During ENVS 160, a vast amount of knowledge gets thrown your way and it can often be hard to fully understand what the point of it all is. How does one take all this information and form useful long-term learning from it? Since reading the first book, I have found myself asking myself this question, and while it hasn’t always been a linear progression of understanding throughout this class, as the semester has worn on I have realized that I certainly have gained much more understanding of the world around me. From a specific understanding of environmental science focused rules and regulations that guide our world, to much more general ideas such as frameworks to help tackle the steady stream of knowledge bombarding us students from all directions, this class has helped guide and change my very thought process.
The thing that I feel will affect my life the most is the ideas about frameworks. Even though it was brought to the class’s attention rather recently, it really made me reflect on my ability to take in and process ideas and knowledge, and how best to modify that ability for my benefit. Like many other ENVS students, I realized quickly that my original framework was one of simply absorbing facts and trying to my best to go about making a decision from those facts. This worked fine for most of my life, however, I noticed a shift in viability ever since coming to college. Ever since I stopped being able to rely on my (very) opinionated parents to help guide my thought process, I have found it much harder to simply absorb facts and make the best decision. Because of this, I found myself often wracked with indecision and filled with a general confusion. However, learning even a little bit about frameworks allowed me to see the flaws in my original framework and how to best go about fixing them so I could be a better thinker in a post-parental world. This is incredibly valuable to me, as I will obviously be living in that world for the rest of my life and be required to make really tough decisions.
As I have talked about in two of my previous blog posts (#1, #2,) the information surrounding austerity politics in the environment left a huge impression on me. In my childhood, I had frequently heard about austerity, but never in the sense of the environment. Never once did I realize that the environmental policies I supported often had similar austerity implications as austerity policies in other schools of politics. While that doesn’t automatically devalue all austerity environmental policies, it did make me think critically about what I supported and how to move forward when similar policies arise in the future. Beyond merely the scope of politics, this also made me reflect about some hypocrisy that has arisen in my beliefs and how to move forward with it. I have found myself having a more critical eye when it comes to research, especially about environmental issues, and have been far more adept at questioning potential solutions and seeing their more far-reaching impacts.
Finally, this class has filled me with a far more general sense of wonder and questions about many aspects of environmental studies. Going to Festival of Scholars and seeing many people’s research about topics related to ENVS, as well as hearing the four honors students talk has made me far more aware of what I could potentially be interested in going forward. Seeing the wide range of topics made me realize that many things that I have been interested in fit into the sphere of ENVS, and I would joyfully partake in researching these interests for the future. That interest and potential research goes far beyond ENVS 220 or any future ENVS class I might take. That interest is something that has invisibly guided me through much of my life, and now is visibly guiding me through what I have yet still to live.