I like serendipitous encounters. I had been trying to get my mind around a particular area of quantum physics and stumbled on Roger Penrose, the Nobel prize-winning physicist who shared a Wolf prize with Stephen Hawking and who did the math on how stars collapse to form black holes. I found a YouTube video interview with Roger Penrose that I completely could not follow, and as I was sitting there feeling dumb, YouTube dished up another random video, a Ted Talk with Dominic Walliman, whose specialty is explaining quantum physics to kids. There were many fine moments in his 15-minute talk, but my favorite came at the end when he said: “You know, science shouldn’t be about whether you’re good at it or not. It should only be about whether you’re interested. …. There’s so much good information out there these days, just pick a subject that you’re interested in, find some material and then from there, follow your curiosity.”

I think “Follow your curiosity” will be my mission statement for 2022.