The Trail We Blaze

I am not an overly sentimental person.

There are definitely times where I can be caught reminiscing over something or another, and there are certainly a handful of things and places to which I have attached moderate to severe sentimentality, but overall, I tend not to be a terribly reflective individual. While my mother points out occasionally that I always have demonstrated a tendency to recall very obscure happenings and details years later, it is also incredibly common for me to forget rather significant conversations and events that one would typically expect to leave a marked impression. More than once I've had someone make the comment in the course of conversation that they "will never forget" when I did or said such and such. These comments often leave me feeling fairly awkward since whatever it was I said or did clearly left an impression them, and typically I have zero recollection of whatever it is they are referring to.

I just don't spend a whole lot of time looking back at what has happened and what I have done in the past. When I do happen to glance at the rear view mirror, I tend to feel more than a little overwhelmed and it boggles my mind to look at how much can happen in a very short span of time. However, as fun as it can be to compare how much everyone's grown and how far everyone's gone in the last couple years, I have a hard time walking away from my irregular bouts of sentimentality feeling like looking back on the good ol' days does a whole lot of good. Sure, I am all for learning from past mistakes and using days gone by as a stepping stone for bigger and greater things, but frequently dwelling on what has already been (and more specifically what could have been) strikes me as a fairly unhealthy mental occupation overall.

See, while I have yet to participate in anything unspeakably horrible (not that I'd speak of them if I had), it is hard for me to look back at even decisions I was making last week without wanting to kick myself for making stupid decisions and calling all the wrong shots. The farther back you go, the easier it is to start getting hyper-critical of my ways of thinking and acting. I have done a lot of stupid things, and I've said a lot of even stupider things. Very likely I am still doing and saying a lot of embarrassing, awkward, and offensive things. (Sorry mom!)

It seems part of human nature to Scrooge things up on a regular basis, and while I am certainly no exception to this rule, I imagine it would be extremely difficult for anyone to dwell extensively on the past without reliving more mistakes than success. That's not to say that there aren't people who have done a great deal of remarkable things with their lives, or that most people looking back are going to regret life choices like getting married, buying their house, or having kids. What I am trying to say is that, no mater how many good choices we've made, there seems to be a very good chance that in most scenarios we could have done better and, looking back, we know it.

The risk to start asking "What if I had only...?" or "How would things be different if I had...?" and I feel like those are very dangerous and (mostly) unhelpful questions to be asking in the great scheme of things. Certainly, we want to learn from both our accomplishments and our failings, but the temptation to get caught up in where we might have been had we gone with some other life choice rather than where we really are is, at least for me, very strong.

Not only does living in an alternative version of your life damage your ability to live the life you have actually been given to the fullest, it becomes easier and easier to go from thinking "If only I had done such and such!" to "If only so and so had done such and such!" and "If only I'd been raised under such and such conditions!"

When you're acting out a life scenario different from the one you would like to have, it becomes oh so easy to start blaming the rest of the world for it. Well sure I could have made a better choices back then, but I didn't because Mr. Yahoo ruined my life by telling me X, and Ms. Whatsit always got whatever she wanted at my expense. Oh, and don't get me started on how much I lacked growing up because my current status in life is totally the fault of my upbringing, the government, religion, and the fact that they started hooking up the alphabet with math once I reached high school. 

As usual, I am probably wrong in making a blanket statement, but I'm inclined to say that asking what could have been is never going to be beneficial in the long run, because you don't get to live in what could have been. We get to live in what is, and if we waste our time reminiscing about what has, hasn't, and never will, we aren't really taking advantage of what is actually available to us.

 (That's probably all just my attempt to justify forgetting everything.)

Mostly though, I think tend not to dwell on the past because I am too busy focusing on what's going on now and what's coming down the line in the immediate future.

When something unfortunate happens, I tend to panic, or get depressed, or otherwise get upset in some fashion, but fairly quickly (I think), I start asking myself "Now what?" My mental state tends not to be too stationary, and usually my reaction to a new, unfortuante development is something along the lines of "Ah, well, shoot... That sucks... But what does this mean? What happens now? Where do we go from here? Can we fix it? What has to happen?"

Now, I'm not trying to brag about my superior ability to respond a crisis, because, well, because sometimes (usually) my performance is pretty sub-par, but I like to think that at least my mind starts to go in the right direction.

Dealing with life isn't about determining what could have been. It is about discovering what's next.

Over the last year, I was bequeathed the title Mr. Plan by a friend of mine because of my tendency to respond to everything with either "What's the plan?" or "Sounds like a plan." At one point in time, I consider myself a pretty spontaneous individual, but that point in time has since vanished into the distant horizon. I can still appreciate the concessional last minute spur of the moment decision to do something entirely unplanned, but for the most part, I am rather predisposed to knowing what on earth is supposed to be going on.

Last week on my way to visit some friends my car broke down within minutes of my getting out of town. The engine overheated and my gas peddle ceased to function (just for kicks). As I rolled down the road (which was thankfully empty) into some random soul's driveway, I was totally freaking out. It was pretty obvious that I would not be making the two hour drive out of town in my vehicle. Thankfully, this was the first time I've had to deal with my car dying on me while driving (the bottom of my vehicle started falling off on the highway one time, but that's another story), but my mind was racing 100 mph, and consequently a lot faster than my vehicle, as I tried to figure out what to do. 

Thankfully, after I called my dad and he drove out to where I was pulled over, we determined that after the car had cooled down, it could be restarted and could operate normally...ish... long enough for us to get it to the mechanic about fifteen minutes away. Unfortunately, once the mechanic had a chance to look the car over, he determined that the issue was directly tied to a malfunctioning/broken/whatever head gasket in the engine and would require a rather pricey fix.

