The Ultimate In Gaming Excitement

Why spend a few weeks when you can spend a whole lifetime?

Have you ever really gotten into a video game, to the point that you have to finish it? To the point that you might not call it addiction, but you could imagine what addiction might be like?

Days of play turn into weeks, turn into months, … , until finally — you won! You finished. It was awesome. You bought 3 t-shirts and a hat.

So, what’s next? Do you wait for what’s popular and new? Or, do you explore a bit more broadly, looking for a challenge?

As any true gamer knows, winning a game of skill requires tenacity, ingenuity, problem solving, and a dose of cleverness, and the more you play and strive for victory, the better you get at games in general.

What was your first video game? Think back to that first game… Was it easy, even just getting started? And how about now — have you ever stopped to realize how you can pick up a new game a lot faster than you learned your first game?

You’d probably agree that this is true for many things, like programming, playing tennis, taking tests, or surgery (not recommended for home study) — people get better with practice, and some skills start to transfer.

Personally, I played video games for many years (OK, many, many years) before discovering a game that transcended the limits of video games. It’s much more immersive. Much deeper. Much harder. Much more rewarding. But before we get to that…

But it’s not just space. We don’t understand exactly how our own bodies work. Think about it — we have to test drugs on mice. So, we admit that we don’t even know how mice really work. We’re still experimenting.

How can we move to renewable energy at cost-competitive prices? How can we drive efficiency more broadly, instead of generating so much waste? What can we do that’s productive with the waste that we do generate? Can we do something better than creating more landfills? What energy production and storage mechanisms are we completely ignorant of?

Personally, I’ve immersed in years of research and development in a broad set of areas, including social and cognitive psychology, organic and physical chemistry, nanotechnology, chemical reaction dynamics, and semiconductors. I’ve worked daily for months on end, trying to figure out answers to fundamental scientific questions. And I loved it. It’s also fun to see a paper that you published appear online or in print.

And you might be thinking — aha! This is the game — it’s science!

Yes and no.

You’re in control of what branch of science you make it your mission to jump into. You’re in control of how deeply you immerse into it, how much you learn about the game. There’s the broader game of what you even choose to do. What field of science? What problems within that field? How can you build a career? There are pitfalls at every step, as you’d expect.

But there’s more. If you go for a PhD, then which field do you choose? What matters most? Perceived prestige or rank of the school? Professor? What?

How do you make it through the program? If you’ve paid attention so far, then you have a pretty good idea. But failed experiments, oral examinations, and final exams featuring a median in the 30’s (as I recall from my first semester of advanced quantum mechanics) can get to some people. Until you realize that it’s a broader, immersive game. Why would you want it any other way?

And that’s the game. You can do it in school, as an undergraduate, graduate, postdoc, and professor. You can switch to industrial research. You can do it at home. You can choose your own adventure.

Edit: after publishing this piece, I realized that maybe science was the first video game. From looking at the natural world and categorizing what was there, to burning things and noticing the different colors of the flames, to modern day marvels. Sure, the academic or industry setting gives science a distinguished character, but the fun and excitement can still be the same.

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