7 Reasons Why Students Love Science
Interest in science grows, there are more and more students yearly who choose STEM specialization. In this article we want to dive into different reasons for students to love science. It is remarkable, but now more than ever students that are not involved with science in their educational path much, read about it, attend conferences and subscribe to popular science journals and newsletters. Why?
Career Prospects and Opportunities
Students fully understand that going into science means they will have the best ever offers in the market. Yes, there are more profitable occupations, but when we are talking about professions that are both meaningful and profitable, science related positions take the first chair.
Challenges That Inspire
Studying science comes with challenges that inspire, with tasks that you maybe even didn’t dream of before. It gives a great feeling of high self-esteem and actually doing something worthy with your life. This benefit has its drawbacks — challenging tasks are inspiring but at the same time, they can break you if you don’t plan your studies carefully. Sometimes, the best idea is to delegate some of your assignments to paper writing services, such as SmartWritingService, and rest. Our brain gets tired very easily, and to recharge, you may need professional essay help from experts who take care of your homework assignment. There is nothing wrong in paying someone for services, it is close to ordering pizza when you have no energy to cook for yourself.
Life-Shaping Maxims
Popular science has maxims that are valuable for any end “consumer”, a student, or not :
- God — forming a picture of the world, answering the questions “why?”, Satisfying curiosity. This is a basic, innate human need, coming from primitive times. It is not subordinated to the tasks of “innovative development” or utilitarian consumer goals;
- Stomach — developments that have practical value for the consumer. Well, with this, it seems, everything is clear;
- Mirror — comparing a scientist with himself, searching for a “hero”. Actually, why should a show business star, an athlete or an actor be a figure to be related to oneself? Why not take this place to an astrophysicist, biologist or psychologist?
Forming Science-Related Ideology
The popular science picture of the world can turn into an ideology that goes beyond science and technology itself. Science comes with a set of values that are more or less common in the intellectual environment. For example:
- priority of intellectual prowess over financial and physical prowess;
- priority of skeptical perception over dogmatic;
- priority of planetary / universal human tasks in relation to national ones;
- priority of comfortable asceticism in relation to conspicuous consumption;
- priority of pacifism over militarism
Such an attitude to life is valuable and perspective, puts one over the crowd and helps dealing with many practical and existential problems.
Social Contacts with Different Social Levels on Your Terms
The basic framework of scientific communication – a scientist transfers knowledge to an interested person and sends signals (comments) to society – was formed in antiquity. Let’s remember the legend about Archimedes: once a researcher at a fast pace went to the king of Syracuse with the news (report) about the open method of examining the crown, and this attracted the attention of other people. Residents of a small polis knew roughly who was doing what, and a bright event resonated with the background information about the scientific activities of Archimedes, many remembered the emotional exclamation “Eureka!” and running around town from where he got the idea, from the bathtub. This has gone down in history as an example of effective contact between a scientist and fellow citizens in connection with a scientific discovery. Now social connections are much more complicated, mobile and influential: say, one and the same person at work in the morning is an investor, and in the evening at home he notices possible signals of change already as a man in the street, on Facebook. So, ideally, it is worth communicating about new knowledge to literally everyone and through all channels, since it is difficult to predict where and how this or that discovery will respond, how the value chain will unfold, especially if it is potentially global.
Science Got More Accessible from Early Age
It seems to me that over the past 10-15 years, the shelf of popular science magazines has changed. Previously, for the most part, they kept an average level of erudition, and now the division into serious, strict and / or thematic magazines (as a rule, expensive and high-quality) and cheaper catchy magazines in the Q&A format with short and colorful materials is becoming more noticeable, big names and juicy leads, infographics — in short, everything that corresponds to clip-public thinking. Probably, some, more serious, media survived so that scientists still have a platform for accessible reports on their activities in front of a society that wants to know what its taxes are spent on, while others were formatted for target audiences – first of all, under adolescents and young people who are about to go to universities.
Interest to Science is a Social Economic Marker
There is a feeling that, going to lectures and science festivals, people want to be in “their own get-together,” to feel close to someone close in spirit. Interest in science is associated primarily with the strong stratification of society: the “upper” stratum seeks to consolidate in this way as well. But the “bottom” falls down lower and lower. Here, two trends met: on the one hand, science has become more “fashionable”, and on the other hand, the number of students in our country has increased so much that the drop in the average level has become noticeable.
Science should be popularized in a targeted manner, taking into account the age and social characteristics of information consumers. Since clip thinking has taken root in the minds of young people, the best way to acquaint them with the achievements of science is through short documentaries. When such a film is dedicated to one discovery, when visual series prevail in it, and not talking heads, it is perceived with great interest by young people. Another way is to post information about what is happening at the forefront of scientific research on social networks, whose active users are young people. The advantage of social networks is the ability to comment on and discuss a scientific event. In addition, a “tasty” submitted scientific event develops curiosity – I want to know the details, background, prospects for using the development. The older age group, as a rule, watches with interest documentaries about science, in which a retrospective is shown.
“Pop culture advocate. Troublemaker. Friendly student. Proud problem solver.”