I spent the last several days trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my car. If it was worth the cost of the repair, if I really absolutely needed a car right now, and if I could maybe afford a replacement, but when I finally made the decision yesterday to just pay for the repair, I stopped worrying about the problem completely. Yeah, the cost is still going to suck, but now at least I know what is going on. I have a plan, and while everything obviously doesn't always go according to plan, having one in place makes it a lot easier for me to be at peace with my decisions and be comfortable with moving forward.

Just as spending too much time looking back makes me feel depressed and discouraged, trying to look too far forward without any kind of battle strategy in place is overwhelming and petrifying. Life's too complicated and demanding to try and just float through hoping for the best, and it is too precious to waste it wishing things were different from the way they really are. I would much rather spend my time figuring out how to make the most of what I have actually been given, and for me at least, that means looking at what I have now, where I want to be, and how I am going to get there.

Undoubtedly, many of my plans and especially those covering what I'm going to do a year or more from now when I'm graduated, are going to end up playing out very differently form how I imagine them now, but in my mind, at least I know I'm going somewhere and I have something to work towards. Whether or not the place I'm driving myself to is exactly what I imagine it to be is not really my concern. Instead, I'm just trying make sure that I'm moving toward something, and that the journey getting there is worthwhile.

Maybe everything I've just said applies only to me, and maybe it is all rubbish, but I really feel like there is something to be said for focusing more on where you're going than where you could have been. I want to be able to appreciate what I've managed to accomplish with my life, but more than that, I want to be able to enjoy accomplishing more.

Life isn't stationary, and it certainly isn't moving backwards. I don't know what's going to happen, I don't know what could have happened had I made some different life choices, but whatever comes, at least I've got a plan.

Pax

"Don't do what you can't undo, until you've considered what you can't do once you've done it."
~ King Shrewd in Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice 

Growing Older if Not Wiser

With the first week of my third year of college behind me, there is more that I could talk about than I would typically like. Between waking up Monday morning with a cold, an in your face professor with a hostile political agenda, and getting the time for my Friday classed mixed up so that I walked in an hour and twenty minutes into the lecture, things got off to a pretty rough start. Each morning I woke up with some new mutation of a cold and felt less and less like actually showing up to my classes with each progressing day, but I'm a stubborn and persistent fellow so I forced myself and my fellow classmates to put up with and endure my sniffles all the way through the week.

Thankfully, I feel essentially recovered from the obligatory beginning of the semester illness, and Labor Day is extending my weekend long enough for me to get stuff done, get my feet back on the ground, and come back to week two with a vengeance.

So, instead of spending an entire post listing off my beginning of the semester woes, I'm going to focus on a peculiar phenomenon I've been experiencing since Monday morning. I can't recall whether or not I mentioned this in my last post or not, but I have a rather abnormal class schedule this semester compared to the schedules of days gone by. In the past, all of my schooldays started with a class at 10:00 am and ended before 5:30 in the evening. I did this on purpose because I don't like evening classes, don't like super early classes, and really don't like online classes. Unfortunately, going hand in hand with entering into the upper level classes, my choices as far as days and times for the subjects I wanted to take were fairly limited, and as a result, my first class of the week doesn't start until 5:30 PM on Monday. Consequently, the first day of school was primarily taken up with me not actually being in class and I had plenty of time to mull over this strange realization that dawned on me as I dove into the beginning of my fifth collegiate semester.

Even though I didn't have class till 5:30, I got to campus at 9:00 Monday morning so I could print out syllabi and then assist in manning the Honors Program table at my university's welcome week event. As I sat in my folding chair on the mall of my university campus and watched student walk by, I was struck by two conflicting thoughts. 1) It felt like was returning home, and 2) I felt totally out of place and like the coming to campus wasn't the same anymore. The first thought caused me to realize that my school , despite all my frustrations with it and how little I actually want to be there some days, has actually become a pretty significant part of my current life. After four semesters and quite a few 12+ hour days on campus, I suppose it isn't entirely surprising that a part of me has grown attached to the place, but I have also developed some good friendships and met some rather enjoyable companions over the last two years. Running into many of these people over the course of my first day back felt very refreshing and helped me to realize just how much my life has changed and how much I've developed in so many ways since beginning my adventures in higher education. Jumping back into the swing of things felt almost seamless that first day in many ways, and I could hardly believe that I hadn't been on the campus more than a handful of times since the end of June.

However, at the same time, I could help feeling like some things had definitely changed. For one thing, the fact that I am a junior and more than halfway through my undergraduate degree hit me in full force for the first time. After this semester, assuming I pass all my classes, I will have only thirteen subjects and thirty-seven credit hours left standing between me and my degree. It isn't even accurate to call this my junior year, because I'll be a senior, God willing, come December. Realizing that I was farther along than fifty percent plus of the student body milling to and fro around me was no small thing for my head to grapple with, and it set all sorts of fireworks off in my head. Being halfway done means that I need to actually start looking at internships and graduate school with increased fervor and focus. It means I need to actually start acting like an adult and begin getting things mapped out lest I run full speed into graduation and the future without a satisfactory contingency plan.

All in all, something felt off. I'm not sure if it was my new upperclassman standing, the fact that I am now taking classes all centered around my major, a schedule with two online classes and none in the mornings Monday and Wednesday, the pesky cold that plagued me all week, some other unidentified variable, or some combination of the above, but I passed through the last several days in a dazed stupor at times. Together, all of these things led me to a single extremely obvious but extraordinary epiphany: I'm getting older.

Life is not, in fact, standing still, and while I am most certainly still a sprouting youngster, my twentieth birthday is coming up right around the corner and before too long I will be entering the grown up world for real. Not long ago, the idea of going to college, getting a driver's license, and turning eighteen were all awe inspiring concepts that marked my crossing the threshold of child to adult. Now all three seem terribly mundane, uninteresting, and things of the past. Instead, completed degrees, graduate school, jobs and internships, a living space of my own, and, God willing, a wife and family are all milestones that are not only fast approaching but will probably also seem incredibly normal and routine before too long.

