Year in Review

My first year in college has been a good time that has helped me learn a lot, in classes and outside of classes. In ENR 3500, the Community, Environment, and Development class I am taking this semester, we learned about how resource use decisions are made, and the power dynamics of government, the public, and elites when those decisions are being made. We learned about different theories of who holds power in communities, and watched a documentary about a land use decision in Los Angeles, which highlighted the political and cultural mobilization of a hispanic community in LA to protect their community garden, and showed the victory of financial influence and connections with politicians over widespread public political and cultural support for the garden and even crowd-sourced financial capital. Resource conflicts favor neither the rich or the public, it depends on the values of the individuals involved. In the Garden documentary, the land owner who wanted the community garden gone would not accept their honest offer to buy the land at asking price, because he hated the gardeners so much that he would not allow them to have the land

In Students for Recycling, I learned not only about the recycling rules in Columbus, because recycling varies from city to city, but the importance of prioritizing quality of recycling over quantity. Recycling contamination rates in the U.S. are incredibly high, and lead to most of our recyclables just going to the landfill. These high contamination rates caused our biggest importer of U.S. recyclables, China, to stop accepting our recyclables because it is so unprofitable to process them. This means that we need to start recycling right, because we can’t keep putting our trash in other countries anymore.

One thing I learned about myself this year is that I like to be busy. Growing up, I held the labels “introverted” and “lazy” close to me, so I was not effectively motivated to join extracurriculars, reach for leadership positions, or commit to extra work that was not required of me. In high school, I joined a few extracurriculars that I was passionate about and started spending more time working with people on projects that achieve goals that we all care about. When I got to college, I joined more clubs with focused missions that accomplish the things I think are most important in the world, and I spend my entire day until 8p.m. out at those club meetings, doing homework, doing group projects, then I come back to my dorm, eat some soup, talk to my roommates, and go to sleep. I like that far better than sitting alone with nothing to do for hours, but a year ago I would’ve said that I preferred chilling out by myself for most of my time.

I’ve made lots of good memories with my new friends here. Watching Happy Feet with them on Valentine’s Day and dancing with Mumble, going to a Mexican restaurant for the first time in Columbus, visiting Kaitey’s hometown an hour outside of Columbus and getting soup made just for me, and visiting Jordan’s hometown all the way in sunny Florida.

Next year I look forward to more good memories with the same awesome friends and with new ones too. I look forward to living in a double instead of a quad, although I am grateful for the people I met and spent (arguably too much) time with. I look forward to being even more involved in my student organizations, and getting a job to work towards those same missions. Next year will be another good year.