I had an extremely difficult time picking a word for this project. I felt like there were so many different words that I could do that would work well with the project, but none of them really caught my attention. I debated what word I would (alliteration much) do all the way until Mrs. Bennett asked me what word I was doing. When she asked me, all I could do was stare blankly at the sheet of words. Nothing jumped out at me. So Mrs. Bennett let me think about it for the rest of class, and then asked me again. I looked at the sheet of words, and said the first word that I noticed. Uncertainty. At first, I had no idea why Mrs. Bennett started laughing at me. I thought maybe she was making fun of me…had I said something stupid? And then I realized that I chose a word that represented what mood I was in. I did not know what word to pick, or in other words, I was uncertain about what word to do. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. But what I did not know was that throughout this entire blog entry, I would take a journey with uncertainty, learning many life lessons from it.
My final belief about uncertainty is that the word is complex and extremely useful. However, I believe that it represents weakness. It represents a weakness is deciding, for example, you are uncertain about what to eat for dinner. Or, uncertainty can represent insanity. If a person is insane or not balanced in their mind, you can never know what is going on inside of your head. Your uncertainty if they are truly in their right of mind or not. However, because the word can be applied to so many things and situations in the world, I believe that the word itself is strong. A good word can have multiple uses and be used a lot. Thus uncertainty represents weakness, but because weakness exists so often in human nature, the word is used a lot. Thus the word is strong.
As I began researching my word, I realized how much uncertainty applied to me, more beyond how I was feeling when picking a word for this assignment. I realized how uncertainty fit my personality in many ways, and applied currently to what is going on in my life. I constantly am uncertain myself and my actions. I am not sure what to do in many situations, and go back and forth on my opinions. I care too much about what other people think. I am not always definite in my decisions, and when I do make a decision, I reflect back and over think that decision. In other words, my actions constantly are haunted by uncertainty. But that often has to do with lack of self confidence. Throughout this project, I have seen how uncertainty does represent me in many ways, and how every person is connected to uncertainty.
Uncertainty has come up a lot in my life lately. My future, at one point this year, was completely uncertain. From first applying to ten colleges, than not having any idea which one I would end up at. As I waited for my decisions, and all of my friends were accepted into colleges and were gushing about where they were going next year, I was completely uncertain of my future. I felt like after high school, I had no place to go. I felt lost. And then, I was denied from eight of the ten colleges that I applied to( waitlisted at two of them and then not accepted from the waitlist… in this article notice the last word of the first sentence XP). I learned a new kind of uncertainty. Not only was I uncertain of the future, but I became uncertain in myself- in my abilities as a student. For years, I have worked hard, and always assumed that if I worked hard, that I would go to my number one or number two schools. This belief was destroyed when I was denied from basically all of my schools. I was even more uncertain of my abilities as a student and as a person than I ever had been before.
There were some points in writing this blog that I completely ran out of ideas of what to say. That was probably right before I went to the rainforest. This is when I probably wrote my worst blog, “Uncertainty in Literature…and other places…” In the blog, I did not correctly identify the uncertainty in Beloved. Instead, I implied what I believed to be uncertainty, and did not prove it. And because I believed that my entire post was not solid, I added random comic strips and lyrics in the hopes that they would save the post. In reality, it just made the entire post a jumbled mess. At this point, I did not really understand uncertainty, and how it could literally be applied to any situation in the world that involves human nature- because uncertainty is human nature. Even nature itself is filled with uncertainty, and the future of life in general is also filled with uncertainty. This is what I learned by going to the rainforest.
Going to Rara Avis in the Costa Rican Rainforest was probably one of the best experiences in my life. But in many ways, it helped me with my understanding of uncertainty. To quote from what I believe is my best blog, from my two week expedition into the Costa Rican Rainforest, “… my definition and understanding of uncertainty- how uncertain one can be of the future existence of something as beautiful as the rainforest and the world in general- was completely reestablished…” In other words, I realized that uncertainty exists not only on my level, but worldwide. Uncertainty exists everywhere. This was my best blog because everything seemed to clique. I was able to push my understanding of uncertainty to a new level, see the word beyond the definition and see how it can be applied in the world on multiple levels. My life has a lot of uncertainty in it, but so does everyone. I should not let my last year, which has been filled with uncertainty for the future, for my family, and my overall existence, be defined by the feeling of ‘irresolution’. While in many ways uncertainty exists in me, I should not let fear of uncertainty drive my life.
