Pole-reversal apocalypse
In addition to my welding classes, my other academic courses provided a balance to my studies. In Academic Literacy and Success, my professor, Mark Palz, assigned a cover letter. Each student was to choose an apocalyptic scenario and tell about the skills they have that would be helpful in such a situation. I chose to write about the earth’s magnetic poles suddenly flipping and weakening our magnetic field. The goal was to write about what one would do in that situation, and to also use our resumes to describe real-life skills or job experiences that would pertain to surviving. It went like this . . .
It was just a sunny fall day in Colorado Mountain College with the leaves changing colors. I was warming up with my cross-country team at the green gate on campus. Suddenly, without any warning, the earth’s poles flipped. During this, the magnetic field weakened, therefore causing more cosmic rays to come in. And at this high altitude, the cosmic rays are too intense, so we have to leave Leadville. The good news is we don’t have to be in a terrible rush because the climate doesn’t suddenly change. But this is very challenging because even though the bus engines start, they won't stay running due to reverse polarity in the electrical system.
So to get us out of this predicament, I have a plan utilizing skills learned in jobs and volunteer experiences. My skills are training burros, trail maintenance, serving coffee and ice cream, teaching, and I am also a long-distance runner.
I will be getting everybody including the cross-country team and our coach to round up burros all around Leadville, then I’ll have all people pack stuff from their dorm rooms into panniers and order everyone to go down the soccer field road with them. I will first track down my cross-country team and coach to help with this. I will also go to the Get Outdoors Leadville building and get more gear for the adventure.
My plan is to get everybody to some lower elevation area with trees. I have to have my teammates go with me to decide. It will probably take a few days to get there, but I have experience with camping, cooking and hiking. My idea is to build a small resort with trails. We could make money by selling ice cream, running gear, coffee, and even renting bikes and burros, and charging fees for trail access.
I think my skills offer a unique solution to the issue that doesn’t leave anybody behind. Thank you for considering my plan to solve this problem.
I felt like I learned a lot of things from this assignment. I learned more about how the magnetic poles and sun work, how dynamic and unpredictable our universe is, and the fact that things at one point may never be the same again. I also learned that certain skills can be adapted to other situations.
To me, space is really fascinating and special. I thought it was fun to do this assignment because it allowed me to research something I’m interested in. Humans like me are very fortunate to be on this tiny blue spec orbiting the sun. In general, this assignment gave me the confidence to take on other assignments both in this class and others, not only doing them but also doing really well on them as well.
I also did other assignments for Mark and one of them was an introduction about me which talks about me, where I’m from, the reason for my presence at CMC, my differences, the friends I went to school with, my time during school, and my progress throughout those areas. This assignment later served as the basis for an earlier chapter in this book.
Another assignment I did for this class was an online reply about what Information Literacy means to me. I use information every day and multiple times a day. For example, reading the news, watching certain videos, using the workout feature on my watch, etc. Information Literacy is typically something that comes from a paper or electronic source. Moreover, it’s the ability to read and retain information being presented on paper or by computer. Learning how to properly use information will help me be successful.
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