Crap.

I think I might have forgotten how to write. I am intimidated by the idea of other literature majors. They seem very numerous, very normal, and very much like myself, and that freaks me out more than you know.

Why is it that in every beginning physics class I take (and I'm on my thrid one, so take my word for it), the professor feels the need to begin the quarter with a lesson on the scale of the universe? They go to great lengths, using pictures and metaphors and numbers to make sure we understand that we are but an electron in a grain of sand on one beach out of all the world's beaches, a speck of dust on a football field surrounded by an immense parking lot. They seem to think it very important to convey to us that we are floating in a universe that is mostly empty space, along with something called dark matter, being controlled by something called dark energy, that there are many planets similar to our own, that there are bound to be a few with life as intelligent as our own, that human history is but a sliver on the timeline of evolution which is in turn but a sliver on the timeline of the incomprehendably old universe. Why do they insists that we become aware that we are nothing but stardust, before we can begin to study the stars? The sheer irony of it all makes me, if anything, less inclined to bother with the subject. Everything just seems so hopelessly paradoxical when you think of it this way. Because more than anything I just want to believe that I am special, handpicked, somehow above or below the rest of the people I see around me. We celebrate our individuality in this country, and talk about how wonderful it is that every person is slightly different from the next. But what difference does it make if you will never know everyone in the world, and they will never know you? I may be unique, but so is everyone else. And in the end I am just one of the many who have come before me and the many who will come after, when all I ever really wanted was to be something special.