As this year’s symposium comes to an end, I am enormously proud of all the work I and so many others put in. I was really unsure of how it would work out and there was a lot of scrambling in the past couple weeks to finalize everything, but it was really rewarding to see […]
220 Midterm Reflections – New Experiences
The last expectation for ENVS 220 I have yet to talk about is giving new experiences a try/ some time. This has been immediately much more evident than cultivating a growth mindset or asking questions. Right from our first lab meeting we were in groups out on campus asking people to answer a few questions on […]
220 Midterm Reflections – Asking Questions
One of the responsibilities outlined in the syllabus for ENVS 220 is to know your questions. Originally, I was confused as to what exactly this meant outside of the context of our concentration, but now I see that it applies to everything we do in this course. Knowing questions does, however, come in very important […]
220 Midterm Reflections – Growth Mindset
Throughout ENVS 220 I have began to cultivate more of a sense of a growth mindset. Scholar Robert Sternberg describes that in a growth mindset, “people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point.” A growth mindset has been shown through the […]
The World Without Us Reflections
Skimming Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, I found it it to be a fascinating yet problematic book. Its premise is incredibly intriguing; it asks, what would the world look like if humans suddenly disappeared? And Weisman’s answer? The world would, more or less, be better off without us. This is a depressing sounding conclusion, and it […]
GIS Reflections
After using GIS for the past two labs, I finally think I can call myself proficient at ArcGIS. Not good, but good enough to get by. ArcGIS has proved itself to be a super useful program, but also not super intuitive. It has a lot of techie features that would be almost impossible to figure […]
Finding Scale
Gearing up for the concentration draft deadline, I have been thinking a lot about scale. A concentration is supposed to be larger than a situated project, but smaller than a broad environmental theme. Finding the perfect balance and focus has been difficult. I have narrowed down to the broad theme of agtech, but just agtech […]
Wisdom Sits In Places
After recently finishing Keith Basso’s ‘Wisdom Sits in Places’ for Intro to Cultural Anthropology, I have been reconsidering place as it applies to Environmental Studies. We discussed at the beginning of the semester about how place provides a method for situating otherwise sprawling research. It provided context for complex environmental issues. While this is certainly […]
Concentration Brainstorm
Figuring out what I want to focus on for my next three years of study in ENVS has been a longer, more difficult process than I had imagined. There are just so many interesting topics under the general field of Environmental Studies that it has been an adventure just to know where to start. Sorting through […]