|
(2016
midterm assignment) Model Student Midterm answers 2016 (Index) Essay 2: Personal / professional topic |
 |
Vicente Garza
Are We There Yet, Or, Do We Even Want To Be?
As I signed up for courses for the first time for UHCL, I found it to be
a bit difficult with my work schedule.
Something late at night that fulfills my requirements; Literature of the
Future? You’ve got to be kidding.
This has got to be interesting. And
so here we are! What a ride it has
been too. But as it says, are we
there yet, or, do we even want to be?
The future is something that I as a “young” person of today am always
looking towards. I’m more worried
about what I will be doing five years from now rather than what I did today or
will do tomorrow. I’m more
concerned about how things will be when I step into the role of educator, rather
than when I show up to class next Tuesday as the student.
In that regard, I suppose I’m looking for my own “green card” to get to
“real time” in the way Mozart did in “Mirrorshades.”
The concept that interests me most of all is alternate realities.
What if I had woken up five minutes earlier?
What if I had asked that girl out?
What if I had taken that scholarship fresh out of high school instead of
going to DeVry? That last one hits
harder than anything and is something I think about every day.
My thoughts about five years from now would have been my thoughts for
tomorrow instead if I had only taken it, I think.
Somewhere out there, there is a version of me who was smart about it and
took it and is sitting back in his chair relaxing in his own home, but that’s
not the me you know today. But then
again, what if these options were taken away altogether and I was stuck in the
world Lauren was in “Parable?” None
of my concerns would mean a thing to the me that lived in her universe.
And there-in lies the great mystery revolving around alternate realities.
In the end, what’s the “real time” of our world?
Or perhaps there are no alternate realities and it’s all a folly of a
daydream to keep myself from becoming depressed at the mistakes I made.
A common question posed to youngsters today is “if you could go back in
time and change something, would you do it?”
The answer is most often a resounding yes.
A perhaps unorthodox but absolutely relevant source for an alternate
reality examination would be the video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of
Time. Of course, the game deals
with time travel. The protagonist
Link ventures to save the world from an evil wizard who seeks to gain control
over the power of the goddesses.
The princess of the land knows it’s coming, but her father the king will not
listen. So, in order to fix the
problem before it happens, the two youths agree to access the sacred realm which
contains the Triforce, a relic of the goddesses that will grant any wish, in
order to vanquish the dark wizard and save the world.
The problem? When Link
enters, and attempts to draw the Master Sword, a holy weapon to defeat evil, he
is deemed too young and is put to sleep for seven years.
In this time, the evil wizard takes over the world and Link has to take
it back. To make a long story
short, the game concludes with Link defeating the wizard and going back to his
own time because the princess feels that he has been deprived those years of his
life.
Here’s the kicker though: the people praise Link in this “adult” timeline which
he saves the world in, but he no longer exists there because he has been sent
back to his “child” timeline. An
alternate reality was created, and the childhood he goes back to is not the
actual one he lived in. In that
timeline, the wizard is stopped preemptively, averting the disaster of the adult
timeline. However, if he
disappeared from the adult timeline, wouldn’t that mean there would be two of
him in the child timeline? This is
never addressed! In addition to
that, there is a third timeline in which Link dies during the final
confrontation with the big bad. But
that could happen any time the player gets a game over, creating more timelines.
In addition to that, the player can go back and forth in time at any
point by drawing and replacing the Master Sword.
Even more timelines are created by doing this, aren’t they?
The worth of going back and changing things would be drastically
different if it were in the vein of this game.
The answer given by all the people mentioned before might not come so
easily this time around.
Time travel and alternate realities are a difficult but entertaining subject. The general populace doesn’t even realize they are involved in them every time they say something along the lines of, “I should have…” or “If only I had…” each and every day. Sci-fi is for nerds, eh? Not this aspect of it. Staying true to the namesake of this piece, here is the question: Am I where I want to be yet? Or do I even want to be there? If I had the chance to view my life had I taken the scholarship, I would immediately decline. Why? It may end up that it was either a horrible fate, or that it was wonderful beyond anything I could achieve in this timeline. Either way, would I want to be burdened by the knowledge? As for the current and real me, that is the reason for the question “do I even want to be there” because of the potential of the “other” me and his achievements.
 |
 |
|