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"You'll Never Believe What Happened" Is Always a Great Way to Start. This is the first chapter we learned in the first novel The Truth about Stories by Thomas King.  Guess what, we didn’t know what we are supposed to expect at the beginning at the ESEM. At the this point, doing my last posting on the Serendip at the Canaday  at midnight, I really have a better chance to see myself better. For me, I believe I really came a long way to where I am today. Looking at the road I have walked by looking at my essays and postings, I can say with joy and confidence that I love my ESEM and learned a lot.

Every time I walked out the little basement, I feel that I just come from another world.  I enjoyed the discussions. Even though, the topics are just too big for anyone to make any sense in a one hour and half discussion. We have narrowed down our topics greatly without decreasing the depth of the discussion. I remember we had the discussion about the differences between the two sections. I think one features shaped our discussion is that we built our discussion based on each other. The discussion is continuous and developed both horizontally and vertically. Of course, the politeness and “cold atmosphere” are the two things come with our discussion on some sense. I think I really enjoyed this kind of discussion because of my own personality. I got a lot chances to speak out my opinions during our small group. My thinking has developed more maturely especially at the way of develop my argument more thoroughly and narrow down my evidence to a discreet perspective. I think these two important parts of thinking will benefit me all the way to end of college.

We have understood more about the origins about the universe and biological evolution. The sense of belonging did get lost during way of searching of answer. At the end, we understand it’s just another way of telling story. The ultimate truth may not be found out yet but I am happy with the stage we have reached so far. The cultural evolutions and individual evolution help me understand more about my role and interactions with larger environment. The reasons of the development in the society and the personal progress can be a serious of the turtle all the way down which is the wonderful methodology I have learned in this fascinating ESEM. I have to admit that I did get disappointed at the last part when we are talking about the consciousness and unconsciousness. Even though I haven’t figure the mechanism behind the scenery, the theory about the mysteries brains help me understand myself in a scientific way. I can start understand the behind scene reasons of my psychological and physical behaviors. The wonderful article “The rational dog with the emotional tail” by Jonanth Haidt give me the system of the explanations of my emotional decisions and way of thinking.

I can’t believe it’s coming to a end this week and it’s hard for me to say goodbye. I like the ESEM for its design of helping student really develop a better system of thinking. I wish in my lifetime, I will be able to take another class for me to really explore more about the environment around and myself. The continuous inspirations keep me motivated in this whole process.  Despite the complain I heard from my friends about their ESEM, I am so grateful I take the chance to have this wonderful journey wondering the sense of myself in this complicated evolving universe.