The fact is that adulthood and the real world are hot on my heels, and while I like to think that I have not been idle or negligent in preparing for their arrival, it is time that I actually start thinking in concrete terms and begin making plans to actually handle them when they get here. Applying for jobs and looking into purchasing living quarters will not remain hypothetical situations to be examined in the future for long. Life's rolling forward and I'm getting older.

As I have told my friends and peers many times before, I don't actually consider myself an adult yet. Sure, I am eighteen, I vote, I attend college, have a part time job, can drive myself to and fro, manage my own schedule, and am responsible for getting myself up int he morning and putting myself to bed at night, but I honestly don't feel like any of these things are really signs or indicators that I have shaken off the title of child and grown into the realm of "grown ups." I still live with my parents, they pay for almost all of my food, my dad still cover's my car insurance, and I do not make enough money that I could fend for myself if my parents chose to kick me out. Thankfully, I have been blessed with absolutely amazing parental units who have graciously allowed me to save quite a bit of money by inhabiting their basement and consuming their food while I tackle this thing commonly referred to as college, but as long as I take advantage of their generosity and remain dependent on their finances, their home, and their edible products, I am not entirely comfortable calling myself an adult.

My reluctance in calling myself a fully fledged grown up extends beyond the fact that I am not self sufficient at this time. As I read the news, look at the parents and adults around me who have to deal with the trials and tribulations of world, and as I sit and think about all of the demands upon my time and attention that will come hand in hand moving out, getting a career, and starting a family, I cannot help but feel woefully unprepared for the responsibilities that will be laid upon my shoulders. Not because I feel like my parents, friends, and society have failed to train me and give me the resources necessary to take on life, but because I feel like I have yet to fully grasp that mysterious beast known as maturity by the horns and embrace the necessary mindset in becoming a real adult.

However, as I wrestle with these thoughts of inadequacy and the impending demands of the real world, I have found myself panicking far less than I would have previously predicted; this whole being adult thing is actually what I have been trying to work towards ever since I figured out that I could graduate high school in three years instead of four. All my efforts, not just academically, but in finding campus jobs, in learning how to drive, and in getting involve in school activities have been focused on reaching the point where I can confidently call myself a grown and meet the world head on.

I told a friend earlier this week when discussing a particularly frustrating professor that I have this semester: "I've got too many things to do and too many places to go to let a professor stop me." Likewise, at this point, the issues and responsibilities that will come with graduating, moving out, and coming into my own are part of the package deal and even though they often seem overwhelming and positively crippling, they are part of life. I will handle them, one way or another, because I have to. After all, I've got bigger fish to fry.

All of this is not to meant to be an attempt to brag or show of pompous self confidence, but rather a recognition of the fact that I am coming to terms with the fact that the up and down roller coaster of life is no longer a distant image on the horizon and that I am genuinely eager to start tackling it. More than likely, I will trip and fall on myself numerous times along the way. Honestly, that seems pretty inevitable, but that's all part of the process.

I'm growing older whether I like it or not so I might as well choose to like it, make the most of it, and be as prepared for it as possible.

Looking forward, I have three regular semesters counting this one before I get my undergraduate degree in Accounting. After that I plan on nabbing and internship before coming back to school for a graduate degree also in Accounting. Between now and then, a lot of stuff is going to happen, and a lot of it is going to be entirely out of my control, but by the time I graduate with a Masters I plan on being able to finally call myself an adult.

After all, you only live once, and while being a kid forever might sound awesome, ain't nobody got time fo' dat. 

Pax

(Note: I should write these things before midnight... not after)

The Epic Summer Adventures of Me (aka, making up for lost time)

After fourish month hiatus, I felt like it was time to return to my neglected but not forgotten blog. A wide array of variables resulted in nothing getting posted here over the course of the summer, but I haven't been entirely absent from the blogging sphere. Back in June a new blog titles The Conciliar Post went live and I have penned two full articles for that blog since it got up and going. The CP is a series of writings collected by Christians of various denominations across the States on anything and everything from ethics in the workplace to relationship advice. If you're interested in checking out the thing you can traverse the interwebs via this.

Anyway, now that the sales pitch is aside, I shall get to the meat of this post.

This past summer has been a rather unusual one for me. Not only did I find myself with a car and driver's license for the first summer of my life, but I also had my first go (and hopefully last) with summer classes. A week after the spring semester finals were completed with my usual grace and humility (read whining and moaning), I began an online course in Nutrition alongside an physical course in Political Science. Both courses led by helpful and engaging profs and managed to prove both mildly interesting and fairly informative, but they were still school and they were still taking place during the summer. During this time I was also working a very modest 8 hours a week as a math tutor still and the consequence was that my weekdays were not exactly the dog days of summer freedom that I have grown to appreciate over the course of my life. However, I knew this was going to be the case and chalked it up to this whole adulthood thing that I am still getting used to.

I was determined not to let my education and employment get me down however and I managed to make several trips to visit friends and attend graduations in another city. Oh, and I played quite a bit of video games too... still haven't shaken off that childish past time quite yet. All in all, the first two months of my summer were a slightly less demanding and hectic version of the school year and hold a relatively straightforward "meh" rating in my memories.

The second half of my summer was significantly more eventful and nomadic. Less than a week after I finished my summer term, my family set off in our caravan for not one but two family reunions out on the great plains. Unfortunately for us, the day before we were to depart, a storm passed through our neck of the woods and managed to drop a particularly vindictive piece of said woods upon our house. With a tree sticking out of our room, a vehicle shorted out by electrical damage, no power, and a street covered in wood chips, we spent our last day at home attempting to patch things up to the best of our ability before abandoning the premises for a week. Thankfully the storm didn't end up delaying our vacating as we feared initially but we are actually still waiting on a final fix to the hole in our roof...

