I think I’ve contributed to SGC only to a small degree. Back in freshman year when we didn’t have field trips I told myself I would be going to field trips sophomore year (assuming that we were going to have them) so I don’t miss out on cool experiences and the ability to travel. However as sophomore year progressed I realized that I wouldn’t have the time I thought I would to be able to participate in Scholars activities outside of class. When it came to group work and small discussions in class I feel like I contributed a good amount to whatever we were working on. I talked to my peers about what the topic was, and we always managed to get the work done. In the projects we had I was pretty involved. I would do my part and bring information to the table from my own research. Sometime in my experiences as a college student so far, and a few times after that, I encountered an interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson where he was debating an interviewer named Helen Lewis on why we live in a patriarchal society in America. Helen stated that the vast majority of capital and wealth is owned by men. Jordan then went on to say that the interviewer was using a small substrata of hyper successful men to represent the structure of western society. After seeing this interview pop up in different places and watching it a few times, I began to think back to logical fallacies that we learned in class. The two that I thought of in this situation were cherry picking and hasty generalization. It can be said that the interviewer was cherry picking when choosing to talk about only things that men were “dominant” in in her argument. Jordan refuted the claims by naming things that women were doing better than men at. The generalization was using the small number of extremely rich men to say that most men own the majority of wealth and capital. An example of a news-related item I’ve encountered outside of SGC was a compilation on YouTube of Elon Musk talking about the urgency of climate change. In the speeches and interviews he talked a lot about the consequences of climate change and what we need to do to slow the rate of global warming. To the average viewer the information he provided would have been new and it was a very nice and simple explanation of the current crisis we are facing. Being in SGC, I was watching the video and hearing things I had learned about in class. An example is the processes of increased CO2 emissions and other contributors to climate change that were mentioned. I already knew some of the science behind them thanks to what I had learned in class. In the supporting course ASTR100, we learned a little about the atmosphere of the Earth, which is something we also discussed in CPSG. We learned about the layers of the atmosphere and the composition of the layers. These classes complemented each other well when it came to this topic. SGC helped prepare me for that unit of ASTR100. In the required class ENGL101, we learned about how to make a proper argument and the components that go into a good argument. In CPSG we learned about logical fallacies. CPSG helped me prepare for making my own valid arguments when it came to the argumentative essay in ENGL101. Honestly, throughout all of my semesters in SGC I didn’t really get close with any single SGC scholar. I didn’t really talk to anyone much. I feel like this is because I wasn’t as involved in the living-learning community as the rest of the Scholars. I didn’t live with or near anyone in the program, so I was never associated with any of them. Nor did I have outside classes with them. From this standpoint it is not very possible to tell whether my learning was enhanced by interacting with my fellow SGC Scholars. In class however, I do think that interacting with other students in activities such as the impacts of climate change and search for solutions projects enhanced my learning somewhat because of the information that we all brought together as a team that I wouldn’t have been able to produce alone. Over the past years I have seen a lot of media saying that global warming isn’t real and while I can’t say I fully bought into the claims, I always keep my mind open to hear new different arguments (and who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory?). Although this argument has been debunked in the past, I think that being in Scholars, especially Science and Global Change, helped solidify the concept of global warming and why it’s so important. By going through the three semesters I realized that there were a lot of flaws in the anti-climate change argument. The class had a heavy emphasis on global change, going through what it is, why it is happening, and solutions to help lessen the issue (although many are saying it is irreversible). So because of this, I think to a large degree that Scholars brought me into contact with concepts that challenged a belief I have seen before. I think my Scholars experience gave me some things that I will end up using in the future. One thing that I found interesting were the different types of logical fallacies. I speculate that these will be useful going into the future not only in my major, but just going through life in general. There are some aspects that I believe will draw upon in the future that I got from being in SGC. One is commitment. To be honest, at first I was unsure if I wanted to be a part of the program because it required extra things I had to do outside of my main focus or major. My first few months in the program I was still weary because the content didn’t seem very relevant to me. But as time went on I stayed committed to it and it turned out to be not as bad as I expected it to be. This led me to my second aspect that I will carry on which is versatility. Throughout my life I’ve never really been interested in studying science or the earth much, but being in SGC taught me that it’s okay to do other things outside of your realm of study because it could end up bringing you valuable information that you wouldn’t have learned otherwise. Learning about global change was an important thing that I will draw upon in the future when hearing news and seeing new information on the topic.