me. I finish my questionnaire, sign the statement, hand both to Mr. Aldrin, and leave without talking to the others. It has wasted almost my whole Saturday morning, and I want to go back to my reading.
I drive home as quickly as the speed limit allows and start reading as soon as I am back in my apartment. I do not stop to clean my apartment or my car. I do not go to church on Sunday. I take printouts of the chapter I am on, and the next, with me to work on Monday and Tuesday and read during my lunch break as well as late into the night. The information flows in, clear and organized, its patterns stacked neatly in paragraphs and chapters and sections. My mind has room for them all.
By the following Wednesday, I feel ready to ask Lucia what I should read to understand the way the brain works. I have taken the on-line assessment tests in biology level one, biology level two, biochemistry levels one and two, organic chemistry theory one. I glance at the neurology book, which now makes much more sense, but I am not sure it is the right one. I do not know how much time I have; I do not want to waste it on the wrong book.
I am surprised that I have not done this before. When I started fencing, I read all the books that Tom recommended and watched the videos he said would be helpful. When I play computer games, I read all about them.
Yet I have never before set out to learn all about the way my own brain works. I do not know why. I know that it felt very strange at first and I was almost sure I would not be able to figure out what the books said. But it is actually easy. I think I could have completed a college degree in this if I had tried.
All my advisers and counselors told me to go into applied mathematics, so I did. They told me what I was capable of, and I believed them. They did not think I had the kind of brain that could do real scientific work. Maybe they were wrong.
I show Lucia the list I have printed out, of all the things I have read, and the scores I got on the assessment tests. “I need to know what to read next,” I say.
“Lou—I’m ashamed to say I’m amazed.” Lucia shakes her head. “Tom, come see this. Lou’s just about done the work for an undergraduate biology degree in one week.”
“Not really,” I say. “This is all aimed at one thing, and the undergraduate requirements would include a course in population biology, a course in botany—”
“I was thinking more of the depth and not the breadth,” Lucia says. “You’ve gone from lower-level to challenging upper-division courses… Lou, do you really understand organic synthesis?”
“I do not know,” I say. “I have not done any of the lab work. But the patterns of it are obvious, the way the chemicals fit together—”
“Lou, can you tell me why some groups attach to a carbon ring adjacent to one another and some have to skip a carbon or two?”
It is a silly question, I think. It is obvious that the place groups join is the result of their shape or the charge they carry. I can see them easily in my mind, the lumpy shapes with the positive or negative charge clouds around them. I do not want to tell Tom I think it is a silly question. I remember the paragraphs in the text that explain, but I think he wants it in my words, not parroted. So I say it as clearly as I can, not using any of the same phrases.
“And you got that just from reading the book—how many times?”
“Once,” I say. “Some paragraphs twice.”
“Holy shit,” Tom says. Lucia clucks at him. She does not like strong language. “Lou—do you have any idea how hard most college students work to learn that?”
Learning is not hard. Not learning is hard. I wonder why they are not learning it for long enough to feel like work. “It is easy to see in my head,” I say instead of asking that. “And the books have pictures.”
“Strong visual imagination,” Lucia murmurs.
“Even with the pictures, even with the video animations,” Tom says, “most college students have trouble with organic chemistry. And you got that much of it with just one run through the