Vacation consisted of two weeks with more relatives than I can recall ever seeing gathered in a single place before... at the very least since my older brother's wedding six years ago. My dad's parents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and we were able to gather almost all of their children, all of their grandchildren, and all of their great-grandchildren under one roof for a whole week (there were something like 35 of us I think). It was a magnificent experience that will continue to live on in my memory for a long time, but even that big party wasn't quite the size of my mom's grandmother's 90th birthday celebration a week later. While the full gathering for my mom's family reunion was not nearly as lengthy, it was more than twice the size with somewhere between 70 and 80 of my great-grandmothers descendants gathered on a single farm property.

Less than 24 hours after returning home from our adventures out west, I headed a few hours out east to visit some friends for a week. On the drive over however I discovered that a tree branch had apparently fallen upon my poor vehicular unit. Said branch had apparently hit with enough force to leave a crack in my windshield in addition to a dent in my roof, but the crack was small enough to begin with that it did not immediately catch my attention. After being on the road for two hours, however, it took up about half of my windshield. Unfortunately I didn't think to get a picture, but the crack was a pretty intimidating thing to behold when driving 60 miles an hour down the highway. Thankfully my friends on the other end of my destination we able to help meet get my vehicle to a very friendly and efficient window repair shop several days into my visit and the whole things was solved with minimal effort and only a couple hundred dollars out of pocket. (Oh cars...)

After returning home from that trip I was back on my family's turf for a few days before heading up north to the not currently frozen wild lands of Wisconsin for a long time friend's wedding. I car pooled with a handful of other excellent friends and while I felt like I had spent enough time road tripping to last several summer by the end of it, I enjoyed myself very thoroughly.

After the wedding I was home for two and a half days before driving down south to the watery lands of Missouri for a four day canoeing trip with some of my church's youth group. Another epic adventure for the records, I managed to canoe for hours and hours with only occasional whining and a single flipping of my canoe. I also learned how to canoe by myself standing up in the middle of the boat so that was pretty awesome.

After an entire 48 hours of rest back at my primary place of residence, I headed east again for a several day conference visit with friends again before heading slightly more east and kinda north for yet another friend's wedding. The day after wedding number 2 for the summer I had to head back home speedy quick so I could make it to a third wedding that evening. (This one was only 45 minutes away from home so it was practically in my backyard compared to my trips this summer).

Since wedding number three I have remained pretty stationary. The last two weeks have taken longer to pass than the entire month of July it seems. I acquired my textbooks for the fall, gathered the necessary educational resources for maximum learning potential, (read pencils) and played more video games. Last week I participated in two days of training for my position as a math tutor, and while the training was not actually mandatory (I've been tutoring for three semesters and two summers already at this point), I was told that I would get paid if I chose to show up. After very little deliberation, I determined that two days of pay and two free meals were worth sitting through a handful of tedious training exercises.

That pretty much brings us to today. At some point in the next week or so I have another blog post I want to write, but I figured a filler post to make up for the silent summer was called for. Tomorrow I begin my fifth regular semester of college. I still feel like a newbie, but when I consider the fact that I am actually 20 credits into my junior year already, I don't think I can really claim new student status any longer. Looking forward, I am estimating two more semesters after this one before I can actually call myself a college graduate.

I don't know how I feel about that yet.

Either way, this semester looks to be the most challenging and complicated yet. With only one class on Mondays/Wednesday, three on Tuesdays/Thursdays, and two online classes, my schedule is completely different from any of my previous escapes into higher education.

In case anyone is interested, this semester I'm taking six classes:
BUS A311 or Intermediate Accounting I
BUS A325 or Cost Accounting
BUS B399 or Business and Society
BUS D300 or International Business Administration
BUS K321 or  Management of Information Technology
SPCH S223 or Business and Professional Communication

Gone are the days of Geology and Sociology. My last two general education classes were vanquished over the course of the summer months, and I only have upper level business and accounting classes left to go. This is both highly intimidating and extremely refreshing. While I expect this semester to be extremely challenging, I look forward to actually learning more about the field I actually plan on going into. This is the semester where I will likely figure out whether or not this whole Accounting degree idea was a big mistake or the right choice.

No pressure.

In any case, after all the curve-balls and new experiences I've seen over the summer, the fact that my life is going through a rapid series of growth spurts is really hitting home. I can't even begin to guess where I'll be two years from now and I expect the coming months will hold plenty of change and new adventure for me.

Here's to Fall 2014 and the class of 2016!

Pax

Hobbies and Careers, Why I'm Not Going for "What I Love"

"You have to do something that you love," is a phrase I often hear uttered when the topic of education and future careers paths comes up. While I think there is quite a bit of wisdom behind choosing to pursue a degree and job that will be able appreciate even after dedicating a very large portion of your time and energy to it day after day, I am not convinced that trying turn your favorite pastime into a career is the wisest choice or that "do what you love" is the best bit of advice to give someone.

Why? Why wouldn't you choose to take the thing you love doing best and turn that into your job? I mean, who wouldn't choose to get paid for doing what they already want to be doing?

Maybe this is a trait unique to me, but I personally find that my interest in and motivation to pursue things drops dramatically when they become something I am supposed to do. It isn't true that I suddenly dislike that which I previously enjoyed simply because it becomes a required task, but often times I feel like a good portion of the joy and interest I have in things drops when a deadline and consequences are attached along with commanding instruction.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a very duty driven person and I think structured responsibilities, assigned tasks, and jobs to fulfill are important. I don't mind them, and I actually believe I perform much better when I am given something to do and a goal to strive for. As long as I can understand the purpose and concept behind the rules I'm given to work with, it is entirely possible for me to function happily and contentedly under a set of restrictions. When left to my own devices for an extended period of time, I tend toward being frustratingly idle and unproductive.

