This I Believe: Change.

I believe in the power of change as a driving force in life.

As the years drag on and one’s life passes before one’s eyes, change stays important. This is not merely the change of the day to day, “oh that person has a nice new haircut,” variety, but instead occurs over an extensive passage of time and has a momentous impact on life. The change I am discussing is not always the most apparent, but it does have the most profound effect.

            Such monumental change took place in my life when I had a parasite on my forehead in my junior year of high school.  While spending the previous summer in Israel, I had contracted Leishmania major via the bite of a sandfly on my forehead. As this eventually developed into an open ulcer, it became obvious that this deformity was here to stay. After months of little change in the condition of the quarter-sized ulcer and innumerable methods exasperated, my parents and I decided to try a radical treatment.

            After receiving this new treatment for 15 days, the parasite finally began to slowly improve.  By the time I had my final infusion, two months later, I finally noticed a huge difference in the condition of my forehead

            For months on end, I had endured a barrage of questions from those around me on what the situation was on my forehead. For months on end, I would constantly repeat, “I think it’s getting better!” with a hopeful smile. But the truth is, I was lying. Even then, change was slow to come. During the winter months of my junior year, I had feared that it would never go away, and I would perpetually have this abhorrent ulcer on my forehead. But two months after the last infusion, I woke up one day, looked in the mirror and realized that the ulcer was gone. Even now, I still hear remarks on how much it has improved. What I gleaned from this adventure is that change is slow but certain, and one of the most crucial part of life. Change was not something I was able to see day to day, and only at the conclusion of this part of my life could I truly appreciate that change is the most vital aspect of life.

            While this all may seem superficial to one who hasn’t had this experience, the lessons of the story go much deeper than the surface, pun intended. While many things in life change, there are many that go unnoticed. As I come to one of the largest crossroads of my life, graduating high school, I look back on my last 17 years. It’s absolutely amazing, everything that has changed in that time, even down to the last week or month. Ferris Bueller once said poetically,“ Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” This is the statement that I believe in the most. 

(This was an assignment in my Senior English Class) 

Change, how bout it?
Make it.

Serendipity

Tonight is a good night (3/17/20110).

Tonight is a good night for "mucho" reasons.

Tonight is a good night, one on which I have decided what I am going to compose my This I Believe about:

Change.

While I am not going to reveal the exact ideas I have developed in here, I have thought about Change and why this would be such a good concept to write the This I Believe about.

 

Some good reasons...

• It is something that we are surrounded by.
• Change can come in many forms.
• It is a necessary force in life.
• Change is constant.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  (ps. Did you notice the anaphora at the beginning?)

An example of a This I Believe.



"I believe evolution. It’s easy. It’s my life. I’m a paleoanthropologist. I study fossils of humans, apes, and monkeys, and I teach college students about their place in nature.
Of course I believe evolution.
But that is different from believing in evolution.
To believe in something takes faith, trust, effort, strength. I need none of these things to believe evolution. It just is. My health is better because of medical research based on evolution. My genetic code is practically the same as a chimpanzee’s. My bipedal feet walk on an earth full of fossil missing links. And when my feet tire, those fossils fuel my car.
To believe in something also implies hope. Hope of happiness, reward, forgiveness, eternal life. There is no hope wrapped up in my belief. Unless you count the hope that one day I’ll discover the most beautifully complete fossil human skeleton ever found, with a label attached saying exactly what species it belonged to, what food it ate, how much it hunted, if it could speak, if it could laugh, if it could love, and if it could throw a curveball. But this fantasy is not why I believe evolution — as if evolution is something I hope comes true.
After all the backyard bone collecting I did as a child, I managed to carve out a career where I get to ask the ultimate question on a daily basis: “Where did I come from and how?” If our beliefs are important enough, we live our lives in service to them. That’s how I feel about evolution. My role as a female Homo sapiens is to return each summer to Kenya, dig up fossils, and piece together our evolutionary history. Scanning the ground for weeks, hoping to find a single molar, or gouging out the side of a hill, one bucket of dirt at a time, I’m always in search of answers to questions shared by the whole human species. The experience deepens my understanding not just about what drives my life, but all our lives, where we came from. And the deeper I go, the more I understand that everything is connected. A bullfrog to a gorilla, a hummingbird to me, to you.
My belief is not immutable. It is constantly evolving with accumulating evidence, new knowledge, and breakthrough discoveries. For example, within my lifetime, our history has expanded from being rooted three million years ago with the famous Lucy skeleton, to actually beginning over six million years ago with a cranium from Chad. The metamorphic nature of my belief is not at all like a traditional religious one, it’s more like seeing is believing.
So I believe evolution.
I feel it. I breathe it. I listen to evolution, I observe it, and I do evolution. I write, study, analyze, scrutinize, and collect evolution. I am evolution.

Holly Dunsworth is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. She co-directs excavations on an island in the Kenyan waters of Lake Victoria, where the fossils date back some 18 million years."

This I Believe 

Lifestyle changes: Senior Year

Everyone goes through lifestyle changes throughout their life.
Everyone changes, its part of human nature.

An article I wrote for the Orbit last year before the Seniors graduated


What is change?
How important is change?
(Think about these questions as you read this)


Change is a momentous word. Although some regard it as frivolous and common place, it is hardly so. Nor is it a word that can be thrown around to get elected to a political office. (Of course when running for a public office, you’re going to preach change.) No one except an incumbent approaches the podium and says, “I’m here to do nothing, and carry on business as usual.” Change is far more significant than many realize, and it needs to be paid its dues in respect.

Every year, week, day, and second; something changes. The world is constantly revolving in change, (even though that is an oxymoron). The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines change as, “to make different in some particular”. This definition is extremely vague. My definition for change, in life is; an altering of circumstances by an event. In this way, it implies that not only has something changed, but there was a reason for this change. In spite of the fact that this definition too is vague; it can be readily applied to our everyday lives.

Humans adapt to change every second, whether this has good connotations or not, it is up for you the reader to decide. Change keeps life interesting, even if one lived in an Utopia, change would still be necessary. For the seniors, an enormous change is occurring, leaving the home and environment they have known for years and venturing off into the world to go to college. This involves confronting numerous life choices, some of which began back in the beginning of their senior year with the decisions where to apply to college. No matter where the path leads you in life, you are confronted with change.

-Orbit, May 2010

My life has changed serendipitously in the past few weeks. Three things have made this possible.
The first of which is I got into Franklin and Marshall College, Early Decision (woot)
Second off, I got sick for two weeks (probably a sinus infection). Being sick for two weeks made me change my policy on drinking tea. I've started consuming at least one cup a day, frequently blueberry with a teaspoon of honey. This is a nice replacement for drinking overt amounts of apple juice and orange juice.
Finally, I've started to write this blog, as well as start a Twitter. I had been considering on starting and writing both of these for a long time. But now I can express all of those ideas that bounce around in my head all day.