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The fundamental basis of my experience in SGC has been grounded in a critical approach to the world. I, as I imagine most others did, came into the program well aware of climate change as a pressing issue and wishing to find how to help address it. To that end, a critical analysis of ideas, especially those affecting climate, was important for me even before entering the program. SGC helped me not to develop critical thinking abilities or guide those towards useful pursuits, but rather to expand my critical view to a greater scope, and seriously consider matters not previously of great concern. Through repeated analyses of how important the public’s perception of science was, whether it was through Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Dr. Holtz’s discussion of what fuels climate denialism, or Dr. Merck’s mad scientist lecture, I was thoroughly challenged throughout the program to consider the role of science in society, independent of technology. I’d always been interested in science and technology when I was younger, but had generally viewed the discipline’s value only through the lens of what was created. What the value of an invention was, how important a discovery was. Previously, I had neglected concerns over public trust in science, that the world was slipping away from logical reasoning, personally just concerning myself with the correctness of science. But a closer analysis, both of how science was perceived and of what science really is (hypothetico-deductive method), made more apparent to me the importance of science communication; of insuring the public understands what scientific knowledge can mean in their own lives, so we may live in a more effective world. Not only was my uncritical view of science’s societal role challenged through my experience with SGC, but also my uncritical view of the individual. Coming into college, I had been greatly concerned with the value of individuals in doing good in the world. Over whether some action or decision was a positive or negative effect on the greater world. But despite my honest concern, I hadn’t critically considered what it actually meant to do good in the world. As part of completing a set of discussion questions during the third semester, I read Stokes’ A Field Guide to Change, an essay recounting her journey in climate activism and her view on individual action in climate change reform. What resonated with me the piece’s fundamental message, that small choices in individual lives do not affect greater change, that only focused action meant to remedy societal ills had impact. On climate change, this is the observation that driving an electric car and having a vegan diet are basically worthless attempts to address climate change on their own. Living in a world built to emit, simply choosing to emit less does nothing. After all, climate change would still be a problem of near identical scope if you died tomorrow, and stopped all emissions. Value in individual action rather, comes from trying to remedy our broken societal systems that serve to make individual actions unsustainable, fighting to have our electricity be renewable, have our buildings be efficient, have our food be sustainable. Without real focused effort, the only thing individual “action” to right societal wrongs does is make us feel better about ourselves. This critical analysis of individual responsibility and impact resonated with me, and motivated me to try and envision how I as an individual could really make a positive impact moving forward into my life. That line of thinking led me back to one of my personal passions, agriculture.

Long before stepping foot on a university campus, I’d already been enamored with agriculture. As a child, I grew up around massive corn fields, gazing at them out the car window, and my appreciation had only grown as I aged and started connecting those farms to the food that sustained me and my family. So it was natural for me to take some agriculture classes when I came to university, it was a point of interest for me, and would fulfill course requirements for SGC. The first of these courses I took was AREC 365 in my first semester, a class focused on the food system as it related to hunger in developing nations. Immediately this class challenged me to critically consider agriculture from a new perspective, to focus on the socio-economic systems that control our food rather than the technologies we rely on to produce it. To consider why previous attempts to feed the unfed via obvious methods, like shipping trucks full of food funded through charity money, had failed and would continue to fail the people they aimed to benefit. Having this experience, especially early in my college experience, helped to expand my viewpoint of issues to a greater scope, considering the many factors within society that created and affected challenges in our modern world. Another of these agriculture classes, AREC 210, hit much closer to home, challenging me to critically analyze agricultural technologies as a connected system, rather than in pieces. Instead of considering the benefits of an organic farming system vs an industrial farming system, the professor immediately opened class by explaining the benefits of industrial farming, and refuting the idea that we needed to grow all our food organically, or that we needed to cut wheat and soy production in favor of vegetable production, incorporating confounding systematic factors I once overlooked or was blind to, like the effective cost of organic farming passed onto consumers, and the relative arability of much of the agricultural land we blindly label as “fertile”. This class, more than any other I’ve taken, got me to begin critically analyzing my own beliefs on matters I cared about, and fueled my interest in agricultural technology, the main focus of the class. These classes brought out a more productive and critical approach to my interest in agriculture within me, peaking my interest to the point of now using Agricultural Resource Economics (AREC) classes to fulfill my upper level concentration for my CS major, and I likely wouldn’t have taken these without them fulfilling SGC requirements. While not a driving force in creating my internal critical focus on agriculture and the food system as societal priorities, I also greatly appreciated discussion of agricultural issues as it related to the environment in SGC. In particular, Dr. Merck’s discussion of monocropping’s danger as it relates to the societal value of biodiversity for future innovation changed my view on environmental protection dramatically. Prior to being in SGC, my view on environmental protection was that while saving wild species might make us feel good, the only environment that needed to be protected pragmatically speaking was that which we regularly extracted vital resources from (forests, farmland, ocean fish populations, etc.). Viewing biodiversity as a human asset for innovation, through the protection of niche species useful for future innovations, like in medicine, changed that view completely, giving a fully pragmatic reason to protect even small environmental pockets. While not as impactful for me as my scholarly experiences with agriculture and the food system, that instruction affected my personal viewpoints tremendously, in a way I view as overtly positive.

Personally, while I do think that having connections on campus is important, one of my main focuses while at college has been keeping connected with my friends and family from back home. I spend a good deal of time talking with old friends online, and make sure to call my family at least once a week. Its small things really, but they keep college feeling friendly and familiar, and their connections with me are honestly more important for me than those I form in college (even if I probably shouldn’t say that). Moving on in life doesn’t have to mean leaving people behind, and that’s been a great comfort for me this first year of college.

SGC for me was a primarily academic subsidiary to my primary college education of computer science. While I did derive some personal value from the program, most notably by having something immediately in common with my randomly assigned first-year roommate, it was mostly not an interpersonal experience for me. My value given back to the program can be measured by how many times I attended colloquium and participated in small group discussions. Rather my experience with SGC was valuable for me because it led to me to take a more critical view of issues important to me of science, climate change, the food system, etc. More generally, SGC helped me to critically think about societal problems in general, and the role of the individual in addressing these. That new perspective has helped me to have more meaningful and fulfilling conversations with others, particularly with one of my friends studying economics who has a new idea for how to reinvent society every other week, and has helped me to find more focus in my desire to be a societal good. Through my exposures to the agricultural system resulting from my enrollment in SGC, I’ve developed a personal desire to be involved in preparing the food system for a difficult future, threatened by climate change while contending with a growing population. I don’t know what the future will really bring, but SGC has helped me realize I’d like to use my computer science skills to work in agricultural technologies, and I’m thankful for the role the program has played in helping me settle on an exciting path forwards. Feeling I might have a way to make the world better for the people I love (and those I don’t know) has resulted from taking a more critical view of the things important to me, and has been my most valuable takeaway from SGC.