So, it isn't true that some driving sense of rebellion quivers at the thought of having my hobbies regulated and transformed into a form of day to day labor. Instead, I am just keenly aware of the fact that what I am required or supposed to ends up getting exhausting and tedious after a few months of repetition. Even when I enjoy what I'm doing, if I'm expected to not only do it every day but do it to the same level of perfection on each go around, my enthusiasm begins to wane. I'll still do it, and I like to believe that I still do it willingly, but it loses its appeal somewhere around the ten millionth go around.

I am very thankful, for example, that college classes switch every semester. By the time week 12 or 13 rolls around, I'm ready for even my favorite and most engaging classes to be done. My professor may be great, my classmates may be great, the material may be incredibly interesting, but there is something about the idea that I've been working on one class for three plus months that gets rather depressing towards the end. My spurts of enthusiastic productivity become fewer and farther between the closer the finish line gets, and the more I check off my list, the less appealing those last four or five assignments become.

I'll admit, it is 100% a psychological issue, and lacking motivation won't prevent me from crossing the finish or from doing whatever I can to secure A's in my classes. Wavering motivation has not yet shown any sings of crippling my grades or leaving my responsibilities dangerously wanting. Only at my weakest moments do I ever forsake a task entirely, and usually I feel guilty afterwords to the point where I try to go back and amend my laziness as much as possible. My point is merely that the joy and enthusiasm diminishes and deteriorates the longer I am set along a single track, and if that track becomes a long term assignment I am not given the option to simply take a breather and break from the monotony for a while.


This semester I've been told by multiple people that I should be a Theater major, and I've been told by a number of other people that I should pursue philosophy or something based on writing, but as much as I enjoy acting, the theatrical arts, philosophy, logic, and writing, I could never convince myself to make those, or any number of other degrees/career paths, my own. Why? Because they are means of relief for me. They're escapes from the assigned tasks and delegated responsibilities. They're among my sources of entertainment and solace when I need something different. If I were to choose pursuing acting as a degree and ultimately a job, I am pretty convinced that I would end up hating myself and regret my decision immensely on top of being financially unstable simply because the role of acting would lose so much of its appeal as soon as it became something that I had to do and had to do as often as possible or face negative repercussions. 

My philosophy homework is usually the last set of assignments I do in my week even though the subject matter ranks among my favorite. Weird as it may seem, I put off doing the homework despite the fact that I am almost guaranteed to enjoy it once I start because the two or three it will take to read the necessary material and answer the assigned questions loom over me as a burden I must shoulder instead of the enjoyable exercise of mental capacity it really should be. A mental block is created that turns answering queries about Plato, Descarte, and the existence of a God away from what would have been an enjoyable pastime into an arduous slog that I must complete if I want to master my course.

At one point in time, I toyed with the idea of pursuing something in the culinary arts, but after looking into the nitty gritty of the field and after speaking with friends of my family that also happen to be professional chefs, I realized that the pleasure I take in cook and baking comes primarily from the freedom I have to experiment, to take my time in the kitchen, to try out random new things based on what just happens to be in the pantry, and on the fact that (if I really want to) I could opt for a bowl of cereal if I really want. The idea of having to crank out dish after dish in a heated (literally and figuratively) environment regardless of whether or not I really feel like cooking seemed less and less appealing to me the more I thought I about it, and thus dreams of being a chef or baker were cast from my mind in light of the fact that something I currently enjoy would likely become something I would dread doing before I even made it out of my college education.

The same goes, I think, for most of the things I enjoy doing in my spare time. A lot of the things I love to do could potentially be turned into a career path if I was willing and interested in dedicated a great deal of time and energy into making it so, but that directly conflicts with the whole idea that my hobbies are an escape. They're what allow me to do what I need to without losing my mind.

That's kind of how I ended up as an Accounting major.

Sometimes I question whether or not I'm really going into a field that I should be. When I hear my music major friends animatedly discuss various composers and musicians, when I hear my cast members for A Midsummer Night's Dream talk about how much they love doing what they do, or really any time anyone I know starts talking about how passionate they are for their degree I can't help but feel like my interest in Accounting is kind of underwhelming.

I'm not getting my degree because the idea of being an Accountant gets me all excited. Crunching numbers doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside oddly enough. While I do find a lot of the stuff I've learned thus far about my future field quite fascinating, and while putting together financial statements and the like can feel like a mentally invigorating puzzle, I highly doubt you'll find a lot of people dreaming of jobs as Accountants in their youth.

I'm not in it for the money either though. Depending on the route you take, I understand that Accountants can make some pretty good money and while I have no intentions of saying no to decent sized paychecks, I could probably pursue more lucrative tracks if that was really my driving motivation.

Instead, I chose Accounting because it interested me, was something fit my skill set, and most important, was something I could see myself doing day in and day out without hating it or totally losing any interest. Like I said before, I don't dislike having things I'm supposed to necessarily, and I feel like what I've learned about Accounting indicates that the job offers to meet me needs for order, structure, and logically methodical tasks while its requirements matched the abilities I have to offer. (Numerous personality quizzes say so :P)  As an Accountant I should be able to pay the bills and have some job security such that I will be free to pursue my interests, hobbies, and the things I love at my leisure.

I'll find a way to be happy and content with whatever path I'm given to take, but the more I think the about it the more confident I am that I'm on the right track, because when I come home from a long day of work I don't want my hobbies and passion to be the source of my exhaustion and stress. Instead, I want my job to be something worthwhile and reliable without being all consuming.

I believe my job should give me the ability to do what I love, but I don't what I love to become my job.

