My experience in SGC is not what I expected it would be. I enjoyed learning the material of the class a lot, but I don't feel like I am going to walk away with the personal connections or experiences that I was hoping to get out of the Scholars program. To me, SGC was an interesting set of classes on climate change, but it never really went far beyond that.
One news-related item I saw outside of SGC that was about climate change that really stuck me was the hesitancy surrounding political action with regards to investing in carbon neutral energy sources. Through SGC, I learned that because of the big upfront cost associated with a lot of climate change-related adaptations that need to happen, people try to justify not making those investments with weaker arguments, not realizing that the bill just slowly starts increasing. I learned that whatever we can pay or do now will make everything cheaper in the long run, but because humans have a harder time thinking on the scale of many decades or centuries, a lot of people don't consider that in the not-too-distant future, more extreme effects incurred by not spending today will cause even more expense.
One of the parts of SGC that has enhanced my attitude about my major would be my practicum project. I am doing research in a biochemistry lab on campus, and I really enjoy my time there and the connections I have made to other undergraduates, graduate students, and professors as a part of it. However, I have a strong feeling I would have done this whether it counted for the practicum or not. It has always been an important goal of mine to participate in research as an undergraduate, and one of the reasons I chose to go to UMD was the variety and availability of research experience. However, the practicum did give me a more focused way of achieving that goal and class credit for it.
One of the classes I thought was interesting to take along with SGC colloquium was BSCI189I (I think it has a different course number now). It was a class about the biodiversity found in humans and how racial categories are not real biological distinctions. It was really cool to see how ideas we learned about like Kida's six-pack of problems contributed to the construction of racial categories using arbitrary physical traits. Another supporting course which had a connection to SGC was in my organic chemistry II lab (CHEM247). In this version of organic chemistry meant for majors, we get to design our own experiment as one of the projects, so for my group, I really wanted to pick one that had something to do with green chemistry. We bounced back between two ideas eventually landing on the depolymerization of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a commonly used and the most recycled plastic. For me, it made the project more cool to have that context from SGC of petroleum-based products like plastics. I enjoyed the classes I took as the supporting courses for SGC, but I would not say they were not any different than the courses I would have taken if I was not in Scholars.
During my time in SGC, I only really ever interacted with a couple other SGC Scholar students outside of class. Since my first two semesters were online and people stopped participating in breakout rooms very quickly after the start of the first semester, I didn't make any connections my first two semesters. My third semester, in person, I made more connections, primarily two important ones with the other chemistry majors. Knowing these two people has aided in my learning of organic chemistry since I learn better if I feel invested in classes like by having friends in the class. One of them was also a part of my lab group which did the PET depolymerization. I have made other connections to other current and past Scholars in different programs, but the connections I made with them also revolve around chemistry and not Scholars. I think being online those first two semesters when everyone is supposed to get to know each other hindered my ability to get to know people in my Scholars cohort that I would only be connected to through Scholars. For me, Scholars hasn't felt like a living-learning community since I never lived with and only had one semester of learning with other SGC Scholars. In other words, my learning for most of my classes was not impacted (good or bad) by my connections to other SGC Scholars.
In the classroom, I contributed to SGC through being a very active member of group projects or small group Colloquium discussions all the semesters I have been in SGC. I was usually the only other person in a breakout room during the online semesters to actually speak. Outside of the classroom, I don't think I have really contributed to SGC. One of the reasons I didn't contribute outside of the classroom was because there weren't those opportunities during the online semesters. Another reason would be I don't feel a connection to SGC more than any other class, so I don't usually think about or participate in activities outside of it. I think I feel this way because I never felt a part of the Scholars or SGC community, so I never had a reason to contribute outside of the class.
I don't think Scholars really exposed me to anything that challenged any previous beliefs or opinions. One thing I learned in SGC that leads me to challenge some ideas I have are Kida's six-pack of problems. I use this to check my ideas sometimes to make sure I'm making the best judgement. One of my beliefs that has changed over the semester is individual contribution to climate change. Individuals don't have that big of an impact; it's more bigger companies and industries which I was not aware of before SGC.
SGC gave me a greater context for climate change. I now know more about the causes and solutions surrounding climate change. I also am more aware of the future impact climate change will have in the world. SGC has informed me about effects of climate change that don't look to be effects but actually are. I really don't know how much of an impact SGC has made regarding my professional life since I would have done the project I am doing for my practicum if I was in SGC or not. I think the topics I learned from SGC I will draw upon the most in the next year or two are probably the effects of climate change.
Overall, I don't think that my Scholars experience was what it was supposed to be, so I didn't get what I was expecting out of it. Obviously, it was no one's fault that the first two semesters had to be online, and I'm sure that I didn't do as much as I could to reach out to other SGC Scholars outside of class. However, one of the big draws for Scholars was it is supposed to make the big university feel smaller, but for me it never had that effect which is really disappointing.
