This year has overall been pretty good for me. Classes this semester have still been very rough, however, I did learn that recycling is virtually just a way to make people buy more plastic, which is very disheartening to learn. I feel as if this is the point of some of my classes, to tear you down to your bare minimum and then building you and your belief system back up in a way that is more catered to the school’s perspective. I do not have much of an issue with this as having general hope about helping the environment is not the reality, there is nothing I can do in order to save everything, and that is ok. Now I need to be able to learn the I personally can do and achieve in order to make the world a better place now that I more fully understand the actual state of the world. I also learned outside the classroom that everyone is really just experiencing everything through their own eyes, morals, and opinions. I could think that someone is doing something wrong but they truly believe that they are correct and right, it is all just a matter of perspective and one’s own experiences. This of course then brings up the question of how do we then agree on anything, which the answer is that we don’t, and that is ok. You just have to be able to surround yourself with people who are morally similar to you if you do not want to constantly have to defend your stance on the world. I learned about myself that I am also not the best person, and that is ok. I have to be willing to change and grow with the new information I hear and learn about myself. For example, it is not my place to speak for others in situations where I am unneeded and misinformed. I am able to offer my support, however, my experiences limit me on what I can contribute to. I should not be speaking for racial minorities as a white person, I should instead be willing to listen and learn in order to more properly understand their experiences, instead of spouting my belief’s that were well-intentioned, but misinformed. I personally think that I have done a lot of growth in this past year, in learning more about myself and others I have been able to grow my experiences and make myself an overall better person. My favorite memory from this past year has to be going to a small plant nursery with a friend, eating bagels in the parking lot, picking out two plants, and then driving back and making plant hangers out of twine. I am looking forward to growing my independence and learning how to do more things for myself. I am still not where I would like to be and I am excited to be able to grow, adapt, and evolve this next year to become someone even better.