Pax

A Bit of What I Do

So, I had what I felt like was an interesting philosophy assignment this week. It is kind of long so you may or may not feel like reading the whole thing, but since I found it interesting to do I thought others might find it interesting to look at the assignment and how I responded to it. Also, if anyone is brave enough to work through the whole thing, I would be interested in hearing their thoughts and opinions.

As a disclaimer, I did end up working on this several hours after I usually call it quits on homework for night. My brain starts to rapidly lose functionality after nine or ten o'clock where my studies are concerned, but hopefully I come across as at least kind of intelligent.

Then, as another side note, I can't seem to change the formatting here... I've tried putting spaces between my paragraphs and the updating the post, but it resets itself back to the way it is now... so I apologize if it seems crowded or hard to read. I did my best to fix it, and my best wasn't good enough.
 

Anyway, enjoy!

Here is the set up given in my assignment...

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General Introduction (read this first)

It’s the year 2025.  The Earth is under attack by an alien race known as the Vogons, who wish to destroy Earth to make way for an Interstellar Super Highway. You have been chosen as part of a contingent that will carry on the human race by traveling to another solar system which contains an earth-like planet called Krypton, a planet that by all indications is capable of sustaining human life.  You will have to make three major decisions along the way. 
At each decision point you will be presented with two choices, and each time you should choose the option that gives YOU, individually, the best chance of survival.   By this I mean that you should choose the option in which you are least likely to die (You’re not worried about survival here in the sense of life after death.  You want to make decisions that will keep you alive). Also, you should not take quality of life into consideration here—just make the choice that is most likely to keep you alive, no matter how poor your quality of life may be.  You will then describe why you made that choice.  Each of these decisions confronts you with a major question about personal identity and what it means for you as a person to survive.  So, think carefully about each of your decisions. 

Scenario #1:   Spaceship or Teletransporter?

The first decision concerns how you will travel to Krypton.  There are two possible methods of transport.  First, scientists have constructed an incredible spaceship similar to the Space Shuttle (but much bigger) that will carry up to 100 people comfortably to Krypton, with plenty of oxygen, water, food, opportunity for exercise, entertainment, etc. (think of the Axiom, the spaceship in the movie Wall-E).  The trip will take approximately three years.  Due to the great length of the trip, there are many dangers.  Lots of things could go wrong (oxygen tanks could rupture, you could be hit by interstellar debris, some illness could befall you for which you have no cure, etc.).  The best scientific minds on Earth estimate that you would have about a 70% chance of surviving the trip to Krypton via spaceship.  

The second option is a recent technological development called teletransportation.  Here’s how it works (pay attention to how it works—it may be different than what you’ve heard before about teletransportation, say, from Star Trek).  The teletransporter performs a complete scan of your body, atom for atom, molecule for molecule, to capture all the physical information about you.  This scan actually destroys all the molecules of your body while simultaneously shooting a beam of energy carrying all the information about the physical structure of your body to the planet Krypton.  The beam of energy arrives on Krypton, where the energy causes existing molecules on Krypton to be arranged exactly like your body on earth (it’s like being “raised from the dust of Krypton”).  The whole process (from the beginning of the scan to the assembling of molecules on Krypton) is virtually instantaneous (let’s just ignore limitations imposed by the speed of light, etc.  It’s my example after all!).

Teletransportation has been tried on human beings on earth thousands of times.  After some initial problems (disintegrations, people emerging with arms on the top of their heads, etc.), the process is now virtually perfect.  For the last ten years covering thousands of cases, in every case the person emerging from the transportation process is an exact physical match to the person entering the transporter. Furthermore, the person that emerges from transportation appears to be an exact psychological match.  This means she has all the same memories, beliefs, hopes, personality, etc. as the person who entered the teletransporter.  The person emerging describes the experience as such. “I have a memory of stepping into the transporter, I saw a bright flash of light before me and then the next thing I knew I was in a completely new place.”  Also, friends and loved ones of the post-transport individual always report nothing out of the ordinary about the subject upon completion of the process – the person recognizes her friends and family and has completely normal conversations with them.  Friends of the patient who did not know she had undergone transportation are unable to tell that it has ever taken place.   The post-transport person reports having all the same beliefs, desires, hopes, and dreams as before transportation.  All the top minds working on transportation believe that transportation to Krypton will be just as successful as transportation on earth (there is absolutely no reason to think it would not be). 

What will you do? The Ship or the Teletransporter?  Why?

Scenario #2:   Vaccine or Silicon Replacement

So let’s assume you’ve made it to Krypton.  At first it’s not so bad.  The planet is very much like earth, though without pollution, deforestation, reality TV, and other ugly things mankind has done to earth.  In a way you feel as if you are in a new “Garden of Eden.”  But after a few weeks you discover that life on Krypton is not a bed of roses! Many of your party start exhibiting a marked decrease in powers. Eventually this malaise affects all of you.  Your speed, your strength, and even your mental powers of memory, reasoning, etc. are being sapped.  Your group begins to refer to this as the “reverse Superman” effect.  Some of you are starting to be rather forgetful – forgetting other people’s names, even forgetting some basic things about your past.  The scientists among you determine that Krypton’s sun has an extremely detrimental effect on all carbon-based life forms – it causes all carbon molecules to slowly decay.  Left untreated, this condition, over a period of just a couple of years, will lead to the complete wasting away of your bodies, your minds, and eventually death.  Your science team has not lost all hope forever—they surmise there are two things that might be done to reverse this condition. 

First, they have developed a vaccine that might reverse the effects of Krypton’s sun.  If it works, it will immediately stop the decay process and you will gradually be restored to complete health.  However, they are not overly optimistic about the vaccine’s working on each person. Whether the vaccine will work in you depends upon myriad aspects of your genetic make-up; however, the scientists do not have the ability to test your genetic makeup and predict whether the drug will work.  The general thinking is that the vaccine will work in around 50% of those who take it. 

