Back when I attended elementary school in the Bronx every year my teacher would organize a trip to the Museum of Natural History. I could remember myself excited to go every time, not to see the exhibits provided at the museum but because the trip got me out of school from working mundane schoolwork. In addition, I was able bring my Gameboy color or Nintendo DS and play on the bus ride since schools trips allowed me to do so. Other than what I listed I found the trip to the museum boring, just another attempt of the adults tried to make history interesting. The only exhibit that caught my eye was the ocean exhibit since the way they arranged the exhibit made it feel as though I was underwater surrounded with seas animals and a massive model whale hanging on the ceiling.
Now it has been almost 8 years since my last visit until October 6, 2017. I decided to visit the museum to satisfy the conditions to post this blog for my freshmen seminar class, after all the information I learned about history since those past 8 years in middle school, high school, and currently in at Baruch I have new perspective when looking at those exhibits. Unlike in elementary I had the freedom to walk around the museum and explore. In each exhibit I looked at there wasn’t one thing I didn’t have some understanding on from African culture, human origins, Hall of meteorites, Northwest Coast Indians, etc. Another difference from then and now was I looking at those exhibits, those pieces of history I felt excited. To know that each of those exhibits played a significant role in forming the world we live in at the present. I found it somewhat inspiration to see such pieces in person unlike reading about them in textbooks, then I wonder what could happen today and years forward that’ll become an exhibit in this museum. Then I stopped looking at a model of the planet Earth to reflect on myself over the past years to measure how much I have grown since my visits as a child in understanding my history, my morals, my experiences, and my choices. Then thought how I was still growing, maturing, and experiences that await me in the future. I have no idea what will happen in 10,25, or 50 years from now, how the world we live in will change, but I and everyone on this planet has a part in creating that future. Whether big or small of an impact its the combination of those impacts that makes history. If I manage to live at an old age and that museum is still around I might go back and measure my growth again, my history.