What’s the best thing you’ve ever found randomly on the street?

I am attracted to random pebbles. Not a rock hound; I usually don’t know what I am looking at. It’s just a pretty stone, and I don’t even know whether it will look shiny after being tumbled in a rock tumbler or if it will just crumble.

Then there was the day I found a chunk of turquoise.

When I found it on the sidewalk in with a bunch of other, less descript gravel, I thought it was discarded gum until I looked at it more closely. It was a blue-green. I poked it gingerly with a pencil, and it did not engulf the point of the pencil as it would have if it were gum. Not bubble gum, then. I picked it up and noted the black veins running through it, and realized that it was an unpolished piece of turquoise.

I have no idea why it was lying on the sidewalk. Perhaps someone had found it in a pile of pretty stones at a tourist trap and bought it for their pocket. It certainly wasn’t from a piece of jewelry given its unpolished state.

It was mine now.

But not for long. I don’t know where it ended up, but I lost it soon after receiving it. Perhaps it was like the One Ring, with a will of its own, looking for a new master. I don’t know, but I hope it’s happy with its new owner.

If you had to be an animal for a week, which one would you be and why?

If I had to be one animal for a week, I would choose a cat. I have three of them, so I have been taking notes on their lives, and they have it pretty good.

My cats are privileged. They live in a house, are well-fed, and get petted a lot. Chloe, in particular, is my personal barnacle, being attached to me any time I am in the living room. Chuckie prefers Richard, and Pumpkin Spice Latte prefers whoever isn’t busy with Chloe and Chuckie.

I would like to trade places with one of my cats, probably Chloe. Or maybe one of the kittens that frolic in the yard in the next block. They look like they have a lot of fun.

What’s a piece of technology you’re convinced will exist in 20 years?

I expect the iPhone will exist, in one form or another, in twenty years.

Mobile phones are part of the culture, to the point where people are moving away from land lines. People’s cell phones are their only phones, and with all the extra features of the iPhone, they have become personal computers in mini form.

IPhones are lifestyle aids. I use my phone for email, checking up on classes, surfing the Internet, playing solitaire, tracking my food intake and exercise, texting, and composing occasional blog entries. I do not use it as a phone much because of my hearing problem, but my hearing aids will connect to it and I will control them from the phone.

I don’t see much changing with the iPhone over 20 years. I could see it becoming a satellite phone, I could see more features set into it, but the form factor will stay largely the same and the functions will stay similar.

Do you think we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are?

When I first encountered this question, I unequivocally thought, “My experiences, of course!” I have had vivid, quirky experiences that have made me who I am today. Everything from playing with lion cubs to floating through a swift water simulation to being a (really tall) Santa’s elf for the school district and more!

But then I thought about the question again and realized, “I chose all those experiences. I took the trip to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center. I decided to experience the Swift Water course. I am that experiential person.”

I’m uncomfortable with believing in nature over nurture, which is the philosophical essence of this question. I am perturbed to think that I was born to choose vivid experiences. I don’t like to give that much power to an accident of birth. Yet I was born with bipolar genes — did they orient me to choose novel experiences?

Psychology tends to favor a model incorporating both nature and nurture. In the case of my personality, it’s covered in “traits and states” theory. About half of our personality is based on traits, or inborn tendencies (nature), while the other half is based on states, or the moods we are in (influenced by nurture). The specific personality trait is “tendency towards trying new things”, which is one of the five basic personality traits in the OCEAN model.

So the science says both, no matter what I think. I just prefer to credit my experiences.

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

I miss cassette tapes.

The concept of recording songs off the radio is a lost phenomenon. Radio is almost a lost phenomenon at this point. All is now Spotify and Apple Music, and there’s no spontaneously hearing a song and recording it. Instead, I buy music off of Apple Music if I want it permanently or borrow it as long as I never leave Apple Music.

Mix tapes are not really a thing anymore. I can make a mix tape on Apple Music, but I can’t easily share it. I can share the playlist with someone, but they have to go and buy the music. I can’t share with someone who isn’t on Apple Music. I don’t know if Spotify is any different.

There was a certain democratization of music back in the days of cassette tapes. The quality of the music was poor when we recorded off the radio, but we didn’t really notice because of our lower expectations with AM radio.

I’m not one for nostalgia, and I know there are great advantages with services like Apple Music and Spotify, especially the sound quality. But I miss the old-fashioned mix tape and the heartfelt communication it represents.

Are you a lifelong learner?

I am a lifelong learner. I have to be to do my job. Being a professor means having a body of knowledge and updating it so we can be experts.

In addition, I am a voracious reader of articles. Some of what I read is really lowbrow, like those emotional heartbreak stories with a missing ending on Facebook. Others are informative stories about current events. And I will read anything medical I can get my hands on, and that’s how I know the cyclospora epidemic started with Taylor Farms’ bagged iceberg lettuce.

I want to learn calculus, the one class I nearly failed in college. I want to learn molecular biology, because I think it’s amazing that complex life came from one-celled organisms and my cells reflect that. I’d like to learn carpentry because I think my mother wanted me to marry a carpenter (didn’t happen, even though I’ve known a lot of people who did carpentry).

I don’t understand people who don’t want to learn. Curiosity is an innate human trait in most people, and I think we need to ignore our better nature if we decide not to learn.