Hello! My name is Ben Okin, and welcome to my “Life in the Universe” blog. I hope you are as excited as I am to explore all that this class has to offer. I’d like to use my first post as an opportunity to introduce myself, share some of my interests, and divulge some personal information and explain, to some degree, how its formed me into the person I am today.

Me and my grandmother Sheila Okin, c. 1996

I was born on May 8th, 1995, at Stony Brook University Hospital, located about halfway between the easternmost shores of Long Island, and Manhattan, New York, to Claude and Sarah Okin. I am my father’s first of three, and my mother’s third of five. The younger of my two older brothers is actually a CC alum, and the main reason I chose to study here for my college career.

I have somehow acquired throughout my family life all the entitlement of a firstborn, as well as the intense belief in my ownership of the perpetual short end of the stick that most middle children are endowed. Incredibly character building. Aside from a few, short, periods spent elsewhere, I have lived almost the entirety of my life in Amagansett, New York, a very small town just west of Montauk, on Long Island.

My parents split when I was seven, and from that point on, and continuing into the present, my mother became exceedingly more involved with exciting things like compulsive spending, and unnaturally high doses of prescription drugs washed down with Grey Goose. To say that my relationship with her has been rocky over the years would be appropriate. So, for the most part, I have been raised by my father, a self-made business man, and his mother, my grandmother, a lifelong therapist and social worker.

Growing up I wanted to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps. I wanted to help people, flip those frowns upside-down. But, when I realized that I would have to spend my days speaking to people who I would be professionally obliged to avoid forming any sort of relationship other than a doctor-patient type, my desire to pursue a profession in that field shrunk very rapidly. As I continued to live and grow, I found that the thing I can do with the most success, and ease, is work with numbers. I can speak numbers about as well as I can English. Because of this, and the fact that I would still like to try to help people if it is a possibility, I am leaning towards a major in economics.

But, just because economics is my major of choice, does not mean I do not have a tremendous amount of interest in other academic realms. This holds very true when it comes to the physical sciences. Everything in this world, big or small, living or inanimate, it is all made up of the same essential parts, all act under the same basic laws, same basic physical principles.  This is a held understanding that amazes me without fail when I let it swim around my brain, and motivates me to discover more; to learn why and how everything is or isn’t. I hope that “Life in the Universe” can further my understanding of some of these questions, or answer those questions of which I have no pertaining information whatsoever.

Speaking of “Life in the Universe” more specifically, the one topic that may interest me more so than any other is the idea of  Earth as a truly rare and unique planet. For life as we know it to survive, not just survive but thrive and evolve, the physical conditions must meet such a specific level of criteria that the fact that life exists at all is an incredible miracle. Why earth? Perhaps why is the wrong question, as the universe will show us time and time again that it has no intended rhyme or reason. How may be the better question. How in our infinitely massive universe did Earth get so lucky? It is a question that we might not have every answer for at this point, but we do have some, and those that we do have give us the template for life in general, and the conditions that would have to prevail elsewhere in the vast expanse of all that lies beyond for life to exist there.