As I sit here, sipping freshly brewed green tea, in my red sweat suit, tapping away at my 12″ Powerbook in my kitchen listening to birds with the sun pouring in, I am reminded of the goals I set for myself as a freshmen in college…
Granted at the time I made those assertions it was before I had been to Cali (the spring of 1999) and before I made the leap to study art, I was just finishing out my freshmen year and was applying to the Dual Degree program…
What’s important though is that I uttered these goals thereby affirming them into my consciousness… to others, they are equally poignant…Recently I’ve reconnected with a fellow freshmen from Dickson Hall who despite the almost 10 years since has written me a note recounting how I’m now close to my dream to “Live in California, someplace with a view, with a laptop, in boxers, and design roller coasters.”
So now it’s a reality…I’m living the life I’ve imagined and it’s great.
**update** July 12, 2007. I found a scholarship essay dated 1997 when I was at home sorting through papers from college…Topic: “What do you see yourself doing in 20 years?”
Earth’s colony on Mars is truly amazing, but it’s strange to think that I helped design it over ten years ago. After graduating from Cornell University with honors in the College Scholar Program in 2000, high jumping throughout Europe while participating in their Gran Prix Track Circuit for 4 years, taking part in the Olympics in Athens in 2004, and getting my Masters degree at UC Berkeley in Ergonomics in design in 2008, I had a wonderful opportunity to help NASA design the space station that so many people call home.
One beautiful afternoon in San Francisco I was working on my laptop on the sun porch, and I got a call from my old professor. He recommended me for the job of designing a habitable space station on Mars. I jumped right into the project, and with the new autoCAD technology I was able to completely design the station from my home. I was on site for the construction of the immaculate structure, and continued to use my skills to troubleshoot when the workers had problems building on the Martian terrain.
Now our colony has grown to nearly 2 million people, and our production of metal ore is in such demand we are a thriving metropolis rivaling New York and Chicago. Occasionally I travel back to Earth to see my old stomping ground, but up here we are always developing new ways of doing things, because on Mars, much like the high jump, the sky is the limit.
I even got the cities right…