In Review
As the title suggests, the following essay will serve as a reflection over my three-semester course for my Science and Global Change program over the past year. I will be discussing the main points of the program that influenced my understanding of myself and the global crisis. Secondly, I will give a brief on how my participation in the community has influenced my learning. And lastly, I will attempt to explain how my Scholars experience may be brought with me in my future as an undergraduate and professional career.
During our time in SGC, we are encouraged to follow up on current news and media around climate change to connect it with our understanding of the course. An excursion experience I participated in during my first semester of SGC was a lecture from a Danish politician. He shared his previous work in his country along with his goal to unite western countries in his mission. One of the points that struck me during the lecture was the sense of urgency of the problem imposed by leaders and the scientific community. It was somewhere along the lines where we were given ten years to make ambitious changes before we face the realities of climate change catastrophes in our lifetime. I remember feeling alert about the message because it was new to my understanding of the issue. The feeling of urgency motivated me to bring my attention into the subject matter the following semester.
Taking a glance back at all our SGC activities in-person and virtually, there are parts of the curriculum that I found helpful in deciding my major as well as parts that pushed me against pursuing the Sciences. Graduating from a technical high school, I thought I would find interest in the STEM field and in research. However, it seems I find myself pursuing something more that fits me that had not stemmed from high school. It was neither an assignment nor topic, but the practice of research in STEM that seemed daunting to me despite me never trying it. I may not have experienced research in stem as of yet, but basing it off of the stem culture in SGC and discussions with friends in the stem field, I know it is not something I want to pursue for myself. On the other hand, what the courses have implied to me instead is my desire to focus on the pathway to design.
Participation in the Program
As part of our SGC program, students are required to fit three STEM courses within their first three semesters as supporting classes. Along those courses I took were subjects in Physical Sciences and Mathematics. With my Physics class, I took into practice the hyptothetico-deductive method performed in our labs. I also applied what I learned in Calculus to Physics and wrote our reports around our experiments. In essence, the main thing I took from my supporting courses was having the fundamental experience practicing STEM. The courses helped me understand how to communicate with science using math around the topic of Physics.
Another part essential to the Scholars SGC program is our sense of community. The program groups students in SGC together by placing us in a single dorm hall to encourage bonding and shared experiences. My experiences dorming were limited only to my first semester due to changes in personal situations. In addition, our second semester, along with everyone else was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. I would say dorming with the same classmates while given the chance helped create connections considering our large student body in UMD. I also made friends along the way during classes, pre and post COVID. One thing to note despite my involvement with other SGC students was that I did not feel entirely connected due to the fact that almost everyone were Engineering or STEM majors while I majored in Architecture. Thus, I would not consider my student life in scholars a major influence in my daily activities. On the broad view, I would say befriending others in SGC helped with few learning assignments such as basic coding to upload our portfolios, but was only limited to such an extent.
During the second and third semesters of the program, I found myself becoming more interested in the subjects of the curriculum. Since I do not feel too comfortable speaking up in front of crowds, I felt more comfort participating during our virtual learning. Therefore, I saw myself making more effort sharing my opinions during our virtual classes as a way of contributing to SGC.
One thing we take to value in our time in SGC is to learn how to think scientifically. In our first semester, we learned some ways we fault in argument-making and ways we take for granted the way we think. The manner in which we reconfigured our thought processes was a new way of learning for me. I appreciate reading and reflecting on the book, “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” by Thomas Kida because I was able to learn something new, or rather realize something already happening and be critical about myself. The logical fallacies we learned was also the first encounter in the subject. Though it seems complicated at first, I soon made connections with it to past instances with myself making faulty arguments.
Final Thoughts
To close, I would like to bring in mind the main lessons I learned in SGC, hopefully to be brought with me in future endeavors. First and foremost, to bring in expectations prior to my attending the program, I accepted being in Scholars to select Science and Global Change because I had hopes of learning more about our global Climate Crisis and seeing if I became more interested in the Sciences. Now I have a sense of accomplishment in my general education of climate change effects and how we should perceive it morally. I found out that I take the climate issue more on the lens of an activist rather than a scientist. What I mean by it is that with my limited knowledge of the sciences, I want to use my abilities to translate the science I learn in the course and create a message more identifiable for the public. In terms of the lessons I learned in scientific thinking, I hope to continue learning and reflecting the ways I misperceive the world. I hope to bring lessons I learned from Kida’s 6 Basic Mistakes and the lessons from our faulty logic in argument-making. Lastly, the small things that sometimes slip under our noses, but are things I fully appreciate are the relationships and connections we make with people in the community. I wish to someday encounter an SGC alum or friend who had similar experiences as mine, in which we can both create something unexpected from our connection.