First Encounters

Walking into the class, I knew what to expect. I had witnessed the direct results of this class 2 years prior to taking it at an honors conference. Santiago had taken four of his former students with him to present the class to those willing to listen to what he had to say, and then further informed them by having the students present their projects and feelings of the class. The audience was simply amazed at the results that this class had achieved. There seemed to be a confusion as to why this class had not been offered at their universities or why they had not thought of this specific explanation of the events.

So I new from this experience, that I needed to take this course at some time in my four years.

Although I had become so inspired by these students and the professor of this class, I soon forgot that I told myself to take it. I was convinced that I was going to achieve my childhood dream of becoming a dolphin trainer, or a shark cage diver. I decided to struggle through classes, kill myself studying,and eventually lost the inspiration so that when I achieved the dream and got the internships...I was let down. There was no longer that yearning to learn or express, I had become a robot. Spitting out information and cleaning up messes. As many of my friends may know, this is not for me. I love to be hands on and get dirty, but Im not a robot and I cannot live in a lab. So my dreams were crushed and I struggled for direction.

However I came back to the one thing I was always good at, TALKING. My first notable trait was to be able to talk, and talk, and talk like the energizer rabbit  as my mother says. Even when I could not formulate words, I still spoke in baby as though I was giving a press conference. This reminded me of this class and I decided to take on the challenge of switching majors. 

I entitled this piece "First encounters" Because the class brought out a lot of things when I looked back. It reminded me of all the "firsts" that led up to this year and this class. Talking, first to leave the biology field in my family, first art class at ut, first semester I've been excited for, a lot of firsts were happening and this class is going to be a challenge for me to officially break away from the science background and get the first breath and first encounter with who I want to be.