quantum mechanics/two stoned chicks talking

I am not a scientist. For my undergrad science requirement, I took geology.  I took it in the fall. The professor hired buses to tote the class to some geologically significant sites. I loved that field trips. And I enjoyed the class. I was intimidated by biology and chemistry. It never occurred to me to take a physics class.

A friend of mine, someone I got high with a lot, was the only female physics major during our four years in college. Right up until she graduated, the males in the department, including all the all-male faculty, would not take her seriously. She had to hear jokes every damned day whose general, lunkheaded theme was "When are you going to give up this joke and get a major more appropriate for a girl?"

She was a little lonely in the physics department.

I had lots of people to talk to about Spanish and Anthropology.

When she and I were high, usually when she was really really high, she would explain what she was studying that week.  I was also high and, as I listened, I sometimes believed I understood what she said.

One of these smoking marijuana, two chicks talking, evenings, with each of us sprawled out on separate dorm beds, too stoned, sometimes, to move, she became excited. She sat up abruptly. I can still see the fire in her eyes, the thrill of thinking great thoughts.  "I get it, I get it, I finallly get it!"
What she had gotten was the theory of quantum mechanics. She went on to explain to me that she had been struggling with quantum mechanics for weeks, that it was the first time she didn't immediately get a physics theory. She even went on to describe her understanding of quantum mechanics to me. and I listened attentively. I think I was able to focus, to follow her, because she was so intensely excited. It was more than being high. She had suddenly gotten how quantum mechanics is in everything and everywhere, the whole world pulsing.

She jumped out and moved around the room, placing her hand on things like a nightstand, a dresser, a desk, a bed. As she placed her hand, she excitedly said "This feels solid but it is not. This nightstand is a pulsing, energetic collection of atoms and subatomic particles. I get it. I get how it works."

I cannot, ahem, quantity what I understood that evening, or what I thought I understood, but to this day, forty years later, I still believe I 'got' quantum mechanics at an energetic level, a phenomenlogical level.

I lost touch with that physics major. I wish I knew what work she went on to do. In 1975, the year we graduated, options for females in science were limited. Opportunities existed but they were even thinner than they are now.

I thought of her this week when that Noble Prize-winning scientist from London, England said women weren't good in science labs because male scientists fall in love with them and if male scientists criticize female scientists, they cry.  Today I read a story about the Nobel dope. He is griping that although it was announced that he 'resigned', he had no choice. He was fired. And not just from one gig. He had been on many prestigious boards, institues and a university affiliation. All gone because, the brilliant scientist made the idiotic choice to publicly mock female scientists at a prestigious gathering of scientists. Seems to me like the schmuck believed female scientists have no power and he could deride them with no repercussions.

I wonder how my physics major, dope-smoking buddy did in her career, if she stuck with science.

And I still think I get quantum mechanics because of her. Maybe the marijuana helped but I think the revelation, both for my friend and for me, was real. We got it. Two chicks talking about quantum mechanics. Go figure.

All we could do was think. Talking was sometimes beyond us.