Archive for the ‘University’ Category

Yay!  My course materials arrived!  I cannot wait for term to start!

Do you remember the very first thing you wanted to be when you “grew up?”  What was it? Did you achieve it or was it some silly notion that seems to never come to fruition beyond adolescence?  Did you want to be an astronaut? A farmer?  President of the United States?   One of the very first things I can remember wanting to be was a paleontologist, or “dinosaur scientist” as we knew it as children, and it was a notion that stayed with me all the way up through high school.  It’s also one I’ve returned to now at 26 years old.

When I was little my parents subscribed me to these wonderful TimeLife  books that came in the mail once a month, each on a different subject within science:  space, insects, animals, Earth, etc.  Then came one on dinosaurs, and I was hooked.  I was convinced that, around the tender age of five or six, that this is what I wanted to do with my life.  I KNEW this is what I was going to do: I was going to visit dig sites and work in a museum and research prehistoric life.  Other ideas on what to do when I “grew up” came and went, among them odd and fleeting ideas such as FBI agent, but my interest in science, particularly Biology, never diminished.

In high school I took my first psychology course and, for the first time, found something that rivaled my interest in the harder sciences.  After the second psychology course, I decided to major in that instead.  So that’s what I did: I went to university (McNeese State in Lake Charles, LA. A far piece from my home in Cincinnati, Ohio) and started majoring in psychology with a sociology minor.  Yet university was also my first true “real life” experience, and it ultimately put me off of the subject.  I can distinctly remember the exact moment in time that it dawned on me I didn’t want to be a psychologist:  I was working in a grocery store at the time and, whilst stocking shelves, a customer came up to me and started flying off the handle because we had both long and short grain rice, but no medium grain rice.  As I stood there staring at him, watching his double and triple chins quiver in his rice-induced rage, it occurred to me that the types of people able to afford privatized therapy sessions are the types of people with “first world problems,” such as the grocery store running out of sodding medium grain rice, and I didn’t want to spend my professional career listening to that… or interacting with people at all really.  What to do?

Luckily for me I was given all the time in the world to decide, as Hurricane Katrina’s lesser known sister, Rita, slammed into the Texas / Louisiana boarder just a month after Katrina… causing the university to shut down for a semester and destroying the apartment I lived in with my ex at the time. Long story short, I moved home to Ohio and took an educational break in favor of some soul searching.

Last year I completed a full year course circuit of all the hard sciences: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geology, Astronomy, etc.  This past week I took the next step and registered for my next year at Uni:  Human Biology.  And I find myself excited for freshly sharpened pencils and crisp, clean notebooks all over again.  I have a renewed sense that this is what is right for me: the major, the path, the eventual end.  A bachelors in Biology could very well one day lead to a doctorate in Paleontology, and the more I think on it the more it seems my inner child was right all those years ago.

When was the last time you let YOUR inner child call the shots?

I think I may have fallen victim to confirmation bias, but it seems everything I’ve watched and read recently has been discussing the possibility of life in the universe.  Just today I read an article on MSNBC about the Royal Society holding a meeting to discuss what protocol, both social and scientific, we should follow should we make contact.  SETI (the organisation for the search of extraterrestrial intelligence) is bound by obligation to consult with the UN should we receive a signal or a response from the vast, silent cosmos.  Although, logically, it makes sense to have such protocol in place, I guess I was taken by surprise upon reading about it as it’s not something you read about every day. It’s all a bit intense to think about.  After all, what are we, the masses, to think when a great mind like Stephen Hawking issues a warning that our attempts to signal other intelligent beings could mean ruin for our civilization as we know it?

But would it be doom for our blue rock?  I would assume not.  Recently I watched an episode of Bad Universe which postulates that, when considering other intelligent civilizations out in the universe, they are far more likely to be thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than us as opposed to being on a level playing field with our technology.  In Carl Sagan’s book, Contact, it is stated that a far more advanced civilization, traveling through the universe just to destroy us, would be like us going out of our way to destroy a few ants on an ant hill in Africa.

Of course, I’d be more likely to agree with Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, where we might become pets.  Perhaps more like ants in a toy ant farm.

