#3: A Reflection on Academia & Independence

Ever since the third trimester started, I kept asking myself why this project felt so much larger and harder. Theoretically, this project should not have been any harder than the one I completed at COSMOS. Then I realized that there was one crucial difference - easy access to people who had answers.

At COSMOS, I was surrounded by people who were perfectly equipped to help me. Professors Bruce and Raja did not have as many responsibilities and thus were able to answer questions I had as soon as I came up with them. Responses were immediate, and guidance was consistently there. However, this project is very different. There are no immediate answers. I need to answer my questions myself using Google & the few correspondences I have with Professor Raja. I knew that the professor would be very busy during the springtime, & was prepared for this possibility in my head. I just didn't realize how many questions I needed answered.

At COSMOS, I had four other brilliant individuals to work with. This senior project is entirely individual - the only person I can rely on to make sure my project works is myself. Of course, I have people to support me - my faculty advisor, Mr. Hrin, gives me great advice every time I get stuck on what my next step should be. My fellow senior projectors, especially my fellow space lover Rena Zhong, support me as we all work through the ups and downs of our project. Professor Raja gets back to me as much as he can given his busy schedule, and simply having him as my off-site mentor is fantastic. My math teacher Mr. Linhares also offered to help me out, which means a lot to me.

Despite all these people helping me, there are still obstacles that I am struggling to overcome. From databases that do not explicitly explain the meaning of certain value names to the fact that every time I attempt to find the definition of a certain word I find three more words I do not understand, this project is requiring me to acquire lots of information about a field I simply do not know a lot about. If I want this project to succeed, I have to consistently work as much as I can every single day. There's no such thing as slacking off. On top of that, once I finish this project the story still isn't over. What other effects can I account for using the resources I have? What exactly is dark matter? How can we use it to our advantage? There are too many questions and too little time. I now understand why some find research frustrating - it never truly ends. No matter how hard I work, there will be always more to do. I've left the starting line, but I'll never cross the finish line. This begs the question - what's the point? If I stopped this project, I'd be less stressed, have more time to reread The Sound and the Fury, and life would overall be easier. Also, it's not like I'm a brilliant astrophysicist who is helping move the field forward in new directions. I'm just a high school senior who likes space.

It's frustrating to tell people how much I love dark matter only for them to bring up the non-existent finish line or the supposed uselessness of astrophysics. It makes it much more tempting to make the easy choice and stop pursuing this project. However, I have loved space since third grade. It's an intrinsic part of who I am, and I'm determined to change the world by contributing to a field I believe holds the potential for the most answers. Despite how frustrating it may be to pursue at times, space exploration is the way I want to contribute to the world. I'll keep chasing finish lines, even if they don't exist. At least I'll have covered some distance instead of just standing at the starting line.

There are always both easy and difficult choices. I could have made the easy one and chosen not to do this project. I didn't choose the easy way, and I'm glad I didn't. To quote my engineering teacher who inspired me to pursue what I love, "It is true that life is meaningless. But it is also meaningless that life is meaningless." Research (and everything else) is meaningless. Why not make the most of my time and contribute to the world in a way I love and truly believe in?

Research matters to me and research matters to the world. This project is much harder than the one I completed before, but that means that by the time I finish, I will have learned much more throughout the course of this project than I did at COSMOS. My experiences at COSMOS completely changed the way I viewed the world & my ideas of how I wanted to contribute to society. I can only imagine how this project will change my view of the world.

On that note, this week I'm going to chase this project's finish line by understanding what a WCS reference band is, finding out whether its position angle relates to a galaxy's orientation, and learning how spectroscopy works. Until this Thursday, reader.

#update #reflection