Throughout my three semesters in SGC, I learned so much about climate change, how it was caused, solutions we can use to tackle it, and much more. However, most importantly especially for my future life in the STEM field, I learned the hypothetico-deductive method and how it can be applied to so many scenarios in my life, inside and outside of the classroom.
In class, I surprisingly find myself using key components of the hypothetico-deductive method all the time. In many of my computer engineering classes, I have coding projects where I use that process all the time. In my signal analysis class, we have many coding projects using MATLAB where we are tasked with trying to code something to complete a specific goal. Throughout that entire process, the hypothetico-deductive method is paramount. Any coder finds themselves going through the process to observe the problem, formulate ways to solve that problem, implement the solution and test to see if it actually works. These methods are the same ones we learned in SGC and not only are they extremely important in many of my other classes, but also in my life as I take in loads of information and must decide what is true and what claims could be misleading.
Throughout high school, I was on the speech and debate team where I found a real passion for current events and learning what is going on around the world. I read the news often and am no stranger to how media outlets specifically word certain headlines or use logical fallacies to try to make a claim that is not necessarily true. SGC has taught me to really analyze what writers are saying and see if their main thesis is backed up by facts and logic. To me, the 2020 Presidential Election was the perfect example of where the hypothetico-deductive method was especially useful when reading the news. There were hundreds of news articles covering the two presidential candidates and both sides had media outlets that would put out very biased articles. I had to use the hypothetico-deductive method in order to see what claims they were making were actually true and what claims were only supported by rhetoric and opinions.
To me, the aspect of college that I had no idea what to expect was the social aspect of being at a University. I decided to stay on campus in Centreville hall and I enjoyed that. I made a lot of friends in my scholars program and in other programs as well. As a high schooler thinking about college, I thought that college, especially a large school like UMD, would be a somewhat overwhelming place because there are so many people. Thankfully, because I stayed in Centreville, I felt like I had a smaller community within the massive school that is UMD, even at a limited capacity because of current circumstances.
TThe SGC program was also very helpful for me to grow as a person in college. Going into college my freshman year, many people told me that the scholars program was great to take an interesting class and learn something new, but what kept people invested in scholars were the people that they met along the way. I had the opportunity to live amongst many people in my scholars program and they are still my closest friends today. Because we are all in STEM fields and take similar classes we can help each other with homework and work and collaborate together to help each other learn. However, what is most interesting to me is that my friends and I in SGC are able to have interesting discussions about current events or things we read or saw online and we are able to talk about our beliefs about those subjects, no matter how controversial, using the concepts we learned in class. SGC has helped me in so many ways, making connections with so many people and learning content that is interesting to discuss.
A core value that SGC has had is to challenge our initially held beliefs. And although many of my beliefs about climate change were not really challenged as I had learned about climate change in a few classes throughout high school and middle school, however SGC has enabled me to challenge my beliefs elsewhere. Since taking SGC, I find myself questioning many media personalities that I used to enjoy watching because many arguments they make are not necessarily backed up with real evidence. SGC has forced me to rethink where I get my information from and how much to trust that information.
As I go forward in my academic career, I want to be able to make contributions to the scientific community. In my practicum project I’ll be using the hypothetico-deductive method as I try to design a wearable bioimpedance monitor. However, I believe that SGC has given me the tools to be able to make a significant impact on my community.