Real Science

Whenever I hear someone say they should be more like someone else, I always think of Disney's The Jungle Book. "I wanna be like yooouuu. I wanna walk like you, talk like you tooooooo." I can go on. But this brings me to my next point about how I really need to choose a class to fill one more science distributive before I graduate. . . . or so I can graduate. I swear these are related. You see, I found the perfect class! I have always liked science, but taking science in college frightens me because almost every real science class seems to be geared toward people who want to go into that particular field or who want to go into medicine. Needless to say, this makes the classes really hard and a lot less fun for the Gemma-like person who is taking the class simply to enjoy the material. But the Gemma-like person also feels like she is cheating if she fills her science by taking Astronomy because the Gemma-like person will tell you that it is not a real science. Psychology is also not a science. . . . I think I just alienated half of the people I know at Dartmouth.
I feel like a lot of people I know are majoring in Psych at Dartmouth. I took Psych 1. . . . what a disaster. They tried to convince me that it was a science. I remain skeptical. I felt like so many of those studies were ridiculous. This is not to say that they were not correct in the end (people do conform to gain acceptance and the dog will drool if you ring the bell), but all of the uncontrolled variables and some of the far fetched conclusions really drove me to believe that there is no way this is true science. Biology. Chemistry. Physics. Now those are the sciences for the real science people. (I really am making people dislike me, I can tell). I say this as a Computer SCIENCE major. That is also not a science in my mind. I work with a very strict definition of science and it does not include looking at stars or showing pictures to people to see if it makes them blink more frequently.
For example, I think that Bonnie is taking real science. She is studying our earth to create things that make it better, safer, faster, shinier! Now you Psych people can argue that you too make the world shinier and I wouldn't argue that knowing how a mind works is not important, but it still isn't a hardcore science.
I think I have made sufficient enough enemies in the Psych department now, so I shall wrap this one up with how frustrated I am that I cannot take a REAL science because I don't have enough time left at Dartmouth. Instead I think I will take Primate Societies in the Anthropology department (now that is a sweet department, not because it is a science, but because their study abroad takes you to NZ). This brings me back to the original connection between The Jungle Book and my science career at Dartmouth.