I like grammar, I like books and I talk about punctuation in my spare time. “The Elements of Style” is one of my favorite books, and I have four other style guides crammed onto the top of my bookshelf.

But I don’t want to be a journalist.

It’s not that I don’t like writing. I love it. I talk about Russian literature in my spare time. And I argue with my father about the ending of “Of Human Bondage,” by W. Somerset Maugham. I’ve read Proust, Dickens and a large chunk of all those other writers that show up on great books lists. I scribble notes to myself all over school papers. I fill journals. My homepage is The New York Times.

I have a secret, though.

I like math. I like science, too. I rhapsodize about my Honors Chemistry class, and when we got a math quiz during a lecture about statistics halfway through the cherubs program, I let out a squeak of delight while my fellow cherubs were groaning. It’s not that I ace all my math tests or do SAT II Math Level II C questions on the weekend instead of hanging out with friends. I just think math is fun. One of the most satisfying moments of my junior year was taking my math final.

I came to cherubs ready to improve my skills as an editor for my high school paper. I still love editing, and I still love grammar, literature and browsing news sites. But after five weeks with no math and no science, I feel, well, a little lost. I miss math and science.

Something about doing a stoichiometry problem fills me with joy, which I know sounds masochistic to some people, but it’s true. After a lecture about the new media and media conglomerations, I was less excited about the new opportunities for storytelling and more excited about business startups and computer programming. I ran out and bought a book on C++ programming—and, okay, I’m only on chapter four and I don’t understand most of it, having not taken a computers class since sixth grade, but I’m learning.

I had a great experience at the cherub program, but I didn’t discover my calling as a journalist—if anything, I found the opposite. I don’t know what career I want, be it campaign strategist or molecular biologist, but I’ve realized that journalism probably isn’t for me. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ll change my mind in a year. But right now, I’m pretty sure journalism isn’t it.