The End

After nearly 6 hours of finals, I've finally finished the semester! And to be honest with you, I'm extremely glad to see the rear end of this semester. I will definitely miss a few things and people from this semester, but generally, I'm just glad to have finally gotten through all my engineering sciences courses. I can now finally start doing what I came here to do, which is to learn about Aeroplanes, and aerodynamics so I can one day streamline a title winning Formula 1 car. In case you didn't know, that's what I want to do as a career. Of course, I will definitely want to go into commercial and fighter aircraft, but my ultimate target is to do aerodynamics in Formula 1. But all that is gonna be a long time from now.

What I liked best about this semester is my Astronomy class. In astronomy, I didn't just learn about what was out there, about how the development of astronomy has helped propel the development of humankind both scientifically and spiritually, how it advanced our knowledge about navigation, mathematics and the like. What I've developed along the way are plenty of ideas about our place in the universe. At the beginning of the course, Dr. Fleck, who stood in for Dr. Aufdenberg, said that after learning astronomy, you will feel insignificant. True enough, as I began measuring in astronomical units, I did begin to feel rather insignificant. In terms of size, the solar system really isn't huge. If it somehow were to disappear today, the universe will still dance on, oblivious to our disappearance. So I kept asking myself, why are we here? Could there really be more to life and death than what we are taught to believe? Are we alone? Is it possible that we have "siblings" in other star systems. Siblings that we have yet to find due to the large cosmic distances. If someone were to look at the solar system from another galaxy, they will come to a conclusion that we do not exist, simply because they just can't see us no matter how hard they try. Even from the nearest galaxy, which is Andromeda, fellow Andromadeans will conclude that there is no life on planet earth. They will only learn of our existence in about 4.5 billion years later!! We do know that in our galaxy alone, there are hundreds of earth like planets capable of supporting life. The Kepler mission is now searching for them. But then again, what if different forms of life really didn't need the basic ingredients which we need for survival? As we know it, even on earth, oxygen is poisonous to certain types of bacteria. So, what if alien life required other ingredients to survive? Are we looking at the wrong places? We know that certain life forms can survive in the treacherous conditions of space. We know that they can survive the radiation for years, and also the heat of entry into a planet. Could it be that based on these facts, we were planted here? Could we all be nothing but experiments? Could learning about all these things lead us closer to understanding the hand of our creator? These are things that I find myself contemplating. We may thin that these questions are crazy, but in the recent development of science, we have uncovered many bizarre truths about nature. Not long ago, we would have been thrown into prison for suggesting that the sun was at the center. But now we now otherwise. Of course, I may never know the answers to these things, but it is indeed refreshing to know that there are bigger things in life to contemplate. Will there be another revolution in scientific thinking? The answers will definitely be interesting.

Ratz, I think I sounded like a lunatic on that last paragraph =P

Anyways, the semester is over. It's time to stop cracking my head. It's time to start having fun! I'm going fishing tomorrow!!