SGC has pushed me out of my comfort zone, primarily by requiring a practicum. Knowing I had to get this done, I spontaneously said yes to an internship offered to me that I never applied to, and started the day after the first word I heard about the opportunity. It was overwhelming and I truly would not have said yes had I not had the goal of getting the practicum done to complete the scholars program.
I was an intern for Impact Automation, a conveyor belt company in Columbia, Maryland. Here, I got to hands on cycle through the hypothetico-deductive method SGC had taught me all about. My boss had recognized that on their Singulator conveyor belt (which was used by Amazon), certain layouts of packages would fly towards each other and stack on the belt, which was not the goal. I was tasked with designing some kind of algorithm to rearrange the packages using the smaller belts to optimize the number of collisions occurring. My first step was to form an idea, or a hypothesis to start my process. I knew it had to be falsifiable and thorough based on everything I learned during our deep dive into the method during colloquium. I documented all of my thoughts and once I had decided on the general idea I thought would work, I headed over to the warehouse to experiment. I got to put physical packages on the conveyor belt for hours, testing different layouts to see which were ideal and which were collision risks. This was my data collection, and I spent the rest of my time at Impact using that to figure out how to have a computer process this data and make the correct decision. My hypothesis helped to reduce collisions, but I wasn’t convinced it was the best solution so I left my internship by giving them several options thoroughly layed out and researched.
SGC also taught me how to think critically and practice honest skepticism, which very recently I felt like I really employed unintentionally by catching someone who wasn’t critically thinking (in my opinion). One supporting course I took for the SGC program is BSCI135, Amazing Green: Plants That Transformed The World. I was assigned to watch the documentary Cowspiracy for that class, which was focused on how animal agriculture is the largest contributor to global warming worldwide. I am already a vegetarian, so I really should’ve enjoyed and agreed with the movie, but I truly didn’t like it at all. The filmmaker quickly became an unreliable narrator for me because he didn’t employ several critical thinking skills. He excessively used confirmation bias and would practically cut his interviewees off if they didn’t say exactly what he wanted to hear. He also downplayed every other aspect of global warming because he claimed that animal agriculture was the largest contributor, which even though it may be true doesn’t make fossil fuels any less of an issue. He didn’t practice parsimony and hinted that there was a huge scam between large environmental organizations like GreenPeace and the meat industry, purely based off of the fact that GreenPeace wouldn’t interview with him fo the film.
Also in that Biology class, sustainability was a large topic. For one lab this semester, we took a tour around UMD to see all of the sustainability efforts. We walked to ESJ’s green roof, the herb garden outside of STAMP, the green wall inside of STAMP, and the community garden by SPH. Not only did we learn about some of these methods like green roofs in SGC, but it was cool to see them in person and connect the climate change mitigation strategies in action at UMD. During that lab we talked a lot about the benefits of green space and plants for the environment, and it backed up everything I learned in SGC.
I also had to take ENGL101 for the SGC requirements, and in that class we read the UMD freshman book, All We Can Save. I felt more knowledgeable about the topics within the essays than my classmates, and it was cool to apply my knowledge about climate change from SGC in my analysis. I specifically remember writing about one essay about saving water in there, and it was really interesting because that wasn’t an especially huge topic we talked about during SGC. It obviously lined up really well and added to my understanding of all of the factors in climate change, and in general being in SGC made that piece of my english class much more interesting.
In terms of College Park Scholars being a living and learning community, I made and kept connections with other SGC-ers that I would probably not have made without it. Simone was in my french class in high school and we were friendly, but I doubt we would have stayed in touch if it weren’t for SGC and living on the 8th floor of Centreville freshman year. Then she became my peer mentor captain, and we continued in close contact even outside of Centreville. I’ve done every group project I could with her, and working together with people I’m familiar with makes it much easier to facilitate discussion and enhance my understanding durign projects and assignments. I also happened to join the same professional fraternity as Deena, and since we had known each other from SGC, we stuck together and got really close. The familiar faces I see in class each week became my close friends, and I’m forever grateful.
In terms of active contribution, I believe SGC forced me to be an active member of the UMD community. Not only did several of the colloquiums each semester include in class activities, but the excursions each semester made me go out of my way to learn more outside of College Park and I am now a peer mentor for the program too. That means I have a group of freshman I get to serve as a role model for and keep in touch with as they transition into life at UMD. I don’t think I would have contributed this much to life on campus had I not wanted to participate more in the Scholars community, and I’ve been able to meet more people and have fun throughout the whole process.
I’m not entirely convinced that the topics in this program really challenged my previous beliefs since I had very little knowledge about the content. I had never been super involved in the climate conversation, and instead of replacing previous beliefs I built on them. The things I’ve learned in this class have challenged some of my habits since I am now much more environmentally concious than I was before after being scared in a few of the lectures for the future of the earth.
The organization of SGC worked really well for me and helped me figure out how I like to organize my work for the semester. All of the assignments are in canvas on the first day of classes, and I’ve discovered that something that works really well for me is making a spreadsheet with every single one of my assignments during that first week. This is a practice I fully intend on keeping up for the rest of my college experience.
I am only a sophomore, but I feel that this program really helped me mature and bettered my worldview. Though it seems simple, the lessons on logical fallacies and learning about skepticism and the lack of value people tend to put on science really made me think more about the way I go about life and thinking.