But what literally blew my mind was this, a quote from the aforementioned article:

Steven Dick, formerly NASA’s chief historian, speculated that we might be living in a post-biological universe, dominated by artificial intelligence, on the basis that intelligences would be driven to improve and perpetuate.

Meaning that the other intelligent cultures out there in space are SO advanced that they may not even exist in a living sense, but rather have their culture carried on by artificial lifeforms. Would we be able to even communicate with such beings?  Would this idea entail we were among the last carbon based lifeforms in the universe?  And how many of them are out there?

It all depends on if you use optimistic or pessimistic numbers in the Drake Equation. N can be anything from one (meaning only Earth in the entirety of the Milky Way Galaxy) to one million.  When Drake himself postulated a number for N in 1961 he came to ten.  Ten other planets in our galaxy, capable of supporting life, capable of nurturing an intelligent life form, whose civilization is advanced enough to transmit communication in space.  Ten other possibilities of neighbors in the Milky Way who may have, by the idea of a post-biological universe, long since organically perished and yet live on in the artificial intelligence they have created.

Amazing.

Share on Facebook

As one would expect, a certain beautiful little girl has taken up my every waking hour for two and a half weeks now. In fact, even as I type this Maddie lies sleeping against my chest.  However, a few other things worthy of note have happened as of late as well:

-I received notification from the OU that I passed my first year uni course.  I have been waiting for this letter to come through the post for two months!  Last September I embarked on a general science course that would last me an entire year and take me through a range of subjects: Biology, Chemistry, Historical Geology, Quantum Physics and the universe itself.  I battled through chemical equations at the same time that I battled with morning sickness (better known as all day sickness really).  I reached the end of the course and spent over 50 hours perfecting my 23 page end of course assignment.  No matter how well you did in the course itsself, if you failed the end of year assignment you failed the year, and everything would be for nothing.

Luckily, this was not the case for me.  Whilst they don’t provide any specific feedback, I know two things:  1. I passed the assignment and the course and 2. the end of year was divided into 5 sections, 3 of which I scored in the 80-100% range, and the other two in the 60-79% range, which is fantastic.

-We may have another property.   I say may because, due to the previous two times the process has fallen through for us, I’ve learned that nothing is certain until the keys are in hand.  But the offer was accepted, and everything is proceeding with the property sale quite quickly.  I am trying not to get too excited until everything is locked into place by exchange of contracts, but I must say we LOVE this place.  I chose to have the positive outlook after the last one fell through that it was for the best and we would find something better (after a brief tear shed over it, of course) and it was exactly the case.  We found something we love so much more.  It ticks all the boxes, and is in a fantastic school district for Maddie.

We viewed the property the morning before my induction, picking a property and birthing a baby in the same 48 hour period? I think so.

- Mom went home last Friday after being here for three weeks.  It was so hard for her to go, and we miss her so much.  I am so grateful for all the help and support she gave us whilst here, and glad she got to be here for the birth.  I don’t know what I would’ve done in the first two weeks of Maddie’s life, never having raised a baby or even held one for an extended period of time, had it not been for her guidance.

And because the blog entry wouldn’t be complete without a picture of the cutie, I give you the level 1 noob:

In the wee hours of the morning, at 2am, I printed off my end of year assignment, put it in a display folder, and set it aside with a sigh of relief… finished and ready to be posted.  I had spent well over 40 hours on this 22 page behemoth, which contained the full spectrum of my course: biology, physics, chemistry, geosciences etc.  I worked on it for several hours a week over the last month, and it felt almost anticlimactic to have it finished and in hand.

Later that afternoon I walked unceremoniously into the post office, placed what felt like, literally, a second child into an envelope, and handed it off for posting.  Out of my hands and into those of fate.  It felt as though a burden was lifted and, when I got home, I finished the last little bit remaining this year for school: a 25 question test.  I passed the test, as I was informed immediately after submitting the answers online, and now all I needed to do was wait for the last assignment grade… the grade that could make or break me. For if I fail the final assignment, the rest of the year’s work is moot… I will have failed the course.  But I am confident this will not be the case: I worked too hard and too long on this to fail.

I’ve also begun my maternity leave… off of work for the next 10 months.  I don’t think it’s hit quite yet, but probably will tomorrow when I don’t have to be at work and I won’t have school work to finish…. what on Earth will I do with myself?!