Sometimes I think my brain is going to explode. I reached the point where it got completely filled up a few years ago, and since then I have been forgetting stuff in order to make room for new information. My few months of unemployment probably cleared up some room in there, but it's gotten filled up again.
What I would really like is to be able to systematically clear out whole sections of memory and then defragment my brain like I do with my hard drive.. It would be great to clear out the song lyrics section, for instance, and have more space for chemistry. Or maybe get rid of the plotlines from every single Sex and the City episode so that I can remember more random stuff about my new hometown.
When I started back to work, I felt like my brain was rusty. This is hardly surprising, since I had been unemployed for a few months and before that was working in an area different than my main field of expertise. Chemistry brain was still there, but it took organometallic brain a bit longer to come out and play. Now organometallic brain is fully functioning, but I notice that organic brain is not functioning as fast as I want it to. The only problem is that it's not a matter of remembering what I used to know and then getting caught up in the literature. Nope, there's a lot of stuff I actually need to learn.* This is why I need more space in my brain.
Organometallic chemists come in two varieties, usually influenced by who we worked for in grad school, but we tend to forget that when we're hanging out with other organometallic chemists. I'm of the solidly inorganic variety, whereas my boss is of the organic variety.
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