Back to School (or "To Infinity and Beyond")

Five months and I will be done my first semester at college. Five months older, five months closer to the end. That was a depressed thought. But I am excited. I am excited that I have the opportunity to pursue my dreams, to reach up and touch the stars, hopefully literally, with my creations. I am an Astronautical and Aeronautical Engineering student, or will be at the end of this semester. I would have to act in the most foolish way possible, beyond my own capability for nonsense, in order to ruin that chance.

I have been told by a very thoughtful eight year old that my dream, to become an astronaut, is a childish dream or a "little boys fantasy."  It very well may be. But somebody has to want to do that. Somebody has to find the way. I don't know why I am so resolved on this. Perhaps it was the wonderful and fantastical shows I watched throughout my years of growing up, or the novels I read. Farscape, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who. All modern remakes or interpretations of the desire for space travel. In the 50's, 60's, and 70's a similar style of show appeared. Star Trek became popular and the original Star Wars trilogy was released.  Maybe I am being dramatic, I do love attempting to be in the lime light, but it seems that history is repeating itself.  Earth is preparing to send her children abroad again. Talks of a Mars expedition are rumored, and other things are seeming to head that way.

The truth of the matter is, however, that getting on a trip to Mars (a safe, well planned trip that is also well funded) seems like a lottery. I want to make space travel efficient, I want to make it desirable, I seek to make space popular in more than just a pop-cultural way.  As much as it hurts the romantic in me to say, I want to make space travel as mundane as taking the highway or a short regional jet to the next city over. Granted it would be more like taking a ship across the atlantic (in terms of time), but by making it mundane and accessible, my dream would be far more likely. And if I do not get to live my dream, hopefully someone with the same or similar dream will be able to live it because of whatever contribution I make.

That is why I am excited to return to Purdue, school of over 20 astronauts. That is why I am excited to return to my studies, however boring they may seem at the time. That is why I am in love with college.