We all know the phrase “if you don’t learn from the past, you’re doomed to repeat it in the future”. The same can be said for ENVS 160, although not as the extreme that the phrase is usually used in context for. Once we know something, we generally use it either subtly or overtly for other tasks. ENVS is great in the fact that it provides such a wide basis for thought.
In any case, ENVS 160 provided for me a substantial base for all fields of academia, as ENVS is a cross-disciplinary field, drawing on a basis of hard sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The situating materials assignment specifically helped me realize how much ENVS relies upon a variety of disciplines to provoke deeper thought and study, as it touched on a specific location and demanded that we take into account the social meaning of the place, as well as other more subtle benefits that can be seen only when focusing deeply on that place, such as the people’s viewpoint of themselves or looking at your own culture through their eyes. This can also be applied, and I plan to apply it, to real life, where it is important to see and understand others’ perspectives.
Besides the thinking side of academics, ENVS 160 also taught me how to skim-read a text, taking away the most important bits, since it takes way too much time to deeply read a text. It has also taught me good digital scholarship, using the most of the technology to enhance the academic experience, such as posts like these that allow thoughts to just flow from my head onto the screen, or something like Zotero, allowing digital collaboration, instead of multiple people gathering resources for a project and finding out that they all chose similar sources.
I can see myself going even further with ENVS, including making it my major, and tailoring it to my specific interests, which consists of a weird blend of environmental education outdoors and theatre tech, even though the two are entirely different. I like that with and ENVS major, you can really design your own major with the final thesis project, much like those we saw from the seniors who came to visit.