Understanding Under The Cosmos

I am not a professor. Instead, my title is Adjunct Instructor. My job is not to challenge students to develop new theories but to see themselves as who they are and what their capabilities will do for them when they master a new set of skills and knowledge they can apply immediately.

Even so, I see my students/customers wanting to understand something about the subjects I teach, more in the realm of hands-on training but still related to textbook material.

In light of this, I rented a movie last night from Redbox ($1 plus tax at a kiosk in the lobby of Wal-Mart) called "Dark Matter." The movie tells us the story of a few students who've traveled from China to get their PhD in Cosmology at an American university while under the tutelage of a great professor. The students in the movie deal in their own ways with the realities of a system that restricts post-graduate degree work. I have spoken with friends who earned their doctorates and many of them described the same limits on their dissertations that were placed on them so that their work did not eclipse the work of their advisors/sponsors.

From a quick search on the Internet, I gather that the movie is based on true facts detailed in a story by Jo Ann Beard, "The Fourth State of Matter."

How do we handle the disconnect between our imagination and reality? How do we explain the killings by individuals that are barely less understandable than the mass murders that take place during wars and skirmishes? I cannot say. I suppose I was fortunate to hear the disappointments and acceptances of reality in the voices of my parents, family and friends when I was very young so that I have no stark imaginative differences between my thoughts and the possible challenges to my way of thinking. In other words, I do not stand on the shaky foundation of principles, ethics, morals, and religious beliefs. My feet are firmly sunk into the knee-deep mud of daily life. I do not see obstacles, I see opportunities for stories (outlets for my creative imagination).

I hope my students/customers have no false expectations. We get what we get, nothing more or less. If you want something, get it. Don't sit around worrying about what you didn't get or can't get. Everything's there for the taking. And never be afraid to ask.