Upon speaking to my senior roommate who took Honors Colloquium in Fall of 2011 with a different professor, I learned that the class would be "a piece of cake". Since I'm taking the class with a different professor, I hoped it would be the same scenario, but I was disappointed to discover on the first day of class that I wouldn't have it so easily. Since this is the honors version of the class, the expectations are higher. That paired with my out-of-practice writing skills as a math major makes me unsure if the class will be an easy A. However, I am excited to learn more about the area I live in and my role in the environment.
The first day of class we discussed what we thought specific words meant. These words to me seemed like sort of buzz words for the course, or maybe an overview of what we will be going over in upcoming weeks. "Sustainability" was the first word thrown out. It seems synonymous with being renewable; something is sustainable when it is not harmful to the environment when used long term. Also discussed was "sense of place" which is to know your place in a system. Something I had never heard of before is the word "eco-literacy", which we are asked to define Upon doing some research I found that it meant a awareness of Earth as our life support system, as if earth is a machine that keeps life going. Eco-literacy includes knowing the principles of organization of ecosystems.
We are asked to relate sustainability to our chosen field of study. As that is mathematics, I have some difficulty seeing how this relates to anything I could learn about sustainability. There are always differential equations that one could write about emissions from a certain factory and the rate of change of the pollution in the atmosphere, but that only points out the problem and how quickly it's spreading. As a mathematician, I can only provide data on sustainability but it is not within my field to actually take some sort of action (which is not to say I won't, it's only highly improbable for a mathematician to do so).
Though I can identify unsustainable behaviors of mine, it is not a fun process. No one likes to think about any harm they're doing to the environment on a daily basis, but the first step to solving a problem is to make sure it's known. Although I'm constantly refilling my reusable water bottle, occasional I can be seen buying a bottle of water from the vending machine when I've forgotten mine. I fall asleep watching "Mythbusters" many nights; this leads to the televisions being on all night (which I don't mind because I don't like complete darkness or silence.) I live on campus, which means I can easily walk to class every morning, but on many occasion I have taken the shuttle because I'm tired or it's raining or just too darn hot!
I'm looking forward to all I can learn in this class, but seeing as it isn't a math class, I'm not sure it can be too much fun.
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