So, last week I sent out this tweet about my mild regret at abandoning my childhood goal of becoming an astronomer. That led to an email exchange with an astronomy student about exactly why and how it happened. I’ve been thinking about it since and thought I’d write something here.

I grew up fascinated by astronomy–the first book I remember owning was about the stars–and it was the only thing I ever really wanted to do up until I entered college. When I did so, I discovered that astronomy was mostly a graduate discipline and I needed a bachelor’s degree in physics first. So I became a physics major.

The only problem with this was the math. I was a straight-A student in math, from elementary school up through my first year of college, so I assumed it wouldn’t be a problem. Sadly, I was wrong. As soon as I started calculus, my grades began to drop. In my three semesters of calc, I had a B, a C (the only one I ever got), and a B. And, if you know anything about the hard sciences, you know that calculus is the beginning of the math you need.

I made it out of calculus somewhat intact, but I continued to struggle through differential equations and linear algebra. And meanwhile, when I started my first upper-division physics classes, I got bogged down with Lagrangians and the calculus of variations. (I’ll forgive you if you can’t read any of the math in those Wikipedia links; I can’t read it myself, anymore.)

Since I was on financial aid at the time, I was on a time limit, and eventually I had to make a decision about whether I could finish the degree before I had to quit. I finally decided I couldn’t. This was devastating, and I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do. I was too far along with school to finish another major in the time I had left, so I ended up getting a general-studies degree–thinking that I would pick something to specialize in for grad school.

I finished in 1995, worked for a year, and then went back and spent a year working on a master’s in anthropology, planning to go into linguistics (another interest). However, there was very little I could do in that field at my particular school. I eventually left, worked for a number of years, went through a couple of relationships, and then started thinking about library school. A few years later I went for it, and now, of course, I’ve finished (though I still haven’t found a job).

I still haven’t quite forgiven myself for quitting physics, and I do keep up with developments in the sciences. But I’m probably happier now than I would have been if I had continued. If I had followed the career path I was planning on, I’d be a tenured professor now, teaching and writing and doing research–and I’d probably have no social life and an ulcer the size of Nebraska. Instead I have many friends and the time to pursue a wide variety of interests.

Don’t get me wrong, I do have the occasional fantasy about starting over. But I don’t really expect that it’ll happen. I have too many other things I want to do. And I don’t want to have to pull my hair out again trying to deal with the math.

And I do make use of my limited scientific education in my writing, so that’s something!