Your other option is much more radical, and this is to undergo silicon replacement of all your body parts.  Silicon (not silicone—that is something completely different!)  is an element similar to carbon that behaves very much like carbon, and could easily serve as a basis for biological life. Over a period of one month, you will undergo a series of four surgeries in which different parts of your carbon-based brain will be replaced by a silicon part.  Then, after your last surgery, your entire brain will be transplanted into an artificial silicon body, which will be constructed to look very much like you and will be functionally equivalent to a human body (i.e., capable of pretty much everything a human body is capable of).  As with transportation, this silicon replacement process has been tried on humans before.  Each time, upon waking from each of the four brain surgeries, the subject reports having all the same beliefs and memories she had before surgery, and interacts the same with family and friends.  And the same is true of the subject whose brain is transplanted into a silicon body.  

You can only choose one of the options.  Taking the vaccine and waiting to see whether it will work eliminates the possibility of doing the silicon replacements (you’ll die too soon). 

What will you do? Why?

Scenario #3:   Your mind wiped clean?

So let’s suppose you’ve made it to Krypton and survived the “Reverse Superman Effect”.  Things are fine and dandy until you discover that, despite what you previously believed, there are other people on Krypton.  And human beings at that—who speak English (albeit with some kind of accent to indicate they are the bad guys)!  One day you find your camp suddenly surrounded on all sides by thousands of these Kryptonians. It turns out they are not hostile and wish you no harm; they just want to “assimilate you” to their society.  What this means is the following—you will be given a drug that puts you to sleep, wipes your mind clean, and “installs” new memories, beliefs, desires, and the like.  After taking the drug, your body will be perfectly healthy and unaffected, but the person that wakes up will have no memory of earth or of any of the hopes, beliefs, desires, likes, dislikes, etc., she had before the drug was taken.  Rather, the person who awakes will believe she is a Kryptonian, born and raised on Krypton, and have myriad “memories” of her life on Krypton, along with a very different personality, hopes, and desires.  

But the Kryptonians are a rather fair-minded lot.  They don’t want to force anyone to take the drug.  They inform you that you can, if you wish, choose to be banished to the Kryptonian desert.  If you make this choice, your mental life will be left entirely intact, but you’ll be forced to traverse the desert.  The Krypotonians tell you that on the other side of the desert, which extends for hundreds of miles, is a virtual paradise where you will be able to live happily.  However, the Kryptonians tell you that you have at best a 10% chance of making it across the desert without dying. 

What will you do?  The drug or the desert?  Why?

Final Summary Section

You have made three decisions about personal identity.  I want you to evaluate your own decisions.  Did any of your decisions change as you moved along?  In other words, did thinking about a later decision make you change a former decision?  Why was this? 

Do you believe all of your decisions are consistent?  In other words, have you used consistent criteria in making your decisions?  Can you identify what criteria you have used? 

Finally, can you give a one or two sentence summary of what YOU actually are?  What is absolutely essential to you?  Is it your body, your mind, both, something else?  Do your decisions make it clear to you?

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And here is my response... 

Part I: How to Reach Krypton

            Based on the description of the Teletransporter (Henceforth called the TT), the likelihood of it doing what it is supposed to is almost 100%. Which means the probability of success for the TT is 30% greater than it is for the Axiom equivalent. As a result, if the TT performs the goal of keeping me alive properly, then it is the logical choice as my means of transportation. The question then, of course, is whether or not I will survive using the TT. Since we are assuming the TT has an almost 100% chance of success the question of survival then comes down to whether or not it is actually me that would end up on Krypton or if I would cease to exist. Since the TT apparently sends the information about my physical form to Krypton, but not necessarily the actual atoms that make up my body, the physical form that would end up on Krypton with my likeness and conscience would be made up of entirely different material substance than that which currently makes up my body. 

            However, by all accounts, it seems like the mind or conscience operating the new physical form (identical to the one I currently have but made up of entirely different stuff) would be also identical to my own. So then the question becomes one of whether or not it is my physical form that is the primary foundation of my “self” or my mind, memories, and conscience. Honestly, it is more or less the Rodd, Maud, and Todd or Sili-Me question from the very beginning of class. What causes me to be myself, and what has to be changed to make me no longer exist? 

            If I were to lose a limb, or two, or three, or even four, I would still be considered the same person I am now… more or less. True, my appearance and capacity to accomplish certain tasks would be diminished, but my family and my friends would still consider me to be me. Similarly, my doctors would still expect payment from me as if I were the same person they removed tainted limbs from, and the law would still consider me to by myself such that I wouldn’t have to re-register to vote or re-sign up for the draft (ignoring the fact that I would be incapable of serving in the military).  If somehow I managed to survive losing almost my entire body while maintain my intelligence, sense of self, ability to communicate with others, I would still be considered to be me. True, we are faced with the fact that using the TT would completely destroy my entire prior physical form and if my entire physical form were destroyed by some other means without my conscience being transported to another body, we would consider me to be dead and gone, but my point is that a very substantial portion of my physical form could be lost or altered without most people considering my “self” to be gone. 

            Additionally, I can’t think of another possible measureable foundation for my “self” than my body or my mind. As a result, I feel that I must conclude that my “self” is based not on my body but on my conscience, my mind, and my memories. If not completely, at least to a greater extent than it is based on my body. Because of this, my primary goal in attempting to survive (assuming that survival is maintaining my “self”) should be not to maintain my body but my mind. If I use the TT there is a 100% chance that my body as it is will be destroyed and only a 30% chance of the same happening if I take the Axiom equivalent. However, my mind seems to have a near 100% chance of survival if I use the TT and only a 70% chance if I take the Axiom. Consequently, I feel that I should use the TT over the transport. 

