My Essay:
My time as a Scholar in SGC has been very rewarding towards both my knowledge of climate change, as well as my understanding of topics discussed in colloquium, such as the scientific method and logical fallacies. The lessons I learned in SGC impacted me greatly outside the classroom, and will continue doing so for the rest of my college career and beyond.
As a computer science major, a topic of SGC, the impacts of climate change, positively affected my opinions of my major. When I applied for SGC, I did so largely because of my interest towards environmental issues and reform, and not to really benefit me in any areas of computer science. However, when I was looking for lab research opportunities with a professor during the fall, I managed to get one with Dr. Ohadi, who works for the CEEE and MechE departments at UMD. The research topic I had to do was using machine learning to make buildings more energy efficient, which makes great use of both SGC material and material I've learned in my CS classes. Before we really dove into the energy consumption of buildings, we first discussed the huge concern of climate change and why it's important to save energy in the first place. During this phase, many concepts of climate change that I've learned in SGC were mentioned again, such as the monthly and yearly trends of CO2 emissions, possible solutions, the various levels of warming, ect. In fact, my first task was to research and present the impacts of 1.5C of warming vs 2C of warming, which was literally discussed in SGC. After this, we transitioned to using machine learning to optimize a building's energy consumption, which makes use of my computer science background and classes I've taken, such as probability distributions from STAT400, matrices from MATH240 and MATH401, and scripting from CMSC330. Ultimately, this really showed me how climate change and computer science can be used together, which was a very enlightening experience.
Another topic of SGC, the misinterpretation of scientific material, was something I've encountered outside of colloquium. One part of this misinterpretation is not realizing that relatively-conclusive results in science are from countless studies and papers which support such a result, and not just one or two, for instance. In other words, although there may be one study which gives some conclusion, it doesn't mean that it's completely correct with regards to science if numerous other studies give an entirely different conclusion. Likewise, even though newer studies may be better than older ones, those older ones should still be valued, especially if they're not outdated or any of the sorts. There's been many instances where a newly-released study contradicts the beliefs of the scientific community on a certain topic, and as a result a bunch of people start siding with it and going against science just from that one study, when there have been countless other studies in the past which goes against it. Just to name a few examples which come to mind, the benefits of keto, and masking during COVID-19. What I've learned in SGC about the process of science has helped me identify such flaws and understand how to properly interpret science. Apart from this, there's another interesting situation I've encountered where science was misinterpreted. During the early stages of the pandemic when we didn't know much about how the virus transmits, the WHO released a study which concluded that people who have COVID and are asymptomatic have a very low probability of transmitting the virus. This statement caused a surge of controversy, with numerous articles and talk shows reporting about it, because people thought the lockdown was happening since we didn’t want asymptomatic people to transmit it to others. However, it was actually a miscommunication of information from the researchers at the WHO to the general public. To us, "asymptomatic" means "not showing symptoms yet but will later," while to scientific researchers it means "not showing symptoms and will never show symptoms." Instead, our version of "asymptomatic" means "pre-symptomatic" to researchers. After this incident, the WHO quickly corrected its statement. Although the public didn't really misuse scientific information in this case, it shows the importance of correct scientific communication and what could happen if it's incorrect.
I've definitely met very like-minded, driven peers in SGC and have had great interactions with. As a result, I really enjoyed the two presentations we did over the semester (climate change problems and climate change solutions), and the breakout room activities, the most notable being the one with the different nations and such. One limiting factor in my opinion is that the entirety of the first two semesters were online, which really hindered the ability to connect with new people through field trips and other various activities, because freshman year is arguably the best year in college to meet new people. However, given the circumstances, I'm definitely happy with the people I've met and connected with in SGC.
As I mentioned previously, because the first two semesters were online, lots of field trip opportunities were lost, so therefore I personally didn't go on any field trips during SGC. However, field trips are only one part of contribution, and I think I've participated actively during colloquium discussions. In addition, I'm very excited to present the research I've done for the Scholars Academic Showcase next semester, and I think many people would love to hear what I've learned.
One belief I've had which SGC caused me to reconsider is how computer science relates to climate change and environmental energy. I've already mentioned this when I was discussing my lab research, but it was definitely very eye-opening for me. Instead of thinking that computer science and climate change have basically in common, I now know and have worked on something where computer science is crucial for climate change, which is using machine learning to optimize the energy usage of buildings.
SGC has taught me many concepts that I likely never would've understood otherwise, the biggest one being the misunderstandings of science and how to avoid it. Of course, everything I've learned in SGC is valuable, but this just stands out for me because it's something I have never learned before- I probably subconsciously knew about it, but now I know it at a much deeper level. Knowledge like this is what I hope will stay with me in the future, as it'll make me a much more scientifically-aware person.