Reflection: weeks 13 & 14

Week 13

On Tuesday we watched the movie the “Story of Stuff”, which I thought was extremely informational.   This movie was phenomenal, and although it was biased, many interesting points were made that help us as consumers gain some insight on what we are doing to the planet.  The movie was animated in a way that was appealing, and the host was very easy to listen to. 

On Thursday we did a little navigational activity through Bagley to learn a little bit about using compasses, and spending time in nature.  I am not sure how I felt about this activity.  It was a little bit far fetched for me, but I think that the photo op at the end was a lot of fun, and I learned to “follow Fred and put red in the shed”.  ??  Hopefully during grad school in Colorado, I get lost in the mountains one day with my man and I can bust out my compass usage skills. 

For our blogs in week 14 we had to post an “issue overview” portion of our advocacy projects.  I actually liked reading these because they helped me to think about a wide array of environmental issues and whom they could possibly affect.  I guess you could say my mind has somewhat been trained to think in a way that “follows the money”, I know this skill will be crucial to have in my future career.  I didn’t really learn much about blogging this week.  I guess that means I am a pro, I am not really sure what other assumptions to draw…

 

Week 14

On Tuesday we had a guest speaker come in from the Civic Engagement office at UMD to talk about his experiences with environment and health outside of undergraduate school.  I really liked this presentation because I think it gave a lot of students some direction in life after college.  I especially liked learning about the different organizations our speaker was involved in and how he would recommend going about graduate school/a professional career.  

On Thursday we had a little repurposing day were our web groups had to think of a bunch of different ways to turn random objects into useful things for a home.  This day was by far my favorite day in environmental health.  I know our web group had so much fun being creative and giggling at those who had some bizarre ideas as well.  Maybe I will become a junker one day as well??

For blogs this week we had our letter to a political representative due for our advocacy projects.  I thought it was great to read through these and see how many different approaches we took as a class, but how effective each letter could be.  They will definitely serve as great resources to use in the future if I ever need to write a persuasive letter regarding an issue I want to be addressed.