J.R. Hay

              I am sitting at my desk with the sound of computer fans whirring beside me as I run the physics based computational models I have tweaked and torqued over the past week. This is just my second week working in an actual engineering role outside of university laboratories. Of course, it is just an internship. But I am working on directly applicable projects, not just the lofty research of academia. I work with real engineers, the older men and women who go to board meetings, write proposals, drone over emails, and go home at night to families of their own. ‘I’ve made it’ I think, while illegible lines of data are processed on the screen in front of me. ‘Oh… I’ve made it’. Those words which are for so long filled with desire and once realized anxiety inducing. Don’t get me wrong, I like my job. I am an Optical Engineer of sorts; I get to work on novel and interesting problems which have an impact on people around the world. I am just the type of person who can’t sit still. If I am sitting still, it is because my mind is running a million miles an hour. I think everyone is a bit like this, it’s why the advertisements for questionable health supplements, sub-par education courses, and even expensive clothes work so well. Everyone wants to improve themselves – to be better. It has been known assuredly long before the attribution to Emerson and Aerosmith that life is about the journey and not the destination.

              I find myself as I so often do at a precipice of my own design. Before me, beyond the cliff’s edge, valleys stretch almost as far as the eye can see. Blue ranges lift along the horizon, barely visible and seemingly indistinguishable from one another. I have sacrificed a great deal of things to become who I am today. I am glad I did; such commitment has made my life going forward markedly more bearable, and interesting. However, points like these in which a great deal of sacrifice pay off require introspection. I have reached this great point and behind I turn to see from which, the trail I have come.

What have I learned?

How have I changed?

What will I do?

             I have learned about the complexity of our Universe, even some tricks to understand shallow swaths of it. I have learned the basics of experimentation and research guided by principles of the scientific method. I have learned how to appease professors, bosses, and high esteemed colleagues. Outside of this professional life I have learned to love, to forgive, and to forget. These are just some of the things that I have learned along this journey. The valley in front of me is deep, but less intimidating than the last, and the mountains which lie ahead are surely greater than the one I stand on now. The only question I should concern myself with is – which one do I want to climb next?

              When I return to university in August, I will be thrust back down into the valley. Whether I pursue a master’s or Ph.D., I do not know. I am not afraid of success, I am afraid of giving up what I cannot bear, in its pursuit. I know one thing, however. I know that I want to reach a mountain which allows me to breathe more freely than I do now. One in which I can pour myself onto a page. Like Hemingway I desire to bleed out along the keys. I would like to hold in my heart the fortitude, the tact- the ability to eloquently place another man, woman, or child into my perspective. The ability to follow a thought through to its end. I would like to write descriptive scenes as well as Steinbeck. I would like to inspire with word as well as Obama. I would like to educate through publication as well as Bryson. These goals are lofty but the trajectory toward them will surely lead me to a peak far higher than I would reach without them.

              Like all my goals, this one will require training. I cannot expect to spend a few minutes a day, especially those at the end of the day when I typically journal. Those entries are purposeful, but they are filled with the excess gunk which builds between my neurons throughout the day. Sacrifices are necessary, to make time for reading and writing. I started recording my reading with fifteen, in a year, last year was twenty, and this twenty-five. I have no talent as a writer beyond the skills that I build. With my next trajectory envisioned I feel the serene bliss only an addict can aptly describe.