Reflection on the Time Capsule

Standing there behind a suitcase full of random objects, I gazed around at the people passing by.  I held a small piece of paper within my hands, waving it around, nervous about what I was going to say when someone decided to ask what I was standing behind. Maybe it was all that caffeine I drank, or maybe because I needed more practice for my speech. “How can I pitch this Idea? How can I make this more interesting than it already is?” Before I knew it, someone was standing before me.

I remember being with my two classmates, Jordan and Diego, when we first thought about the idea. “We wanna do something with the Golden Record.”

It seemed interesting, but there needed to be a twist to the idea. It was not just sending an object out to space to contact extraterrestrial life; it had to be more. The sounds contained on Carl Sagan’s Golden Record show so much of Earth’s culture, but we had to do our own take on it.

We decided instead of sounds on a record, that we would show objects. Since we are of different ages and come from different backgrounds, it seemed like a good idea to gather random items to show the hypothetical aliens what they would think of human culture through visual appeal. We brainstormed the idea a bit more and finally brought them to the next class.

There were books, knick-knacks, video games, flags, stickers, photos, a painting, and more. Once we put all the items in the suitcase, we realized that we had provided so much art, nostalgia, and landmarks in time. It was interesting to see that even though these objects were all different, they still had a few things in common.

Realizing this, I pitched the idea to the first person who stopped by. More ideas kept flowing through the more I talked about it. It was easier after the first person, because even discussing it with my classmates and hearing what they had to say about the project, it was also about perspective.

“What would you put into the suitcase?” I asked those who stopped by.

It got them thinking, and it made me realize that is what part of what this project was about. Although ours emphasized art, nostalgia, and the human experience, other people had different ideas of what they would send. There is not one way to do this project, but we ended up finding something that we can all relate to.

Listening to all the other students’ projects and presentations gave me different ideas on how to do presentations and research. It is always nice to see how people care about their ideas, just as we care about ours.