Blog Post 1 — A little bit about myself
This is my very first blog post on my very own blog!!! Yay me! I’ve been thinking of doing something for a while now, but couldn’t quite figure out what I wanted to do. I wanted it to reflect my love of history- particularly ancient history, and astronomy. I hope this blog will help me to meet others who share my passions. Ancient history, especially Classical history, is not something that interests many people here in Korea, and certainly none of my friends. But before I get ahead of myself, I wanted to introduce myself.
My name is Jinny, and my family lives in South Korea. I am a Freshman in a boarding school in California. Although I am still adjusting to a new environment and culture, my life here has been great so far. You may be wondering how I came to love ancient history? My parents bought me a book on Greek Mythology when I was quite young, and they would read it to me before bed. I soon became obsessed with the stories of Zeus and the other Olympian gods. As I became older, I wanted more stories, but my mother couldn’t find many books on Greek mythology in Korean libraries or bookstores. Luckily, Amazon delivered to Korea, and over the years, I have built my own little library of Ancient myths, legends, and civilizations. I am especially interested in Ancient heroes, real as well as fictional. And how these fictional heroes came to influence great men like Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar. As well, my interests have grown to encompass other Ancient civilizations like Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. Whenever people tell me that history is boring, I want to sit them down and show them how wrong they are. History to me is more than just a collection of dates and facts. There is drama, intrigue, heartbreak, jealousy, love and war. Many fictional stories in books and movies are set in history or are affected by it. We all live in a moment of history, both personal and shared. It is unavoidable and is in fact, woven into the very ‘fabric of life’ so to speak.
Astronomy has always been another interest since childhood. During summer break when I was in the 1st grade, my best friend asked me if I wanted to go to the NASA Space Camp with her. I knew nothing about space or anything related to it, but I wanted to spend time with my friend, so I accepted and said, ‘sure!’ Little did I know that this would open up a world for me that I cannot explain in words. In the five days that I spent there, we conducted experiments, saw the robots that were going to Mars, and saw pictures of the galaxy. The pictures were beautiful, fascinating and intriguing. As I grew older I wanted to understand what those pictures meant. Now, of course, Astronomy is more to me than amazing pictures. The danger, power, beauty, excitement, the need to explore, the need to know where we came from and where we are going. I can say with certainty that when I look up into the night sky the answers to everything is out there.
Throughout my years of elementary school and middle school, most of my presentations were about the universe and the cosmos. My teachers were always surprised by my passion and I felt honored went one teacher presented me with a book called “The Universe in a Nutshell.” As I continued to learn, I researched even further by reading books by Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan. I joined a physics club in my school and talked to others about Astrophysics (and it still strikes me as one of the most exciting research areas today). There, I met many students who shared the same interests as me or grew to like Astronomy. Astronomy is at the frontier of science and there are new discoveries being made all the time. The universe shows how insignificant we are, and how the human mind from the astronomical view is infinitely small. I believe that understanding the stages of our life is crucial for any existence to have real meaning, and Astronomy is a science that seeks to explain everything that we observe in the Universe, like comets and planets in the Milky Way to distant galaxies and the Big Bang. I still find time to look up and the night sky whenever I can, and each and single time, I wish I could stand upon one of the many worlds I have imagined, and the countless worlds I have not.
