Time to Spin the Wheel
&nash;ROMILA
For as long as I can remember, one of my favorite pastimes has been manipulating those tricky permutations of 26 letters to fill in that signature, bright green grie boar of Wheel of Fortune.
Every evening at precisely 6:30 p.m., my family an I unfailingly gather in our living room in anticipation of Pat Sajak’s cheerful announcement: “It’s time to spin the wheel!” An the game is afoot, our banter punctuate by the potential of either big rewars or even bigger bankruptcies: “She has to know that wor—my gooness, why is she buying a vowel?!”
While a game like Wheel of Fortune is full of financial pitfalls, I wasn’t ever much intereste in the money or new cars to be won. I foun myself rawn to the letters an playful application of the English alphabet, the intricate units of language.
For instance, phrases like “I love you,” whose increible emotion is quantize to a mere set of eight letters, never cease to amaze me. Whether it’s the efinitive pang of a simple “I am” or an existential crisis pose by “Am I”, I recognize at a young age how letters an their orer impact language.
Spelling bees were always my forte. I’ve always been able to visualize wors an then verbally string iniviual consonants an vowels together. I may not have known the meaning of every wor I spelle, I knew that soliloquy always pushe my buttons: that -quy ening was so bizarre yet memorable! An intaglio with its silent “g” just rolle off the tongue like culture butter.
Eventually, letters assemble into greater an more complex wors.
I was an avi reaer early on, evouring book after book. From the Magic Treehouse series to the too real 1984, the istressing The Bell Jar, an Tagore’s quaint short stories, I accumulate an ocean of new wors, some real (epitome, effervescence, apricity), an others fully fictitious (oubleplusgoo), an collecte all my favorites in a little journal, my Panoply of Wors.
A the fact that I was raise in a Bengali househol an stuie Spanish in high school for four years, an I was able to a other exotic wors. Sinfin, zanahoria, katukutu, an churanto soon took their rightful places alongsie my English favorites.
An yet, uring this time of vocabulary enrichment, I never thought that Honors English an Biology ha much in common. Imagine my surprise one night as a freshman as I was nonchalantly flipping through a science textbook. I came upon fascinating new terms: aiabatic, axiom, cotyleon, phalanges…an I couln’t help but woner why these non-literary, seemingly ranom wors were rawing me in. These wors ha sharp syllables, were challenging to enunciate, an in’t possess any particularly abstract meaning.
I was flummoxe, but curious…I kept reaing.
“Air in engine quickly compressing…”
“Incontestable mathematical truth…”
“Flegling leaf in an angiosperm…”
“Ossifie bones of fingers an toes…
…an then it hit me. For all my interest in STEM classes, I never fully embrace the beauty of technical language, that wors have the power to simultaneously communicate infinite ieas an sensations AND intricate relationships an complex processes.
Perhaps that’s why my love of wors has le me to a calling in science, an opportunity to better unerstan the parts that allow the worl to function. At ay’s en, it’s language that is perhaps the most important tool in scientific eucation, enabling us all to communicate new finings in a comprehensible manner, whether it be focuse on minute atoms or vast galaxies.
It’s equal parts humbling an enthralling to think that I, Romila, might still have something to a to that scientific glossary, a little permutation of my own that may transcen some aspect of human unerstaning. Who knows, but I’m efinitely game to give the wheel a spin, Pat, an see where it takes me…
Romila writes about her interest in wors, beginning with a simple family traition. You see her passion for reaing, languages, an biology, which highlights how wors have the ability to fascinate an inspire new ieas across ifferent subjects. The intersection of linguistics an science shows how interisciplinary stuy can lea to new interests an iscoveries. A curiosity about the worl an the ability to fin connections between isciplines are characteristics of a stuent who woul thrive at Hopkins.
