Final Post

Well its been an interesting journey from the beginning of this school year to now; however, I do feel myself growing up in a gradual sense. I feel like my choices were made well and that I have learned a lot of new things about myself and the world around me. I already have switched majors once and hopefully I have found where I need to be.
College is a wonderful time in my life and I am learning to find my niches in this large community. I am excited to see where the next 4 years lead me and how it all ends up. Maybe I will come back and read this blog to see how I have truly transformed.

Sustainability on Campus

So my last paper was about recycling on campus and today in a meeting with people from throughout the sustainability office on campus I learned a few things about campus. We have now diverted almost 50% of all of wastes from a landfill to new recycled uses. Last year there were no recycling bins on campus and this year we have over 100 strategically placed along with trashcans. However because there are some many trashcans left progress is not as good as it could be. The goal of 60% diversion is set for 2015 and it should definitely be achievable.
A few things to do are make supplies used around campus better packaged to cut down on un-recyclable wastes. Also just educating students to fully think about their choices on campus and make sustainable options available throughout campus including some of the franchises on campus.

11/11/11

Wishing is useless. On the eve of the momentous occasion of 11/11/11 11:11(am or pm), I feel like making a wish at that time is just the same as any moment around the clock, useless. Because wishes make us hopeful for something which either means: it will become a goal and we will strive for it, it will become forgotten in the next 30 seconds, or it will lead to a hopeful longing of something that can never happen. Thinking back on wishes I have made, I realized none of them have come true and I haven’t gotten anywhere because of them either. Why is our human race so persistent on a cause that can never be satisfied? From our childhood, we are told to make wishes on stars at night and from then on it just becomes a habit. But, why? Why can we not teach our children to be grateful for themselves, the food they eat, or the earth surrounding them? We really are setting children up for a lifetime of disappointment which seems pretty pathetic. Maybe I am just a cynical person in the making because none of mine have ever come true, but I can’t be the only one. Nor would I want to be. To have the things I wished for would make me a materialized, romantic who gets her heart broken a million times. The only wishes that have ever come true are those I have done for myself, which means they aren’t wishes at all but more like personal goals. Wishes can also be linked to the superhuman being in the sky, because isn’t “God” the one that grants wishes. The whole idea seems pretty skewed to me, I would rather just enjoy the stars and treat each moment like a gem than sit and wish for things that 95% of the time will never come true. Well, at least with the 5% I don’t sound like too much of a cynic.

180 Degrees South

So after watching this movie, my drive to conserve open spaces and explore the world has just been heightened. Patagonia is just one area of the earth with untouched beauty on the brink of globalization. The only way to conserve these areas is by buying them. For a few years now my goal in life has been to get a degree and make a substantial amount of money so that I can buy the rights to land right here in America, stopping the spread of urban sprawl to those places which it has not yet touched. Before this movie, it didnt even occur to me to do this with land throughout the world.
Ironically, I believe it will also be my love of rock climbing that drives me to travel the world in search of new land to buy. This movie is inspirational to say the least and to me if private owners held more conservation area then the land might be taken care of better.

Indigenous Education

The mystery of the people of the New World could have been solved a long time ago if the original Americans and some today that feel the only way to have a great country is if we deny there was ever something here before us. In the article "Indigenous Resistance and Racist Schooling on the Borders of Empires: Coast Salish Cultural Survival" by Michael Marker, we grasp just a small notion of what happened in the 60s and 70s that diminished the already scarce knowledge of the indigenous people of the North American continent. It is shameful that a nation built on free beliefs and religion could have tried their hardest to keep Native Americans from teaching and showing their ancestries about the culture. From outlawing ceremonies to requiring children to attend public schools, we have weeded out much of the knowledge of the wonderful land before the settlers.
It is because of this, the severity of the mass epidemic that killed most of the people on the continent will never be recovered and Native Americans will shun out everyone from their culture but themselves, a terrible fate for a once peaceful community.

Butterfly Lessons

"as the climate of the continent had changed, life had rearranged itself." -Elizabeth Kolber

Our earth has been through many different climate changes since the dinosaur age came to an end; each one seems to affect the animals and plants in the same way each time. As observed in the article "Butterfly Lessons", insect's patterns in particular are the easiest to either trace the flight patterns or in a mosquito's case when it goes dormant for the winter.

She also presents the idea that we live in a very different world than we did 20,000 years ago and now things like non-native species being introduced is very common and hazardous to the ecosystems around us.

Learning from animals

Our problems with predicting natural disasters and climate change could all be solved if we just paid more attention to the animals.

A bold statement but one that has been observed true multiple times.
Elephants started charging inland before the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia; birds go quite before an earthquake happens in San Francisco; butterflies migrate patterns change as the planet warms and cools.
Every time something happens like this however, humans decided they need better technology to predict things like this, when really all they would have to do is pay attention. People who are lazy need technology. People who are wise listen to the world around them. If plants and animals are so inferior to the human race as many say, how can they have knowledge of these disasters before even our best technology?

Why not spend more effort looking and learning from the environment than destroying it in our attempt to recreate it?