Michael Moore

Being a Science and Global Change scholar these past three semesters has been by far one of the most rewarding experiences of college thus far. Not only did I learn much about the world and how it is changing for the worse, but I also got to participate in some truly awesome activities along the way. I will be totally honest: I initially only chose to be in SGC because it was the only program who’s colloquium time did not conflict with my schedule first semester freshman year, and I guaranteed that I would be living in an air conditioned dorm. Perhaps not the best rationale when it came to choosing the program I would be in for the next two years, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had little to no experience with environmental science in high school, and, quite frankly, had only a little beyond the bare minimum of science class credits. Needless to say, my background didn’t quite fit the description of the program I would soon be entering.

Prior to college, I tried to stay as far away from politics as possible. I wasn’t reading much news; the extent of my exposure to the day’s events was whatever I happened to see on the front page of Reddit. After the lecture on logical fallacies, however, that changed. I began scrutinizing every bit of political news I saw. I actively sought out remarks made by politicians on the world’s issues (not to mention each other), and criticized them. I went as far as looking up the President’s Twitter account at least once a week, and just bashing the garbage that is put out in his tweets (and I’m not even on Twitter!). In particular, the President’s remarks about climate change irked me. “It snowed over 4 inches this past weekend in New York City. It is still October. So much for Global Warming.” – Donald J. Trump on Twitter, everyone. I won’t begin to lay into him for saying things like this, among many others. But my point holds true; SGC opened my eyes to the nonsense that these politicians say about climate change, and only made me dislike them more.

As far as my major is concerned, the most applicable lecture of SGC was, obviously, the lecture on HTML. My major is computer engineering, which focuses mainly on low-level programming languages and hardware design. There are no web development courses included in my major, but that is a topic that I am interested. Coincidentally, I was taking CMSC122 fall semester of freshman year, which is a course about web development in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I only took the course because I wasn’t able to fit the first computer science course of my major into my schedule. By the time we had got to the HTML lecture in SGC, I already had a good grasp of the concepts of web programming, but I hadn’t really applied any of it to something concrete. Creating the portfolio changed this, as it was a continuous project that I would be growing throughout my first two years of college, and possibly beyond. So, while the content in that lecture wasn’t exactly SGC-related, it was definitely the most useful for my major.

One of my supporting courses was CHEM135, Chemistry for Engineers. One of the topics in the course was carbon dating, which conveniently was taught briefly in SGC freshman year. While the information provided in SGC was very general and broad, I at least knew how it worked and what the purpose of it was, so when I got to the that portion of the course, I just had to apply it with the calculations.

My experience in the SGC program was definitely made better by others. I’ll be the first to admit that I am not the most voluntarily social person, but the Newhagens definitely made the experience better. We did nearly every group project together, and the results were always spectacular. In addition, it was super convenient to have someone to ask when something is due, or whether or not there was a quiz on that particular day…sometimes twenty minutes before colloquium.

While they weren’t really challenging any of my beliefs, I found the more philosophical and ethical lectures to be most interesting in shaping my opinions. Don’t get me wrong, all of the content directly relating to science and global change is definitely interesting, but it was the more abstract lectures that were really thought provoking. For example, the last few lectures of third semester were, in my opinion, really intriguing. In addition, the whole series of lectures on pseudoscience were cool as well. Despite my major, I really enjoy deep thinking and topics that are not so concrete. These abstract lectures in particular only amplified this interest and made me want to explore more about the social dynamics and ethicality of the science community. People often overlook these aspects of science and tend to focus only on the core material itself. The University is notorious for doing so in most of the classes I have been in thus far. SGC, however, was the opposite. It was just the right ratio of technical content to the abstract, and if I’m being honest, it was the abstract lectures that held were the best at holding my attention.

Now comes my contribution to the SGC community. This is certainly where I am lacking. Of course, I always made sure to do a field trip or equivalent each semester, and always participated in group work both during and outside of colloquium. Beyond that, however, I didn’t do much else. I never went to any of the Scholars in Action events, and didn’t go to a single one of the special holiday events, like the ones that happened around Halloween. I didn’t attend either of the Scholars Block Parties. Was this by choice? Absolutely. To me, it always seemed like I had something better that I could be doing, something infinitely more productive. That’s just how I am – a workaholic. Do I regret never doing any of these things? Certainly, but only after the fact. Missing out always seemed like a great decision at the time. I definitely should have participated more, as I probably would have got a lot more out of the program had I done so.

So that’s it. My Three Semester Review. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in SGC. I know that I should have participated more, but I learned a lot from what I did do. I am convinced that SGC is the best program an incoming scholar can be a part of, not just for the professors, peers, and content, but for the experience as a whole. It is truly a great way to spend your first two years of college.