Sitting in biology class freshman year of high school my teacher went off on a tangent that was completely unrelated to biology but extremely inspiring to me. My teacher had a passion for looking deeper into human thought and expanding his mind in many different ways. My favorite part of his class was when he would begin to start talking about the space time continuum and Einstein’s theories of relativity. This one off shoot in class sent me on an educational journey where I explored many different scientific journals, books, and websites about theoretical astrophysics.

My teacher began this specific lesson by describing Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity. He spoke of how time was a relative concept built by the constructs of both space and time. This concept lead me to read books such as “The Universe in a Nutshell” by Stephen Hawking and “Physics of the Impossible” by Michio Kaku. They completely blew my mind and made me think about how I view the world as well as made me wonder whether or not I was truly letting myself view the universe in a scientific standpoint. I became bewildered and confused by all the incoming information that I was gathering and had nowhere to go to seek explanations. One day I went back to my biology teacher and explained the impact that his lessons had on me and I asked him for resources to contact to get more explanations. He responded with titles of more scientific journals as well as contacts to astronomy professors such as the head professor at UMass Amherst and UMass Dartmouth. So with that I contacted the professors and asked questions and they sent me back answers as well as their own novels about the history of physics and explanations of theoretical physics. I sat down and read them all, extremely overwhelmed with information but also extremely motivated to continue my search for explanations.

After discussing with college professors and reading all the books offered from my school’s library on the topic, I called the American Museum of Natural History and attempted to get in touch with world renowned astrophysicist to seek even more information but this time more for online scholarly resources that would be updated with new information as it came out. I received an email in return full of information regarding the topic I was investigating. From that moment on, I continued to learn and expand my knowledge on the topic and even write my college essay on how influential this epiphany was for me.

For the coming years, my teacher would have me come in and share my knowledge with his classes when they asked for him to cover it. I became almost like his assistant and spoke upwards of 4 times. I did this in hopes that other students would find the same passion in the topic as I did. One day a student came to me with the same wide-eyed look and asked me where he could learn more about the lesson I provided. My response was easy because I just gave him all the resources I owned and helped set him on his path to discovering the amazing way to look at space like I did.

Moments where I am truly in awe of what i am being taught are what I am hoping to have while at the University of New England because to me there is nothing more inspiring than finding a book so fascinating that you can not put it down.