Environmental Analysis (ENVS 220) has been a large contributor to the growth and change that I’ve gone through this semester. One of the biggest changes for me has been adapting to a bigger and more stressful workload, and 220 has had all to do with that. With all the parts of 220 existing simultaneously, labs, concentration, website design and posts, and everyday classwork, this class had a lot going on and has been probably about the same amount of work as my other three classes combined. This has resulted is just some basic organizational skills, from flagging and filing important emails to having separate, open desktops for each class. Also, my time and stress management skills have definitely improved this semester with the increased workload.
Besides just from the workload, I have learned a lot of other skills. I have definitely experienced growth all of the ENVS 220 learning objectives: learning to ask and answer questions, experiencing and improving upon new skills, and cultivating a growth mindset. I think my biggest growth, however, comes from being able to better think critically about research and asking and answering questions. Through our detailed analysis of question types and designing my own labs, project, and concentration, I feel more confident in my ability to ask the right kinds of scholarly questions in any situation. Besides this, I can now better find answers to these questions, or at least explain why I can’t find answers. This is reflected in my lab project, which has my lab partners and myself asking all sorts of questions about the role of urban green spaces play in Portland.
However, this skills translate to outside of ENVS as well. The biggest area of growth for me this semester outside of the environmental studies sphere came from SOAN110 – Intro to Cultural Anthropology. Throughout this class we were constantly challenged to look outside of our own cultural lens to analyze issues of knowledge, place, gender, and race. The biggest hurdle for me here was looking at how we obtain knowledge, and my ability to ask questions helped me to see my knowledge as a belief system backed by the politicized institution of science. This opened the door for many more questions to be asked about the effects of my own cultural lens.
This came in use when we began talking issues of race in our Ethnography, Philipe Bourgois’ The Search for Respect, but, more importantly, with issues of race of campus and nation have been facing. Racism is one of those big “wicked problems” we talked about a lot in ENVS 160 and learned how to make progress with them in ENVS220, and thanks to that background, I felt more comfortable taking stances on these problems that were brought up by the racially changed attacks on our campus. I could also think critically about proposed solutions and the possible effects they will or will not have. ENVS220 has played an important role in how I approach problems.