Graduation Speech: I Have No Regrets :: Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

I thought that I'd start by taking a picture, being as this is the last time that I'm going to see the majority of you. So could everybody smile? OK, now that that is done with, I would like to start out with a quote. "As people used to be wrong about the motion of the sun, so they are still wrong about the motion of the future. The future stands still, it is we who move in infinite space." (Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet). Webster's dictionary describes commencement as a beginning. Perhaps many of you believed that commencement was an ending. So instead of today being an ending, it is a day to celebrate a new beginning. But the big question is the beginning of what? It has been 13 long years since that first day of kindergarten. It may seem ages ago, but that was only one beginning. This first chapter of our lives is now ending, and we are here today to celebrate the beginning of the next, new stage in our life. It's sad, but true, that after this day, we are all going to go our separate ways. Some of us are headed to college, while others are going to work, or already own their own business. Whatever it is, it is going to be something different than any of us are used to. Even though this is a celebration of a new beginning, we couldn't possibly move on without remembering the past. I don't know about everybody else, but even now, this still feels unreal. I have been waiting for this day since sixth grade, and it is strange that it is finally here. I have had so much fun these past 13 years with all of the friends that I have made. I want to thank everybody for all of the memories throughout the years. It was you guys that made school fun and interesting. From back in elementary school getting intense on the four square court or playing some tetherball, to the Friday night football games and volleyball matches, and the whole time enjoying every minute of it just because I was hanging out with my friends. I hope that you made your time here was worth it because you have to live your life to the fullest. We don't know how long we have on this planet so cherish every moment like it is your last.

Flannery O’Connors’s short story Essay

I believe the main theme in Flannery O’Connors’s short story, † Good Country People† is approval; everyone wants to believe that they are beautiful and we seek approval from both our parents and friends. In this short story a girl, Joy, longs for her mothers approval. After she is unable to get her mothers approval Joy starts believing that she is unworthy of anyone’s admiration. Joy is thirty-two years of age and has a wooden leg, which makes it even harder for her to be socially accepted. Joy’s wooden leg represents the on going theme of approval in O’Connor’s story. Joy changes her name to Hulga which Mrs.Hopewell feels is one of the ugliest names she could have chosen. This could be interpreted as a representation of how Joy â€Å"Hulga† feels about herself. I do not want to say that I do not have any beliefs, honestly I don’t know what it is that I believe in. To me this story depicts the real meaning of life and how you can be happy with your own self, disability or not. By changing her name to Hulga I believe that Joy not only accepts herself but realizes that not everyone is meant to be made perfectly. Hulga’s main accomplishment is her education, a Ph. D in Philosophy. Joy’s mother, Mrs. Hopewell did not like the fact that her daughter had gotten a Ph. D in Philosophy. † My daughter is a schoolteacher, or even my daughter is a chemical engineer. You cant say, my daughter, the philosopher. That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans,† (O’Conner, 276). Hulga’s mother was never really accepting of her daughters choices. Another main character in this short story is, Manley Pointer. I could consider his role in this story to be very ironic. He goes around selling bibles to so called â€Å"non-believers† but can never leave without stealing something. This character is a very smooth talking and can almost always out talk his way out of any tight or difficult situation. Ultimately, the deception of portrayal and deceiving has been seen to symbolize the devil. Pointer starts his deceiving by coming off as to good to be true and overly friendly; all in all a true christian. † I hope you don’t think,† he said in a lofty indignant tone, ‘that I believe in that crap! I may sell bibles but I know which end is up and I wasn’t born yesterday and I know where I’m going,† (O’Connor, 290). Manley finally comes clean to Hulga and admits that he is not really who he says he is and that he is not a christian. Manly had beaten the Hulga, a woman who believed that he was such an innocent man and not much else, began to believe in the man he was and who they could be together. Hulga had â€Å"decided that for the first time in her life she was face to face with real innocence†. (289) This short story has opened my eyes, in the simple fact that the characters are so symbolic. Each one representing faith in their own way. From their names such as, Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman to Hulga’s symbolic wooden leg. We discussed in class the importance of the characters names such as: Mrs. Freeman, free; Mrs. Hopewell, hope; Joy Hopewell, joy; Manly Pointer; man. Each name or figure represents some sort of theme; which makes this short story much more ironic. O’Connors depiction of this story is both comical and very meaningful in many different ways. Mrs. Freeman is comical at the beginning of the story when her facial expressions are described as never being wrong and when she is, it is evident â€Å"her face comes to a complete stop†. (271) Mrs. Hopewell considers herself to be a good person, with each character she sees the good and focuses on that. The reason behind this may be a way of comfort to just see the good, and ignore the bad in people. Joy uses her education as a way of having wisdom and avoiding a belief in any type of religion. Manly is a symbol of deception and control, he takes every situation and manipulates it to his advantage. The characters in this short story portray many people that I associate with in real life. From Mrs. Hopewell who always sees the good things in everybody and does whatever she can to help people out. And Manly, who is like almost every male in this world; in it only for the benefit of himself and in the end hes only going to do something if it benefits him in the end. Then there is Hulga, who is very conscious of the people around her and she also lacks confidence. She lives a very timid life and is afraid to live her own life, shes to worried about what someone is going to say to her. This short story is a very good deception of everyday life and challenges that people are faced with daily. It also contains many different symbols and opened my eyes to the meaning of faith.

