“Reading can take me places that I can’t ordinarily go. I can soar with the Wright Brothers on that first flight, or be in the Cambridge lab when Watson and Crick unravel the secrets of DNA. I can even be the DNA.”

The Road Taken

by Scott Watson (class of 2007)

Robert Frost, in his poem “The Road Not Taken,” illustrates the idea that seemingly small decisions can make a large impact. The speaker of the poem stands before two paths and knows he must choose one. These paths are identical; as he says, “the passing there had worn them really about the same.” He ponders for a moment, then states:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Even though the roads are, by all appearances, nearly identical, each worn down and well traveled, he decides to “take the one less traveled by,” and making that decision makes a huge difference to the speaker in Frost’s poem. Frost also identifies, in this poem, the fact that “way leads on to way.” Small decisions lead to other decisions that lead to more decisions, each one assuming more significance. All great discoveries find their roots in smaller decisions. The decision of the Wright Brothers’ father to give to them a small flying toy in childhood ultimately led to machine-powered flight. James Watson’s decision to study zoology ultimately led to the discovery of the structure of DNA. On a smaller level, a decision made by my fourth grade teacher to institute a reading contest led to my love of reading.

Today, we take flight for granted. But as recently as one hundred years ago, machine-powered flight was simply an idea in the heads of two small boys. Wilbur and Orville Wright, the fathers of flight, were just eleven and seven years old, respectively, when their interest in aeroplanes began. That summer, their father, a traveling minister, brought home a small winged toy, powered by a wound-up rubber band. The boys were fascinated by the way it flew. When the fragile toy broke, the boys made the decision, small and seemingly insignificant, to copy the design and build their own. Doing so sparked their interest in mechanics, which, in time, led the two of them to open a bicycle shop together. Working in this shop taught them valuable skills. Their design for a single cylinder reciprocating engine, originally used for powering the power tools in the shop, would be implemented to power the first airplane. Building bicycles gave them experience in working with steel tubing, wood, chains, and other materials that would soon be needed in their experiments with flight. Also, both airplanes and bicycles are controlled on a two-axis level, so they would essentially be controlled in the same ways.

The brothers also decided to learn from others’ experiments. They studied the wing designs of George Cayley and his gliders. They studied the reports on air stability published by Alphonse Penaud. But most of all, they pored over the small engine design and wing design of Otto Lilienthal, who had achieved flight, although not machine powered, with the hang gliders he had built. All this work by the Wright Brothers, all of these small, seemingly insignificant decisions, eventually led to the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk. In his journal, Wilbur Wright wrote: “To me, it seems that a thousand other factors, each rather insignificant in itself, in the aggregate influence the event ten times more than mere mental activity or inventiveness.” Because of these thousand “rather insignificant factors,” because “way [led] on to way,” the world was blessed with flight, and with it, many great advancements. Because of a series of commitments that stemmed from the small boys’ decision to rebuild a small toy, man can now traverse from continent to continent in the span of hours. We can visit the moon and explore Mars. Food can be rushed to the victims of natural disasters anywhere in the world. All of this was born of a father’s impulse to present his children with a small toy, and in turn, the children’s choice to let their imaginations soar.

Another example of “way [leading] on to way” is the career of James Watson, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. As a young man, James Watson loved birds, so naturally, he studied them in high school and college. Throughout his college days he would rise early in the morning to listen to bird calls. He also mapped the migratory habits of birds such as robins. His studies led him to an interest in genetics, which caused him to pursue his PhD in that discipline from Indiana. These qualifications, in turn, attracted the attention of the famed Italian microbiologist, Salvador Luria, who invited Watson to help him study viruses in an effort to understand the nature of genetics. As part of his studies, Watson journeyed to Naples, Italy, where the real work on DNA began. Prior to his time in Italy, Watson had developed a theory regarding the structure of DNA, but had little evidence to support it. In Naples, Watson met fellow geneticist, Maurice Wilkins, who had taken pictures of DNA using an X-ray diffraction unit. The pictures that came out were “slightly blurred photographs of a geometrically shaped unit.” Watson viewed these photographs when they were shown during a speech given by Wilkins. Immediately, Watson knew that this is what he had been looking for, the key to unlock the structure of DNA. Not yet fully educated in the art of translating X-ray diffraction pictures, Watson started working in a lab at the University of Cambridge, where he met Francis Crick. Together, Watson and Crick worked out the structure of DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid. Because of the knowledge based in their research, it is now possible to manipulate DNA to replenish the white blood cells in leukemia patients or to fix disease-ridden organs. Cancer can be destroyed by gene amplification, the replication of a certain gene. DNA analysis can indicate a predisposition to diseases. Law enforcement uses DNA to condemn the guilty or spare the innocent. Watson’s simple love of birdsong and the flight of robins led to a discovery that changed the world.

A decision I made that greatly influenced my life was prompted by a decision made by my fourth grade teacher. In an attempt to get my classmates and me to read over the summer, she told us about a contest she had initiated. The contest was, simply, who could read the most books. Participants got one Jolly Rancher for every book read. But the book had to be at least one hundred pages long, and it had to be a chapter book. She had been holding the contest for a few years, and the record to beat was 137 books. I, liking a challenge (and Jolly Ranchers), figured, “I can do this.” I decided to read. I spent that whole summer reading all types of books, from the Hardy Boys mystery series to Ramona the Pest. When the summer was over, and we turned in our tally sheets, I had read a total of 347 books, a record that has yet to be broken.

That summer, I learned to love reading, and this love continues. Reading can take me places that I can’t ordinarily go. I can soar with the Wright Brothers on that first flight, or be in the Cambridge lab when Watson and Crick unravel the secrets of DNA. I can even be the DNA. I don’t know where this love will lead me. It will certainly help me later in my life, as I study in college, bond over a story with my children, or just entertain myself when I need a break. I set the wheel in motion, but I do not know which way it will roll.

Just as the decisions of a father to give his child a toy, or a young man to study a certain subject, or a boy to take up the challenge to read seem small, so do many of the decisions that we make in our everyday lives. Yet seemingly small decisions can have a huge influence, even if it takes some time before those decisions to add up to something important. A small decision I make today will influence my future. Pay attention to the decisions you make, to the roads you choose to walk down; it will make all the difference. ■

The Road Taken

by Scott Watson (class of 2007)

All great discoveries find their roots in smaller decisions. The decision of the Wright Brothers’ father to give to them a small flying toy in childhood ultimately led to machine-powered flight. James Watson’s decision to study zoology ultimately led to the discovery of the structure of DNA. On a smaller level, a decision made by my fourth grade teacher to institute a reading contest led to my love of reading.

---