My name is Gareth Hardwick and was born in Seattle, Washington in March of 1995. My mom is a lawyer and my dad worked at Boeing. He had a small telescope that we would use to look at other stars, planets and galaxies at night. When I was around 12 he bought a much larger telescope to use at our cabin. With the new telescope we could see much further into space, usually I would just spend my time panning endlessly between stars and planets in no particular order. My uncle collected rocks, especially meteorites, and he even gave a small fragment of one to me when I was 10. In addition to stargazing and looking at rocks, I spent many hours building model rockets and airplanes, usually crashing them spectacularly. This served as my introduction to physics and astronomy.
My first formal education in astronomy occurred in my freshman year of high school when I took both physics and astronomy both semesters. While my physics class was less than challenging, my astronomy class was very difficult; I was the only freshman and the only student who had not taken calculus. Fortunately my teacher spent lots of time outside of class helping me so that I did not fall behind. Finally I took an advanced physics class my senior year (I went to a private school so we had no AP or honors classes, they were all supposed to be taught at around that level) which challenged my much more. Because we got through our textbook so fast we spent nearly a quarter with no schedule, on a sort of independent study, I chose a topic involving astronomy, in particular the formation of planets, stars and solar systems.
Aside from academics I spent my middle school and high school years as a nationally ranked cross-country skier and biathlete. Mountain biking, mountaineering, backcountry and downhill skiing take up the majority of my time away from school, though I also hike, trail run, backpack and do many other outdoor activities. When I am not doing any of the above I usually draw or paint.
I still have not decided on a major, one of the reasons I selected this class was to see if I would want to major in a field similar to astrobiology. Aside from astronomy my other interests are physics, math (especially calculus), drawing, and painting.
I hope that by the end of this class I will have a better understanding of astrobiology, but mainly, a better understanding and clearer idea for what I want to major in. Right now I am very divided between what seems like to possible routes, math and physics, or art. Which ever I choose to major in I will probably minor in a subject of the other field. Hopefully this class will start to show me which of these two options I will take, though I cant even say that this with much certainty.
It is hard to choose one part of astronomy over another, but what interests me most is the space travel. Possible this is because of my exposure to flight and rockets at a very young age, but whatever the reason, I am fascinated with it. Travelling though space is the coolest thing I can think of doing. I spent the later half of my astronomy class researching space travel and even got into a bit of special relativity, though I barely scratched the surface of that field.
