Introduction to my Crazy Life

My name is Connor Dugan.  I'm not sure if this post will do justice, but I am one of the more different people in the world.  In lots of good ways (in my opinion), but it has its consequences as well.

I am a Junior majoring in Chemical Engineering with an emphasis in Biotechnology at the University of Oklahoma.  I absolutely love my major.  I'm not sure what exactly sparked my love for science and learning, but around junior year of high school I became obsessed with science.  I love learning about nature, physics, particle physics, quantum field theory, psychology, I love learning about the world.  My favorite branches of science are chemistry and particle physics (the math for particle physics is very intimidating).

My picture I took of The Jam Shack
(I am on the right)

I have also become very productive in the past couple years.  Last summer I began my first company, The Jam Shack LLC.  The Jam Shack is a food trailer that sells exotic and gourmet sandwiches inspired by the PB&J.  I and my friend that attends OSU spent close to a year building the entire food trailer with little experience with anything.  We learned as we went, and boy did we learn a lot.  The Jam Shack was the hardest thing I have ever done psychologically.  The pressure I put on myself, the money I invested in it, the time and effort, and all this while knowing it could be a complete failure that can't pass health inspection or hold up to what our operation would demand.  But after a very long time of dedicated work, we were fully operating The Jam Shack at events all over my home town of Edmond, Oklahoma in the summer of 2017.  The wrap of The Jam Shack that can be seen in the images has our information and the artwork (which wraps all the way around the shack) is scenes of the greatest achievements of humanity (discovery of fire, egyptian pyramids, theory of relativity, smart phones, moon landing, etc.) played out with PB&J characters.

Another Picture I took of The Jam Shack

While pursuing my dreams with The Jam Shack, I was also beginning my career in science by pursuing research in the Asphalt Binder Lab at OU.  I am working with my Momentum, Heat, and Mass Transfer professor Dr. O'Rear.  My goal of my research is to measure the effect of the addition of oil in binder (the tar in the roads) that is heavily composed of recycled asphalt pavement.  With my gathered information, I am hoping to be able to reduce the costs of materials for Oklahoma roads, as well as make them last for a longer period of time while reducing the footprint of humanity by using recycled material.

Lastly, my more creative side comes out when it comes to philosophy about life itself.  I have always been asking "too many questions" which would often get me in trouble at my private religious school.  I was never one to just believe, it also had to make sense and line up with the world.  My line of thinking stems from the fact that science and logic should all point directly toward whatever true philosophy that may exist.  Thus, I have come up with many hypotheses about reality and so far most of them have utterly failed in some way.  My current most profound philosophical thought that seems to line up with reality most accurately is that consciousness is a part of the universe just like gravity.  It is a force of nature.  And just like we know mass seems to generate a gravitational field, neurological structures generate consciousness, we just don't know WHY it happens yet.  The consequence of this is all consciousness in the universe is the same, but manifested in neurological structures that are vastly different.  I could get into this much further but this post will be RIDICULOUSLY long.

I love life, I love the universe, and I always do my best to not get too caught up in worldly things that aren't worth being upset over.  The Jam Shack and my research brought upon me a really negative mind set where nothing was ever enough and I was suffering for a while, but I am on my way out of that and into a much more positive mind.  And a positive mind is without doubt one of the most valuable things to posses. 

Thanks for reading! :)