Personally, I see others using different types of logical fallacies all of the time in college. One of the biggest ones I see prevalent is the bandwagon fallacy. The bandwagon fallacy states that if many people agree on the same point, it must be true. But, this is not always the case. This is seen in my life all of the time either in school or out of school. For example, in a group project I had for my geology class, we had to research an earthquake and reevaluate the wikipedia page based on new information that we obtained. We choose to update the information about the 1886 Charleston earthquake. In my research, along with my other group members, we noticed that the sources we found said there was not a lot of damage after the earthquake, which did not make sense to us. So, after doing further investigation, we found that there was a ton of aftershocks and a lot of damage. Because there were not many photos and documentation of the earthquake at the time, individuals brushed it off. We were able to go past this and dig deeper into the information. Another example of this in my everyday life is with my fraternity. I belong to a social fraternity on campus here at the university. We are having a lot of problems now with the nationals of our fraternity and the individuals that run the house. There has been no one in the past that has questioned their intentions because that's “how it was always done”. Now that we are currently living in the house, me and my immediate friends are working to fix the issues that have been going on for several years now.
My next topic goes under several of the topics I had to choose from. So, for background, I have a beach house down the Jersey shore and I noticed that since covid began, the oceans seemed to be much cleaner. Usually the water is extremely murky, and there is trash in swimming areas. Recently, the oceans have been very clean, in that you can see your own feet and even wildlife passing by. But, in reality, pollution has increased because of covid. One article that caught my attention, by Scientific American, stated that Covid has put a big lock on different garbage centers so the oceans have become more polluted as a result. Also, as more plastic masks and gloves production increased, the plastic was being found in the oceans as a result. This made me question all that I know because I thought the water was getting much cleaner, but in reality, it was worsening.
Two classes that are SGC requirements or supporting courses that also support my thesis were English 101, which I took my second semester, and Geology 200 that I took this semester. In my English class, I chose many topics to talk about that were involved with global change. One of my preliminary papers was on why global warming is a bigger threat to the human race than covid. I was able to reference many of the SGC lectures to help me with writing this paper. In my geology class, I learned about how natural disasters can be caused by humans, like by fracking, which can cause the global temperature to rise drastically.
Well firstly, the living learning community allowed me to meet others that have similar interests to myself coming to such a big school. SGC helped me make friendships in the first couple of weeks of school, when I was coming to a big school where I did not know anyone here. I would constantly hang out with some other members and do work together. I also was able to meet some individuals that I have other classes in. One example of this is that there is a member in SGC that is in my organic chemistry 2 class. We have discussion class right before SGC and we walk over together. This provided a great resource for myself to ask the person questions in either class if I ever needed help.
It was exceptionally hard to personally contribute to SGC in some field trip aspects because of covid. So with that, I tried my best to participate as frequently as possible in class discussions and other opportunities that were organized by SGC. I think my favorite project so far this year was the one we did in class a couple of weeks ago. That two week assignment allowed us all to branch out and consume the role of our countries. I tried my best in this assignment to talk to all the different groups to see what they had to offer and what I could help them with as well. As a relatively smaller country, we aimed to team up with some of the bigger ones so that they would help us with international relations while we were able to offer them natural resources, which they lacked.
Personally, I come from an extremely Irish- Catholic family, and I attend catholic highschool. Many of our beliefs are in Adam and Eve as the origin story of the earth. If you are unaware, scripture states that God created the earth in 6 days, and rested on the seventh. God put Adam, Eve, and a serpent on the earth and they lived in peace. Once Eve listened to the temptations of the serpent and took a bite from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden. Still, some of my relatives believe in this but I questioned this story heavily. Knowing what I know about evolution from SGC lectures and biology classes, I know we all evolved from a single celled organism. It is hard to question something that I have been told since birth, especially when some of my relatives still believe in this origin story. It was also interesting because scholars also connected me with others in different religions that I did not know anything about. I was able to talk to some others about their stories and their specific holidays and beliefs. Surprisingly, we had many of the same morals and beliefs. By meeting more and more people, this broadened my horizons and understanding of others backgrounds. To be honest, where I grew up, there were many individuals who came from wealthy backgrounds and had no idea how the real world works. Personally, I do not like this, in that my parents worked very hard to get where they are today. But, as I go home and see some of those people back home, I try to tell them stories about individuals that are not as lucky as them, to try to show them how big and crazy this world is.
The knowledge I gained from SGC as a whole, I would not trade for anything. My biggest takeaway from this program as a whole is that the human race is doing a terrible job at protecting the environment and that if we continue on this path, we may not exist anymore (which is very grim). In my further career as an undergraduate, I plan on joining different clubs and organizations that aim to raise awareness on the harmful effects of pollution and how we can take action to reduce global warming. Personally, my S4S project was about regenerative and conservative agriculture. I believe that these forms of agriculture can be implemented in today's society that can drastically lower global carbon emissions. In my professional career, I plan on pursuing a career in the medical field. Still, I am not certain exactly what focus I want to pursue but I want to do something that can allow me to spend time trying to find different solutions to reduce plastic and garbage from hospital systems. As I go into the field and see day to day operations, this will allow me to brainstorm new, creative ways to attack issues that have been around for a long time. I actually have brainstormed some ideas for a new type of reusable, or biodegradable paper that doctors use for patients to sit on during examinations (also comfortable). Also, this summer I spent a good amount of time in the operating room. I saw firsthand the amount of plastic waste used during surgeries and I plan on experimenting with different materials to find ways that plastics can be either reused or recycled.
I wanted to also thank Dr. Holtz, Dr. Merck, and the teaching assistants for creating such a fun way at learning all this information. I will recommend SGC to anyone that is considering it. Personally, when signing up for scholars and putting my top three choices, SGC was the third on my list. I thought I was not going to be placed in it but I am so happy that I was. The information and connections I made in this class will last for the rest of my life so I wanted to thank everyone.