Science and the Art of Seeing

I always had this fascination with space and the great beyond. I also spent my childhood in an all girls-catholic school, until upon graduation from elementary, I received this strange piece of news that I got accepted into our own version of Hogwartz – Manila Science High School

For years, I did not want to talk about my geeky past, and I have been in total denial about being geeky at all, maybe because I never really felt that I was special or one of them. For starters I was never very good in Math.

It was all very strange at first, especially since it was a Co-Ed highschool, which meant that there were BOYS, lots of them, and also as much as there is a variety of Math and Science classes, there was no religion subject, but we had Values Education.

My classmates and schoolmates were some of the sharpest kids in the country but they were also just kids. We had everything normal, Christmas parties, baking classes, after school hangouts, secret crushes, Sabayang Pagbigkas, Intrams, except we also had applied physics and linear algebra, research and advanced trigonometry all on the same year.

In the end, only a handful of us became scientists, but I would like to think that a lot of us grew up with that scientific spirit for which I am grateful for.  That spirit of wonder and inquiry, reserving judgement and testing hypothesis before before jumping into conclusions. the spirit that appreciates and craves innovation. The spirit that understands that life is a quest and that knowledge leads to better understanding.

On a personal level, lately I feel my mind expanding with every experience and every opportunity of seeing something for the first time, whether it is a photograph of Pluto or a Van Gogh painting or a newborn baby.

As mankind reaches out to the farthest known "Planet" of my childhood,  I feel elated knowing that despite our limited capacities we haven’t given up exploring,  and that we are still out there trying our best to understand, trying our best to see.

As Van Gogh would say - “I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars make me dream. “

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Speaking of Space frontiers, I just signed up for NASA's mission to mars, they're gonna put a microchip with my name on Mars, here's my boarding pass :)

Sign up with NASA : http://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/insight/