The Horizon by Maya Murry

​​I don’t think I’ve been hit yet with the fact that TRIP is over. I feel like only next Saturday, when I’m back at work, sitting at a desk rather than in a lab surrounded by living creatures and ever-fleeting minds, will the realization hit me the hardest. TRIP didn’t just single-handedly give me the exposure of a lifetime to what STEAM truly is, but it also grounded me in a way that I could still adapt as a number-cruncher without having to give up my artistic abilities. That is why I title my final blog The Horizon… it’s what TRIP becomes after it collides the worlds of art, psychology, and human interaction skills together into a single class room lab.

---

And it was that very environment that later on led me to come up with my independent project: the study of counteracting the negatives of sleep-deprivation by altering diet. ​

Originally, I found it impossible to thin down my list of potential idea choices to a single experiment because of the enthusiasm that our three instructors would constantly fuel us with. However, my independent project ended up being about what I chose to sacrifice for TRIP along with school and sports and extracurriculars: sleep! But don’t get me wrong; if I could organize my time properly, this wouldn’t be a conflict at all, especially considering the fact that I’ve been sleep-depriving myself way before I knew about TRIP. However, curiosity struck me once I found myself thinking about the build-up of all these years, and surprisingly, my experiment revealed that sleep-deprivation did in fact increase both memory and socialness.

Great, I thought! Now I could walk out with no fear of having future-me affected. But there was more to it.

Some trials failed.

Others were questionable.

Some results I still simply don’t understand the science behind, and maybe I never will know what occurs behind every failed trial - behind every anomaly born out of even the most perfect executions. But it's these little enigmas I fear may never unravel that are what drive us down every future opportunity that TRIP has paved for us.