What am I?

I'm not sure exactly what I am.  I was born the son of scientist, Dr. Robert John Wilson Douglas, a geologist with the Geological Survey of Canada.  Consequently I was exposed to geology when young, but much to my father's chagrin, I was not that interested.  It has only been in the last decade that I realized how fundamental geology is to understanding our world, and he is no longer around to ask.

I wanted to be an artist when I was young and I showed some early promise.  But the school system thought I should be in an academic stream and that crushed an early career in art.  I am very happy about that now though, as I don't think the art world in the late twentieth century was so great.  When I got a chance to go to art school later in life I was drawn to the academic techniques of the old masters, not the fashionable intellectual games of the times.

At university I started along the easy path: Math and Physics!  I still love reading articles on physics and cosmology but as a student I quickly discovered that neither was easy.  I wasn't smart enough, but perhaps more importantly, I didn't enjoy working at mathematics.  Instead I found the genetics and lab-based psychology courses much more to my liking.  I could work hard in a lab.  My B.A. (Hon) thesis was in psychophysics, and I went off to grad school to do electrophysiology as a way to understand how the brain works. What are the mechanisms of memory, perception, and attention anyway?  I've had a moderately successful career exploring those questions.

Perhaps I am an engineer. Almost from the start of my scientific career I was the "computer guy": the one that got the computer and associated hardware to control the equipment, collect data, and do some of the data analysis.  In contrast, running a lab, getting grants, and supervising students were not my strengths. Ever since the 1970s other labs used my software, however, and eventually another professor and I set up a small company to manufacture scientific equipment. After fully retiring from the university I spent the next 10 years doing software design and programming full-time.  It paid for some glorious travel experiences, but also didn't help with my posture.  I wonder what the iPhone generation will look like in 50 years.

I met my wife, Jerena Tobiasen, on a ballroom dance floor.  Besides being a better dancer (and human being) Jerena is also a writer of historical fiction.  She is working on her sixth novel as I write this, and is always asking me questions that expose how little history I know.  But I do know how to research things, so I am now her research assistant. And computer guy.  And travel guy, because she finds actually visiting places she is describing in her novels to be important.

So what am I?  A student. ​​