Devin Hoops

Hoops 1

Topic A
Describe a setting in which you have collaborated or interacted with people whose experiences and/or beliefs differ from yours. Address your initial feelings, and how those feelings were or were not changed by this experience.

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Journey of Time (Final) Interacting with people with different experiences and beliefs is an everyday thing for every living person on this planet. I work with people and discuss their beliefs, tell stories about my experiences or theirs, and we always find common ground somewhere in the conversation. One such conversation is always in the back of my mind, due to the fact that it was the single most interesting conversation that I had ever had during a class. I was in my aerospace engineering class, during my sophomore year, and I was sitting near the projector like I usually did, and dreading the fact that the class would not catch my interest that day. My class consisted of all manner of students, ranging from sophomores to seniors, and each person was having their own conversations among their friends, and I was no exception. When class started, the class quitted down to a whisper, and Mrs. Moon began to speak and tell us the agenda for the day. Surprisingly, it was about time and satellites, which were both topics that caught my attention, and I immediately perked up and began to think about what time was. It seemed that I was not the only one, as I would find out later on.

Devin Hoops

Hoops 2

Mrs. Moon began with talking about the satellites, and the clock system that was on board every satellite that orbits Earth. Since the time in space is faster than that on Earth, they need clocks that calculate the difference and adjust accordingly. Of course, a few people did not understand this concept, which didnt surprise me, since I had not learned about the clock until I had seen a science documentary that had that information during the show, and when she tried to explain the clock and time, it sparked a conversation about what time is. This is where everyones attention was focused once the conversation had started. Each person had their own opinion about what they thought time was. Some thought it was a type of fluid that we are constantly passing through, while others thought time was an exact moment, and is the moment is destroyed once it is passed, meaning time travel is impossible. All of these opinions were voiced and heard by each person in the class. At first I was unsure how everyone was going to react to the philosophical discussion of time that we were having, but once everyone voiced their thoughts on the matter, we had a lot of fun thinking about everyones ideas, and correcting other ideas that might not have come out the way the person wanted it to. At the end of class, I felt as though I knew my classmates a little better, and I got to see how they felt about theoretical physics and the time space continuum, and I could always find a common ground if I needed to. Most of all, it made me think, and it changed how I looked at things and how I thought about the world and the space we inhabit.