I Love Brains. And Stars.

Before I was an English major at Winona State University, I was a psychology major (and creative writing minor). I had intentions of becoming a clinical psychologist, and I even had thoughts about med school so I could be a psychiatrist - until I realized that I can't handle needles or blood or hospital hallways even, and so med school probably wouldn't work out for me. But, I wanted to study the human brain because I find it incredibly fascinating. And I still find it incredibly fascinating and still love learning about it. I try to imagine all the neurons zapping signals this very second - how much it takes for me to put a sentence together in my brain and then type it on my computer - I try to imagine the speed of that. Incredible.

Or I think about Evelyn's still-developing brain, and just this morning I read that she was born with 100 billion brain cells. And that by the time she's three, her brain will have made about 1,000 trillion connections. 1,000 trillion?! I can't even fathom that number. It's like trying to fathom the universe and what (if anything) is outside (if there is an "outside") of it (clearly another fascinating topic...). How many connections, then, have I made? How many have you made?

And interestingly, whenever I try to imagine the human brain with all it's connections, I imagine all of the stars as neurons, and the light they emit is like the synapses sending signals . . . from one star to another.