I thought at the end of the semester that I had it all figured out. I had my academic plan for next year. I had a clear goal: finish my civil engineering degree and take two extra classes to earn a technological commercialization minor. But last week, I went into the financial aid office and found out the aid I thought I had for next year was no longer being given to me.
So now, I have an academic plan, but it might be too expensive to finish it. I now have to base what I do next year on what I can earn over this summer. I don't have a job yet. I don't know if the last possible university loan I applied for will be given to me. I don't know whether I am going to be able to stick to my plan or if I'm going to have to find a career earlier than I anticipated with my first bachelor's degree.
It is all based on what happens in the future, which is uncertain and uncertainty sucks. Think about it. When is uncertainty ever a good feeling? Somebody's in surgery and their family members are sitting out in the waiting area chewing on their fingernails until they don't have them anymore. The studious college student sends out graduate school applications to try to get into graduate school and they worry about what they are going to do if they don't get into their dream school. Gradually, time passes and a new letter comes every few weeks telling you whether you got in or not. Months of uncertainty while also working on senior-level work starts to get to the student and they are sporting the Einstein hairstyle because of the stress of the uncertainty. Uncertainty is scary, causes anxiety, and drives me insane.
However, there are instances where ignorance-based uncertainty can be beneficial. My brother and I watched that storm chasers tribute on the Discovery Channel and then we went to Best Buy. As we were walking towards the Best Buy entrance, the back reverse lights lit up on a van next to us. Then, he asked me the question, "Would you rather die by getting hit by a van or getting swept up by a tornado?" My response was, "It depends on whether they are ignorant sudden deaths or I see eminent death coming. If I'm ignorant and I suddenly die, I think that the cause of death would not matter because I was ignorant. However, if I see it coming, I imagine both scenarios would be quite terrifying."
Yes, I'm morbid sometimes, but intellectual morbidity is in line with Daria's personality and my love for forensic- and crime-based tv, so I enjoy it. Thus, I suppose uncertainty in small doses is good for people, but I don't like the long drawn-out kind. I'd rather know I can afford my plans ahead of time than anguish over the uncertainty of achieving my goals the way in which I had intended.
That being said, I thoroughly appreciated the Storm Chasers Tribute on the Discovery Channel. I kept wondering if they had salvaged the actual storm chasers footage when they died. I totally understand that the family might not want that released, but the tribute episode kept building up and I was hoping to see that they had achieved some last bit of groundbreaking data in the erratic F-3 tornadoes that happened the day they died. I was hoping there was a last bit of data that they had captured to show that their sacrifice wasn't just an unforeseen accident.
It is always sad when pioneers in science die, like they were. I hope their last few moments were not spent being aware of their impending death. I hope it was ignorant and sudden, so they went through minimal or hopefully no suffering at all. I like to believe that specific scientific laws apply upon the death of humans. I believe that when humans die, our energies are not destroyed and merely become a different type of energy that emanates into the environment. I hope the storm chasers who died had their energies sent to the heavens to become future natural phenomena.
No comments:
Post a Comment