Schrodinger's School Year

Does the beginning of the school year feel a little bit chaotic, unpredictable, and confusing? 

You know what else is?

Quantum mechanics.  

Quantum mechanics is the science of teeny tiny particles. It is about trying to predict when these particles are running into each other and why and where and all that jazz. A fundamental principle of quantum mechanics is that these particles are usually very difficult to locate , so difficult in fact that they might just be in multiple states at the same time. That is called superposition.

Superposition is most often described through a thought experiment called Schrodinger’s cat. In the experiment, there was a box, and in that box was a cat along with some sort of vial of toxic chemicals. (Honestly, of all the combinations of things you could put in a box, this may be the worst.) If the chemicals in the box were to become unstable, the cat would die. If they did not, the cat would live. But the experimenter would not know if they had become unstable unless they observed it. So the cat is both alive and dead, the particles are spinning in who knows what direction and then there’s you. 

Erwin Schrodinger created this experiment so people could more easily familiarize themselves with something that we don’t observe in everyday life. And for that, we thank him. But I mean, think about it for a second. It’s the beginning of the school year. You have a bunch of new classes and professors, and people you’re around, and at the very least, a new schedule. You might not find yourself running into a whole lot of simultaneously alive and dead cats on a daily basis, but possibility is something we are all quite familiar with. 

A helpful way I have found to get out of wondering whether the vial has released the toxic chemicals all up in your cat is by 1. Allowing the passage of time to do its thing or 2. Trying the things that you might be scared to do. In other words, go to that one meeting for that one club, spend time with the boy, and go up to the cat on the sidewalk, and ask him, “are you alive?”

Sometimes when you try a thing, more questions come up. Maybe you’ll try a thing and it won't be what you expect and it will make you want to move in a different direction. That's okay. It's okay to change.

 Sometimes you will fail. Failing is not fun. Maybe you’ll try out for a thing and you won’t make it or you’ll like someone more than they like you, or put a lot of effort into something that ends up being lame. Failure, and all the things that may go along with it: heartbreak, disenchantment, embarrassment, shame, threaten to make being a potentially dead cat in a box a more appealing reality than a person who gets up and tries again. 

One of my favorite books is called Humans of New York, which is essentially a collection of interviews and quotes taken from people going about their lives in New York City.  There’s a lot of wisdom to be gained from strangers, but my favorite wisdom is from a barefoot man. 

Photographer:  “What’s the best part about being barefoot?”

Man with no shoes: “You feel alive. You feel the heat. You feel the cold.”

Photographer: “What’s the worst part?”

Man with no shoes: “Stepping in dog poop.”

Being alive is not always an easy thing to be. There will be things that won’t make sense and knock you flat on your back (and maybe even make you feel like you're stepping in theoretical dog poop), but take heart! The universe is quite literally composed of tiny random intervals of chaos. You can stand to experience a little chaos yourself.  Maybe you’ll try the thing and fail and maybe you won't. But you won’t know if you never try, so I would recommend doing it. 

Citations and notes

Stanton, Brandon, and Brandon Stanton. Humans of New York: Stories. St. Martin's Press, 2015. 

https://jqi.umd.edu/glossary/quantum-superposition

(I’m pretty sure Schrodinger’s Cat has been disproven or expanded upon or something, but it is seminal and a great metaphor, so we will keep him in there.)