The Ultimatum by Maya Murry

Hey everybody! I’m fourth-week-Maya, and I say it that way because with every incoming week I have been completely changing my opinions and interests toward everything I’m experimenting with in the labs, especially with my ideas for the independent project. But eventually, finally compressing my thoughts with the pressure of two hours that I have sabotaged myself into leaving before the due time, I have finally settled upon a topic: lucid dreaming. Which strangely is also the first topic I had thought of experimenting with from the very first time I clicked upon TRIP’s website and landed upon the application. Even though I have personally never had a lucid dream, I am absolutely fascinated by the very act of it and how the mind could possibly subject a subconsciousness during a time of total unconsciousness.

The way I see it, all dreams are purposely created by our brains, but we do not necessarily understand the purpose because most of the time, they’re more of the leftovers of the memory-ordering process our brains go through during sleep. And my hypothesis is if flies could possibly have increased REM-sleep - the most vivid stage of our sleep - then their cognitive ability and memory would drastically improve. Although my biggest fear is that this hypothesis is going to turn out to be wrong, it is something I have also prepared myself to embrace.

That is the greatest mindset that TRIP has been teaching me to develop, even throughout these first few weeks. For there have been times where my results have been so insanely different than what should have naturally occured - and sometimes even the complete opposite of the proven result. But whether that matters or not is completely dependent on the way you’re going to swallow in not just the process but every other external factor that you’re completely blind to. We might go through this entire experience without ever completely distinguishing what these factors are, but at least we’ll be leaving with the knowledge that there’s something else out there that still needs to be discovered.