Money Where My Mouth Is

Logan Patterson, lpatterson.015@gmail.com, Political Science/Economics

Description

My project aims were to make efforts toward supporting a green energy initiative, which is something that I support from a political standpoint. Many people are pro-green energy, but it’s hard to find ways to live a lifestyle that reflects that, especially as a college student. To that end, I have been using only a solar cell to charge my cell phone, every weekend for the last 3 months.

Process

My dad works as a commercial electrician and he gave me this solar cell to use as a battery back-up. I decided to try to use this solar cell as the only means of powering one of the most important devices in my life. Anytime I wasn’t charging my phone, I would leave this solar cell in an open window and allow it to fully charge, then use that to recharge my phone’s battery

Results

The Results were mixed. On some days it was incredibly cloudy, and I will admit that I needed to cheat once or twice so as to actually have battery in my phone, but overall I was able to appreciate the energy usage more, and I was able to maintain my phone by limiting how often or how long I would use my phone.

Reflection

I think that I took a lot away from this project. For starters, it’s much more clear to me now that clean energy is possible, even in my day to day life. With increased efficiency and storage for the energy I used, it would be possible to use my phone practically year round with this sort of setup. It also gave me a sense of energy conservation, as on the weekend I was limiting my phone use by an incredible amount.

Pictures/Visuals

This is a photo of the solar cell in the window of my room. The window had to be open because the windows themselves are designed to block sunlight as energy efficiency measure.

This has been the strangest autumn of my life. Honestly, I didn’t quite know what to expect from university, or what I was getting myself into. Agreeing to tens of thousands of dollars of debt to go to a school I had never even seen before was a leap of faith, and I can’t say I regret it. The opportunity presented by this university is unparalleled. I’ve seen fantastic presentations from wonderful people, been inspired by heart-wrenching stories, and experienced life through the eyes of an adult for the first time. The campus has an exciting atmosphere, and a sense of camaraderie which I’ve never experienced before. The sheer act of being a buckeye seems to elevate you to a higher plane of existence in the public eye. I’ve made friends. I’ve lived countless cliches. And I’ve had great times. The humanities program has offered me the largest opportunity, for experiencing culture, and reflection upon news events, with greater context than I could ever achieve at my four-hundred student high school. If retaining the privilege to be invited to multiple events focused around cultural exploration is the cost of remaining in the humanities program, I gladly accept. There isn’t much else to talk about. My experience has been predictably unpredictable, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

One thing that I dedicate my thought and passion toward is my belief in the progress of humankind, not necessarily myself, or even America, just humans as a whole. This isn’t some crap I think to make myself feel better, for I genuinely think the progression of society until this point has been amazing, and it would be a disservice to the hundreds of generations leading up to me to not respect that legacy. With that out of the way, I was very pleased that not ALL of my strengths turned up in the strategic thinking category. Four out of five is more than I would have liked, but the fact that I got connectedness was satisfying. The rest of my strengths were generally things I could have described in myself, but this one is something more, something I try to strive toward. The rest seems like a natural occurrence of my thought patterns, but connectedness means more to me, as it’s not something I previously saw as quantifiable. Even connectedness falls short of my real vision, but I feel it is adequate as far as 5 words to summarize my personality could be. Will it change my perspective? Probably not. I didn’t go into this with the most open of minds, and probably could have gotten more out of it if I had, but I would say that the results were sufficient of what I expected. As far as what I did take away from it, I enjoyed the process of deliberating between two non-distinct choices in a brief time span. I don’t think that all of my options truly reflected my feelings on each matter, but as far as my spur of the moment thoughts it goes unchallenged. The problem I see is, some things are very complex, and not having enough time to properly weigh options can lead to fallacies as far as analyzing every persons choices. For instance, I distinctly remember changing my mind immediately upon reaching the next question, a revelation that I’m sure didn’t change the overall outcome, but nonetheless effected the way I was captured by the eye of the program. I like to think that these 5 aspects, Input, Learner, Analytical, Intellection, and Connectedness are good at summarizing parts of who I am, but as I discussed in class, these fall short of defining who I am as a human, or what it means to be human in general. They definitely caused me to think about my strengths, which was the general idea of this assignment, and perhaps upon revisiting this program I will learn a bit more about myself, and the underlying decision making that makes me who I am.

“Philosophy doesn’t start or end in the classroom. Discussing ideas is universal, and so is thought. We’re each, in our own way, inching forward toward the answer to life’s greatest questions. We may be from different walks of life, but that doesn’t disqualify anyone from deep, or important thought. Don’t forget that life is just a game, and don’t take it too seriously.”

I have been on campus for nearly 2 weeks now, and it has been rough. I never imagined this much grief about leaving behind my friends and family and moving so far away. This community has been very welcoming though, but I have been somewhat conservative with my motions to join in. The most fun I’ve had was probably the OWL move-in. I truly enjoyed helping people, and days like that make me wish I had had more time to volunteer while in high school. The Humanities Scholar events were fun, and though I much preferred the viewing of Tecumseh to walking around in the sun for several hours, it was a blast. My biggest complaint with this school is the amount of work that takes place over the internet. Every class uses some different website, and none of it properly aggregates to Carmen. I’ve already missed an assignment because I didn’t know it existed until I got an email saying the next assignment was due. I guess I will figure it out as I go along.