Part II: The Reverse Superman Effect  

            For this portion we are faced with the fact that our mind, conscience, and memories, which we identified in the last portion as being the most likely foundation for the “self” we are trying to keep alive, is actively deteriorating. In order to combat this we have two potential options with some similarities to the options we had for getting to Krypton in the first place. One option has a chance of keeping us alive more or less the same as we are now while the other also has a chance of keeping us alive but at the cost of our entire body being destroyed and recreated. The two most notable differences are that the percentage chance of success for the less extreme option has dropped from 70% to 50%, and the method of destroying and rebuilding my body is actually more extreme than before because it will result in my body actually being made up of a different kind of substance. In the previous example, or reformed body was explained to be identical to our current one in that all of the building blocks and materials forming it were of exactly the same type as original. In this example, the Silicon treatment would change the makeup of my body into something very different in some ways from its current state.

            Just as with the first problem, if the surgery has the inexplicitly assumed success rate of 100% that the problem indicates it does and manages to keep my “self” alive, it is the obvious choice because it would have 100% chance of success as opposed to the 50% chance of success that the other method has. The drop in probability of success for the less radical treatment actually doesn’t change the outcome of the problem at all, because I am still faced with a 0% percent chance of survival for one option and a more than 0% chance of survival for the other if what matters in keeping my “self” alive is keeping my body alive, and a 100% chance of success for one option and a less than 100% chance of success for the other if it is my mind that matters. 

            Against, just as before, the answer seems obvious if we can distinguish between whether my mind or body is the primary thing we want to keep alive. Even though the silicon surgery will more dramatically change my body than when I used the TT, if my body is not what my “self” is based on, that fact shouldn’t be a determinant in my decision making. Going back to the loss of body parts example I gave previously, if I had the majority of my body replaced with artificial limbs, but continued to be the same person mentally and emotionally somehow, friends, family, legal entities, and my medical personal would all consider me to be the same person. As a result, I am led once again to conclude that transforming my body into a different kind of substance would not actually destroy my “self” and for the same reasons that I chose to use the TT as opposed to taking the transport, I would chose the surgery over the antidote. 

Part III: The Kryptonian Ultimatum 

            In Part III we are faced with a scenario very different from the previous two in some notable ways. First, the option with a 100% chance of success is not one that destroys our body but maintains our mind, but rather one that maintains our body and destroys our mind complete. Likewise, the option with a specified non-100% chance of successes is our only option for keeping our conscience completely intact (assuming we do not go mad in the dessert). 

            I would like to propose once again that the difference in percentages does not actually have a notable impact on my decision making. The question will still come down to what part of our “self” is it that we are most ardently trying to keep alive, and if we can answer that question our answer will be obvious. Why? Because once again, we will either be faced with one option that either gives a 100% chance of survival or a 0% chance of survival. 

            Interestingly enough, my body isn’t necessarily specifically at risk in this situation. True, my body will be dead if I die in the dessert, but so will my mind and everything else about me as well. 

            So, in essence, I still only have to return to my original reasoning that led me to believe that my mind, memories, and conscience are what I want to maintain above else, to determine that I should go through the dessert. True, this time I don’t actually have a 100% chance of success if I go with the option that maintains my mind as I did before, but the 10% chance I do have is significantly better than the 0% chance of keeping my mind if I were to take the drug being offered. 

            There is something worth considering though, that isn’t specifically addressed within the question. While the set up for the question seems to give the impression that there is no way that I could ever regain the memories, mind, and conscience that I had before taking the drug, if there was in fact a chance somehow of returning to the same mental, and emotional state prior to taking the drug, I would have to reconsider my decision based on how likely that return would be and if at that time I would have a greater chance of getting across the dessert. Since there doesn’t seem to be a chance of regaining my memories ever however, I would have to go with the attempting to cross the dessert. 

            Also, it may be worthwhile to note that my above average intellect, physical prowess, and all around superiority to others would likely give me more than a 10% chance of success in crossing the dessert. 

Part IV: Summery of Thoughts

            I feel fairly confident that I remained consistent and reasonable in my rationale throughout the exercise even if my reasons and perception of things was faulty. Starting with the first scenario I established what I felt were the key criteria and applied them to all three situations despite changes in what was going on. 

            The main problem with the reasoning I applied, as I see it, is that I don’t actually think my “self” is based solely on my mind. Rather, I do believe that humans have a soul that is separate from their memories and consciences and that would continue to exist even in light of memory loss, total physical destruction, or a coma. The problem with trying to apply that belief to this argument is that I cannot identify a way of testing whether or not the soul would remain after any of the potential processes. I cannot evaluate or confidently stipulate about the location of the soul after a TT has been used, or after a silicon surgery has been performed, because I cannot confidently identify what the exact characteristics of the soul are and how it reveals itself. One, because I don’t think I’ve seen what a living person absent a soul looks like, and two because the processes presented in our scenarios aren’t not real and we have no way of extensively examining a product of such a situation. 

            As a result, I was going off of the assumption that our souls have something to do with our personalities, the way we think and reason, and what kind of a person we are. If that is true, than the soul is actually linked to the mind even if they are separate things, and because I do believe that is the case, I went with the options that I felt were most likely to keep the mind intact in hopes that the soul would follow the mind over the body. 

            It was a little bit more difficult to come up with a solution around the soul in the last scenario, because I believe that a person retains their soul even when they enter into a comma or suffer amnesia and the effects of the drug seem somewhat comparable to something like that. However, since, as I already stated, I have no way of evaluating whether or not the soul is present on its own, and since I chose to use the presence of the mind, memories, and conscience as my standard for the other two options, I felt it was necessary to use the same standard for the last scenario. While I didn’t feel satisfied in my reasoning, I couldn’t come up with a better method, and so used the option that seemed the best given what I felt I had to work with.