Short Narrative on learning new things, Stellar Metamorphosis

A short recollection of an event which happened to me back in the late summer 2007. I was at Florida State University and I went to get the key to my post office box because I was moving into the dorm at Kellum Hall. I remember waiting in line to receive my key at the post office on campus, and it was about 5 P.M. I remember being very curious about everything, always asking questions and what not, making new friends, striking up conversations with anybody who had time to spare. Given the majority were college aged there was a lot of time. 

With only school and partying as the priority it was really easy to make room for socialization. That being said, I remember quite vividly asking this one guy, who was skinny and tall like me what the book he was reading was about. I remember seeing that it was some type of mathematical theory book, I want to say quantum mechanics and the like, but I’m not too sure exactly. I naively asked him to sort of give me a quick run down of what it was, and I was told it was really advanced and that I wouldn’t understand. As he said that though, I got the feeling he had been at it for a while, and his eyes sort of glazed over as it said it. Mind you, he wasn’t being arrogant, it was just something to the tune of, “shit man, I don’t get this stuff either.” I understood immediately that kind of brushing away of questions. When someone tells me I wouldn’t understand it, I take it as they don’t understand it themselves. Its sort of a way of elevating the person’s ego in a conversational sense, so that they can appear to be knowledgable. Case in point, if he really understood it he could have just explained it in one sentence. Why say, “you wouldn’t understand”?

I just remember that and it sticks out in my mind. Its like, who am I now? I am Jeffrey Wolynski, a theory designer of alternative planet formation/ stellar evolution. A fringe theorist who doesn’t give a shit about being accepted. That was a full four years before the discovery was made. Seeing these young minds rack their brains for acceptance (yes, that’s what it is, nothing more nothing less) irks me. They should be trying to learn new things, and filter out the bullshit when it appears! Not accept it just because people who are teaching you this crap believe it!