working 
firthofforth provides some details of her job, which requires a working knowledge of scientific principles. When her reports on daily activities drift away from the terror of office politics to anything that involves implementation of her scientific knowledge, I realize just how different the inside of her head is from the inside of my head. The disparity between the two of us is pronounced enough that I refer to the "Science Times" section of the Tuesday New York Times, not dismissively, as the "girl news" section. It's as mysterious to me as the style and fashion section might be to other males who are divvying up the sections of the newspaper.
I'm not sure about the derivation of this personal shortcoming. I've struggled with science since at least high school. In college, I suffered through my two required science courses with such a profound lack of capability that I was jubilant to receive a D+ in my three-credit physics course ("D's make degrees" was the uninspiring battle cry amongst some of my UW-SP classmates). I celebrated that dismal passing grade more than any hard-earned A.
Perhaps my formative exposure to science was suspect. I was born after the space race ended with the snapping of the finish line on the surface of the moon and was into adulthood before the technological era begin bounding ahead with new society-shifting innovations seemingly by the moment. In the eighties, our breakthrough products were more modest. Maybe I was simply looking in the wrong places, but science seemed less inspiring at that point in time. This may be an elaborate rationalization to excuse a unsightly dent in the chassis of my intellect, but I was a whiz at math, so it's not as if that part of my noggin is entirely faulty.
This is, of course, not a huge problem. I can get through my humble existence just fine without grasping the concepts tossed around by the likes of Stephen Hawking. And I can effectively grapple with the work put forth by some inventors. I just may occasionally face certain parts of the natural world with a gaze as foggy as a Carolina morning.