Dark Matter and a Distant Supernova Make an Eerie Cross

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...a massive star exploded. That cataclysm created an object called a supernova  (similar to the one we call the Crab Nebula). At the time this ancient star died, own galaxy, the Milky Way, was just starting to form. The Sun didnt even exist yet. Nor did the planets. The birth of our solar system still more than five billion years in the future. Light Echoes and Gravitational Influences The light from that long-ago explosion sped across space, carrying information about the star and its catastrophic death. ​Now, about 9 billion years later, astronomers have a remarkable view of the event. It shows up in four images of the supernova created by a gravitational lens created by a galaxy cluster. The cluster itself consists of a giant foreground elliptical galaxy collected together with other galaxies. All of them are embedded in a clump of  Ã¢â‚¬â€¹dark matter. The combined gravitational pull of the galaxies plus the gravity of dark matter distorts light from more distant objects as it passes through. It actually shifts the direction of the lights travel slightly, and smears the image we get of those distant objects. In this case, the light from the supernova traveled by four different paths through the cluster. The resulting images we see here from Earth form a cross-shaped pattern called an Einstein Cross (named after physicist Albert Einstein). The scene was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The light of each image arrived at the telescope at   a slightly different time — within days or weeks of each other. This is a clear indication that each image is the result of a different path the light took through the galaxy cluster and its dark matter shell. Astronomers study that light to learn more about the action of the distant supernova and the characteristics of the galaxy in which it existed.   How Does this Work? The light streaming from the supernova and the paths it takes are analogous to several trains that leave a station at the same time, all traveling at the same speed and bound for the same final destination. However, imagine each train goes on a different route, and the distance for each one is not the same. Some trains travel over hills. Others go through valleys, and still others make their way around mountains. Because the trains travel over different track lengths across different terrain, they do not arrive at their destination at the same time. Similarly, the supernova images do not appear at the same time because some of the light is delayed by traveling around bends created by the gravity of dense dark matter in the intervening galaxy cluster. The time delays between the arrival of each images light tell astronomers something about the arrangement of the dark matter around the galaxies in the cluster. So, in a sense, the light from the supernova is acting like a candle in the dark. It helps astronomers map the amount and distribution of dark matter in the galaxy cluster. The cluster itself lies some 5 billion light-years from us, and the supernova is another 4 billion light-years beyond that. By studying the delays between the times that the different images reach Earth, astronomers can glean clues about the type of warped-space terrain the supernova’s light had to travel through. Is it clumpy? How clumpy?   How much is there?   Answers to these questions arent quite ready yet. In particular, the appearance of the supernova images could change over the next few years. Thats because light from the supernova continues to stream through the cluster and encounter other parts of the dark matter cloud surrounding the galaxies.    In addition to the Hubble Space Telescopes observations of this unique lensed supernova, astronomers also used the W.M. Keck telescope in Hawaii to do further observations and measurements of the supernova host galaxy distance. That information will give further clues into conditions in the galaxy as it existed in the early universe.