As a transfer student who had lived in multiple countries and studied under many different viewpoints, signing up for an intro to environmental studies course seemed vaguely insulting. I was this experienced and worldly student with a passion for the environment, what more could an intro course teach me that I hadn’t already learned from […]
Post 1 (Due Apr 05)
Student posts below addressed the following: "Name and briefly describe three key lessons related to environmental studies that you have learned in our course."
Hammer and Sickle
Environmental Background Growing up in Phoenix, AZ, most of the people around me were climate change deniers. Living in a red state did have a drastic effect on my overall ideologies, mostly in strong rebellion. By the end of high school, my economic and social views had been solidified, but one thing I was lacking […]
From Existential Crises and Unfair Biases to Hope and Understanding: Lessons from Introduction to Environmental Studies
Lesson 1: There is not one single solution to our current environmental problems, but there is hope for the future. In order to transition into a more environmentally conscious and less destructive culture, there will need to be significant (arguably radical) social/cultural, economic, scientific, and technological changes. It will not be sufficient for these spheres to […]
Brain Tools
I came to Lewis & Clark entirely unsure of my major, and always kind of figured Environmental Studies would be the one I could fall back on if my other possibilities, math and SOAN, ended up not grabbing me. A part of me hoped I had time to figure it out, and that the obvious […]
Changing Views Step by Step
Before taking Environmental Studies 160, my views towards environmental issues and anything dealing with climate change were mainly based on the knowledge that I had obtained in a prior class that I took in high school. Usually, the basics of what was going on in the world were explained and what my teacher at the […]
From the Bay Area to the City of Bridges: An Evolution of ENVS
It was fall of 2015, sunny San Francisco, California, the campus was alive and humming with an excited buzz. It was on this early September day that I would begin taking classes that would significantly impact my life. At the time I was studying at the University of San Francisco where both the Environmental Studies […]
No Simple Solution
ENVS 160 has definitely been a wake-up call. Coming into the course I had the notion that while not simple, everything that I viewed as a problem had a clear and correct solution that could be attained. Of course, I did realize that the field of environmental studies was complicated and often uncertain, but I […]
Formulating Opinions
The scope of ENVS 160 is completely unlike that of the AP Environmental Science class I took my senior year of high school. Not nearly as extensive as our class, it hardly talked about what actions can be taken, described through the different philosophies of environmentalism, and instead taught what climate change is and the […]
Reflection on the Water of ENVS
Coming into ENVS 160, I thought it would be similar to environmental science in high school. I could have been more wrong. the main source of the difference is stemmed from the names: studies and science. Studies implies that it focuses on the whole, rather than the specifics, which is the opposite of science, which […]
Environmentalists don’t Agree
Before the second semester began, I had a very narrow-minded view of environmentalism. My upbringing was one that strongly emphasized a low carbon footprint and waste reduction on an individual scale. My family and I rarely used our car and almost exclusively biked to and from work or school. We have solar […]
Do We Have the Weapons to Fight a Climate Battle?
I’ve always considered myself very earth friendly. My mom shopped at Whole Foods, used reuseable shopping bags, we carpooled to school, I rode my bike to soccer, I was teased by peers for washing and reusing ziploc baggies, and my dad waited till Thanksgiving every year before he would turn the heat on in my […]
A Climate Ideology Reconfiguration
ENVS 160 has a strong point: its required readings are well chosen. Moreover, they are insightful and properly challenge the conventional frameworks and assumptions popularized by trendy, crunchy liberalism that manifest themselves from the merits of organic acai bowls to the virtuosity of buying local. Going deeper, they raise important questions about the methods of […]
Modalities of Thought in 160
Environmental Studies 160 has taught me that my perspective entering the class and the way I interpret material we learn in class is sometimes uniquely discrepant form others and that I am just one in the diverse pool of thought. It was the distribution in Ecotype beliefs that exposed this reality to me. The survey […]
Why Science Won’t Save Us
As a major in the natural sciences, I entered this course with the mindset that the people who don’t believe in climate change must simply not understand the science behind it. I always thought that maybe, if there was a way to get enough ‘science’ out there, we could convince everyone that climate change was […]
Environmentalism: A White Man’s Ism
Environmental studies, a politically liberal field, has shown itself to be much less intersectional than I previously imagined. As a movement that requires extensive scientific knowledge about many different process in the world as well as the same amount of knowledge about social issues, environmentalism is and has historically been available to those with access […]
Embrace the Discomfort!
ENVS 160 has helped me to better articulate my own beliefs while knowing that they will inevitably change as I collect new knowledge about myself and the world I inhabit. I would like to share some of the lessons I have taken so far from this course. An essential lesson from ENVS 160 is that context and […]
Three Key Lessons from ENVS 160
Environmental studies has changed the way I view the world. Many people claim that environmental studies is a soft science and prior to this class I shared the same belief. However, my understanding of environmental studies has changed over the course of this semester and I have come to realize that environmental studies is anything […]
Environmental Studies: Learning to love its monsters and my own
Regardless of personal opinions on the environment most people agree it is complex and messy. People are complex and so is the environment. To approach the inherent diversity of ideas and realities that come together to form what we now refer to as the environment an interdisciplinary context is required. Coming into Environmental Studies as […]
Which Argument is the Most Valid?
Throughout my time in high school, I consistently questioned what I would end up majoring in when I graduate from college. I first started out wanting to be a computer science major, but when I took AP Psychology, I felt psychology might be the major for me. However, I have always been very interested in […]
One Class. Three Lessons Learned: A Synthesis of Environmental Understanding.
In this semester of Environmental Studies 160, I’ve realized that the problem of climate change in its entire concept is a much more convoluted problem than I ever imagined. The word Climate Change is so broad, it’s hard to understand what it even means, and I feel like that is a point of our first […]
The Making of an ENVS Star
The Making of an ENVS Star by: Robert Nakihei Growing up in Hawaii I was surrounded by lush tropical forests, majestic mountains, exotic wild animals, endangered species, and the Pacific Ocean. The thought of my home and all it has to offer vanishing because of an environmental catastrophe has never came to my mind until […]
And When I Snap my Fingers, You Will Forget Everything You Think You Know
Having attended a fairly academically-rigorous high school, I thought that I was pretty well-prepared for college. I also expected to be prepared for ENVS 160, as I took an AP Environmental Science during my senior year. HOWEVER, I was wrong…. Extremely wrong. So wrong that it’s not even funny. Thankfully, in just one semester, I […]
Riveting Realizations: Connections and Changing Conceptions
Part of the reason I decided to take ENVS160 was due to the interdisciplinarity I heard so much about. Connections between concepts have always intrigued me. When reflecting on the key ideas I’ve learned thus far, it was difficult to narrow it down to three ideas, as all the small things I’ve learned somehow connect to […]
Words As Ideas? Or Ideas As Words…
Environmental thought, I thought, could not have possibly been so vast. I came to ENVS 160 assuming I would be looking at different graphs, images, systems, and global wind patterns. I did not realize how in depth we would be considering the many different styles of thinking available to humans under an environmental studies lens. […]
How Walking With a Stranger Changed Me
Before this course, I had limited knowledge of the environmental issues plaguing the world today. I have always been deemed an outdoorsy person, playing outside, enjoying natural gifts that are free of charge. But this was all a foreign land to me, and exploration of different lands lead to many changes in my thought, which is […]