The
first day of class you said something that stuck in my head, and I think it
will continue to stick with me for a long time. You said that experience is
nothing without reflection. I’ve had a lot of experiences in my life, but that
one stray comment made me wonder just how often I had really stopped to reflect
upon those experiences, and if they would have been richer had I just paused. It’s
nagged me all semester and while I don’t have an answer as to previous
experiences, I do know that this class made me stop and think, and that’s a
lesson that I think we all need to be reminded of from time to time in our
lives.
Overall Impression
The format of the class was innovative and a welcome breath of fresh air in the rip tide of regular grad classes. It was especially refreshing after coming back from working in the real world for a couple of years and suddenly faced with the façade of student life where pride seems to come in the form of letter grades. The class format might not work for everyone, but I found it very useful and it encouraged me to study harder and reflect more deeply than exam based courses.
The format of the class was innovative and a welcome breath of fresh air in the rip tide of regular grad classes. It was especially refreshing after coming back from working in the real world for a couple of years and suddenly faced with the façade of student life where pride seems to come in the form of letter grades. The class format might not work for everyone, but I found it very useful and it encouraged me to study harder and reflect more deeply than exam based courses.
Understanding of Sustainability
Prior to this class, sustainability was a term that I had heard thrown around a lot, but a concept that felt too big and expansive to properly define. After taking this course, completing my individual project and working on the STAR community report for the City, I feel that while sustainability remains a very expansive term, it is something that I am constantly aware of now and actively striving toward in a vast array of thoughts and forms. My personal project of sustainable brewing forced me to look at sustainability from a variety of perspectives and levels that I never would have believed possible.
Prior to this class, sustainability was a term that I had heard thrown around a lot, but a concept that felt too big and expansive to properly define. After taking this course, completing my individual project and working on the STAR community report for the City, I feel that while sustainability remains a very expansive term, it is something that I am constantly aware of now and actively striving toward in a vast array of thoughts and forms. My personal project of sustainable brewing forced me to look at sustainability from a variety of perspectives and levels that I never would have believed possible.
Course Projects
In planning my independent project, the most basic aspects of conserving, recycling and reusing came easily, while re-thinking sustainable approaches took a greater effort, more creativity and made the topic more interesting to me. A bigger picture began to form as each minor detail such as water re-use, glass recycling, cooking with spent grains, sharing communal equipment initiated an incremental lifestyle change. I started researching each topic separately, and while each topic was relatively minor on its own, each aspect emerged as something larger in the end. I noticed that drawing attention to how much water I could re-use in brewing changed my overall consumption of water, and my boyfriend’s consumption as well. Relying on other people for equipment allowed me to make connections with new people who not only had lots of helpful advice, but also more equipment to share. Around the same time I began sharing my car with a friend and finally put my apartment on the couchsurfing website to reciprocate for all the couches I’ve bummed during my travels. Learning to cook with wet spent grains encouraged me to pay more attention to other food I was throwing out that could be re-purposed with a little creativity. I began to see that sustainability is not just about changing policy, but our everyday behavior, and most importantly, our very way of thinking.
In planning my independent project, the most basic aspects of conserving, recycling and reusing came easily, while re-thinking sustainable approaches took a greater effort, more creativity and made the topic more interesting to me. A bigger picture began to form as each minor detail such as water re-use, glass recycling, cooking with spent grains, sharing communal equipment initiated an incremental lifestyle change. I started researching each topic separately, and while each topic was relatively minor on its own, each aspect emerged as something larger in the end. I noticed that drawing attention to how much water I could re-use in brewing changed my overall consumption of water, and my boyfriend’s consumption as well. Relying on other people for equipment allowed me to make connections with new people who not only had lots of helpful advice, but also more equipment to share. Around the same time I began sharing my car with a friend and finally put my apartment on the couchsurfing website to reciprocate for all the couches I’ve bummed during my travels. Learning to cook with wet spent grains encouraged me to pay more attention to other food I was throwing out that could be re-purposed with a little creativity. I began to see that sustainability is not just about changing policy, but our everyday behavior, and most importantly, our very way of thinking.
Course Content
Many of the articles that we read, especially those that focused on the economic perspective of carbon use, climate change and natural resources impacted me the most deeply. Those articles did not just focus on what individuals can do, but proposed that we think about the world differently. If we begin to see a world with a definitive limit, that GDP always adds and never subtracts, that it is bizarre to tax everything except limited resources, that scare resources are used to the detriment of the planet while a nearly inexhaustible labor market goes under-utilized to the detriment of people, the world begins to look different, and questions begin to surface. With questions inevitably come answers, and more questions. In cases like this, it is the questions themselves that can change the world. The little routine choices that we make everyday matter too, but for me, it is learning to question the root of the issues that made this topic and class so useful to me. While I’m sure many of the facts we’ve discussed in class will fade, the questions will not. I think that is the best type of education we can receive, the type that motivates us to learn more, to constantly seek to find answers, discuss frequently, until we change things in the process.
Many of the articles that we read, especially those that focused on the economic perspective of carbon use, climate change and natural resources impacted me the most deeply. Those articles did not just focus on what individuals can do, but proposed that we think about the world differently. If we begin to see a world with a definitive limit, that GDP always adds and never subtracts, that it is bizarre to tax everything except limited resources, that scare resources are used to the detriment of the planet while a nearly inexhaustible labor market goes under-utilized to the detriment of people, the world begins to look different, and questions begin to surface. With questions inevitably come answers, and more questions. In cases like this, it is the questions themselves that can change the world. The little routine choices that we make everyday matter too, but for me, it is learning to question the root of the issues that made this topic and class so useful to me. While I’m sure many of the facts we’ve discussed in class will fade, the questions will not. I think that is the best type of education we can receive, the type that motivates us to learn more, to constantly seek to find answers, discuss frequently, until we change things in the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment