I have the chance to employ the hypothetico-deductive method on a regular basis through coding. Just one of the many ways that these past 3 semesters have had an impact on my college experience and whole life. Through this essay I will talk about the experiences that I have had throughout the first part of my college career in and out of College Park Scholars.
I employ the hypothetico-deductive kind of thinking most often during “debugging” of class projects, where we are forced to make inferences about what is wrong with our programs. We then change our code and test it again to observe the outcome. This is repeated over and over until the desired outcome is achieved. While most scientific reasoning does not have the desired outcome I am still able to employ the testing of different hypotheses to find out what the error in my program was and eliminate it. SGC has given me the foundation for exploring discoveries that I am able to use and repeat often. Each time I go through this process I make a hypothesis on what I think the bug is, I test my changed code based on my hypothesis and I make new observations on the outcome. This rinse and repeat method is something seen throughout science including many of our SGC classes.
SGC has also affected the way that I see some news headlines. I remember seeing the news about the most recent IPCC climate report that described the realities of climate change for our earth. The UN Climate Change Instagram made a post describing 5 key takeaways from the report with many basic facts about climate change. It was interesting to see how these basic facts that I learned in my first SGC semester, and that have been known for decades, are still unknown or ignored by much of the world. Through class, we have covered misinformation and seen how people can lose trust in science through various paths, but I personally still find it astounding that people have not yet decided to take action towards saving the planet.
The College Park Scholars have opened up an amazing world for me in college. In my freshman year dorms I was able to meet people from our program and I made lasting friendships with the people on my floor. The people I met last year are the people that I live with, go to class with and spend my time with this year as well. The opportunities that scholars gave me have allowed me to meet new people and gave me an opening to like-minded people who I could confidently and happily work with.
Scholars, overall, did not challenge many of my beliefs that I had prior to college. I feel that I was already very climate-informed and passionate about Climate Change before going through the scholars program. SGC did, however, teach me so much about how our planet’s climate is changing and what the human population can do to save the planet and each other. SGC did affect my feelings about education in another way through my practicum. My practicum project where I taught young kids coding and game design forced me to change my way of thinking and presenting constantly to make sure that I was conveying the proper messages to my student campers.
Along with my practicum, I feel I was able to make an impact in people’s lives through personal interactions. As mentioned before, the lasting friendships that I made with fellow SGC students will forever be a part of my life and hopefully all of theirs. Scholars is a small community and it is always a pleasure to meet someone from any of the scholars programs knowing immediately that you share something important in common with that person. I feel that scholars are a very important community and I can’t wait to see how the program will change after I leave.