Being in the Science and Global Change program has adjusted the way I think about information I take in on my day to day, and how I think about many things on a larger scale. Through what I have learned throughout the past three semesters in the SGC colloquia, I am able to connect things I encounter outside of the classroom to concepts taught in SGC. The importance of data collection and analysis has further driven my desire to pursue a career in computer science. Furthermore, when I come across climate change in the news, I am well versed in the subject to the point where I feel I have an adequate understanding of the topics being discussed.
My approach towards my major of computer science, and what I’m interested in working on throughout my career has shifted as a result of SGC. Throughout the colloquia, and during independent investigation outside of class, I have seen several climate models generated by computer programs. I have been intrigued by the idea of being able to write programs which can account for a multitude of factors, and produce output, providing information about things such as the intensity of extreme weather events resulting from climate change, or modeling the expected rise in global temperature over a specified period of time. In my first semester at UMD I took GEOL200, where I had seen examples of modeling produced by programs written in Java, a language I was learning at the same time in CMSC131 and 132. These programs were used to model seismic activity resulting from volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and the same tactics can be applied to programs aimed at predicting extreme weather events. This interest was further strengthened after talking to a student who had previously been in SGC. He told me about an internship he did where he used programs to analyze the efficiency of certain transportation such as subway trains, so fuel conservation could be utilized, creating lowered emissions. The idea of being able to write and use programs to predict almost anything– weather events, economic fluxes resulting from climate change, etc– is captivating and has created a stronger drive to learn about computer science.
Another way topics from SGC have shown up outside of school have been in conducting research into ticks after a friend contracted lyme disease last summer. This summer my friends and I spent most of our summer hiking trails and swimming in the mountains nearby where we lived. In August a friend developed a rash and soon discovered that he had been bitten by a tick and contracted lyme disease. Shortly following this, I looked further into cases of lyme disease and found news articles reporting increased cases of lyme disease, even in places such as Canada where ticks apparently hadn’t been a large issue before. After more research I discovered that rising cases in northern latitudes of lyme disease, malaria, and even worsening allergies were being attributed to climate change and increasing temperatures, allowing ticks and mosquitoes to inhabit places further north. This discovery aligned with ideas that already existed in my head because we had discussed in colloquium similar concepts, like how rising temperatures cause a shift in where agriculture is most effective. Although I had previously thought about how warming temperatures can cause animal species to have to move habitat, I hadn’t considered that it could also have an effect on human health, that diseases could spread differently or over a larger area as a result of climate change.
Over the past three semesters I had not been especially involved with the program outside of class, but I still feel that I was able to contribute to the program throughout the past three semesters through my participation in group projects, discussions in class, and especially on service day. I hadn’t known about service day until the night before, and initially dreaded the affair because I would have to wake up early and do manual labor. This anxiety was overturned after the experience began because of the way it immediately connected me with others in the program who I’d made friends with and later discovered lived on the same floor as I. In addition to how connecting service day was, I also felt much delight at the fact that we were helping others, to clean a public park and help create new trails. Service day was my favorite experience in SGC and started my college experience off with a feeling of helping the community.
Being in Scholars caused me to reevaluate some beliefs I had that had been formed as a result of logical fallacies, and challenged how I had previously thought of climate change as a whole before beginning the program. Some ideas I believed were formed by one or two instances of them working in my favor, for example, during finals last fall I had waited until the last minute to study for a few of my finals, cramming all of the studying into the two days before the exams. I ended up receiving high scores on both my finals, and believed that this form of studying is what worked best for me. Later on in the spring semester, I had studied the same way for one or two midterms and received poor scores on them, prompting me to reevaluate my studying habits, when I realized my notion that crammed studying being efficient was a result of a logical fallacy, where I took one example of something working out in my favor, and taking it as the truth. Additionally, in high school I had touched on climate change in some classes such as AP Biology, but my understanding of climate change was minimal and flawed. I thought the only issues that would result from climate change would be hotter summers, more extreme weather, and animals being forced to migrate north. I had never done any further research and climate change wasn’t something that I was very hung up about. Through the past three semesters in SGC, however, my knowledge of climate change has been exceptionally expanded. I have learned what climate change means, how it has taken form on a geological scale, and how humans have been causing significant changes in the climate over the past century or two.
I think that scholars will inform my future either through the work that I do, or the means through which I live my life. I hope that at some point I work directly with climate data through computer science so I can develop programs that model the effects of climate change. If the work I do doesn’t involve climate change, I will at least be able to make informed decisions about the amenities I use. I’ll aim to use public transportation, or drive an electric vehicle if it is necessary. I have already begun to use cold water in laundry and during showers. I also want one day to have a composting bin where I live to prevent organic waste, and to live in a building powered by renewable energy such as solar or wind.