Posts

My first semester’s second year project was to be a mentor for ENR scholars. I completed about 20 hours as an ENR mentor, by going to the mentor meetings, community meetings, extra ENR events, and reading my mentee’s blog posts about their ENR experience. I enjoyed being an ENR mentor, since I know my mentor last year made the experience great for me. I think that this project did not fulfill exactly what I hoped it would, since I could not help my mentees with any of their questions, since they are all zoology/biology/animal science majors, and as a student in SENR I have no idea what happens outside of SENR or how to help them find help. Brooke (co mentor) also had trouble helping them, as only one was a zoology student (her major) since the Animal Science major is so different from both of ours. One of my roommates who is an animal science major ended up helping them better than either of us could. I am glad that Brooke and I got the opportunity to help them out with the mentor reviews, and thankfully most of the mentees seem to have adapted to college well. There was not much for me to do in the way of being a mentor, since each of the exercises we did in class were not helpful to my mentees, as they were all sure of what they were doing, and did not want guidance, (which I am glad they are confident and sure in their actions!). However, I don’t think I helped them too much with any academics or even socially (what to do in CBUS etc). Overall, I enjoyed being a mentor, because I got to become more involved with ENR scholars, however I wish I could have been more of a help, or that ENR scholars itself could have been more applicable to students who have direction.

So far this semester, being a member of mentor council has been a great experience- I love the bonds I have formed with my sapling group. At this mid-semester point, I think that I have made good progress on my second year project. One thing I would like to do going forward is more whole group activities. Currently, I do things with the saplings in my group one-on-one, and don’t do much together with my mentor partner. I would love to get more group events going, maybe try rock climbing, exploring High Street, or even just group dinner more often. Keeping in touch with each of my saplings to make sure they are doing alright and keeping good mental health is what is most important for me, so I would like to reach out to the saplings more often as well. As a mentor, I am glad we got to talk to the saplings in their ‘mentor interviews’, however, I wish I could be more helpful to them! My saplings are all in bio or animal science majors in the School of Arts and Sciences, and I am in the School of Environment and Natural Resources, so I can’t really help them find the resources they need as well as if our majors overlapped. However, helping them have a fun year socially, and teaching them how to balance the challenges of college life is what I am really in mentor council for! Making my saplings’ first year as fun as my first year was is very important to me.

I am going to use my involvement in the Saplings Mentor Program as my second year project. This year, I really look forward to engaging with all of my saplings as the year goes on. I want their first year experience to be as influential in their development as mine was, especially with being involved in ENR Scholars. Last year, as a first year and a scholar, being surrounded with people who shared my values really helped me develop my character and self-identity. I became passionately interested in new hobbies, deeply involved in community commitment, and through the School of Environment and Natural Resource, I found a job that I love, and has pointed me in a new career direction I wouldn’t have found had it been for my set of experiences in the first year. By focusing this project on my time as a mentor, I want to make this year be just as great for them. Even if it means only getting someone to experience one new thing this year, it might just be the one thing they are very interested in. Being involved as a peer mentor means that I gain experience working with people, and getting them involved around campus. The saplings in my mentor group will hopefully enjoy the activities that ENR scholars hosts for them, and the time we spend together outside of the scholars program as well. Over the course of the year, I hope to learn a lot about my saplings and what their deeper interests are, rather than scratching the surface with ice-breaker type questions only. At this point, we’ve only been in class for a week, but I can tell the tight-knit groups of scholars are already forming, and this is the first step toward learning more about yourself, and hopefully through this project, I can help define that.

The theme I chose for the Columbus to-do list was food. For part one, I went to the North Market. After that, I went to Nida’s Thai on High, which was delicious (and I have had it a few more times since, too!). It was right on High St, and we could sit in the window to watch what was going on downtown at that moment. At Nida’s, I had green curry, which I haven’t tried before, and it was delicious! I haven’t experienced much Thai food outside of fried rice, and I was pleased with this experience. I would recommend this to a friend.

I went to Northstar with a group of friends, as well. I’ve been there a few times before, but I always try to get something different. I have been waiting to try the Cloud Nine Pancakes there for a while, and I finally tried them. SO great. I wouldn’t have thought ricotta in a pancake would work so well. I like Northstar because of all of the different healthy, vegetarian, local and natural food options.

The next stop was Tasi’s, which was definitely my favorite restaurant on the list that we chose to visit. The venue was very cute, and the menu had tons of options. Tasi’s is very clean and has a rustic feel to it sort of, and was very welcoming in general. The Tasi’s is very vegetarian friendly, which worked out well with my Earth Week Challenge that week, which was to eat vegetarian. I had never heard of this place before, and I am glad I discovered it. I know I would never have found it without the to-do list.

Lastly, we went to Lavash Cafe. Mediterranean food has never been high on my list, but apparently I haven’t been eating the right food! I had a vegetarian tabbouleh pita (still the vegetarian Earth Month challenge week!) and quite enjoyed it. I also tried a bite of a chicken shawarma pita (yes, I cheated a bit). I learned that lavash is actually a type of bread, as well. It was an order and pick up style restaurant, so there were a lot of options and I wasn’t sure what all of them were, but I enjoyed this experience quite a bit anyways.

Throughout the to-do list, I tried to pick places that provided a lot of diversity to the foods that I eat. Most of the places (except North Market and Northstar) I hadn’t heard of before, and I would highly recommend going to all of them, since there are so many options for any type of food. There truly wasn’t an experience from this semester’s to-do list that I didn’t like, and I may go through the rest of the list just to try the other foods so I don’t miss out on any other great food opportunities. I like that I had this opportunity to learn more about the foods of other cultures. In this to-do list, that consisted of walking around the North Market and looking the HUGE variety of foods they have there, and then eating at Nida’s and Lavash.

The last week of Earth Month Challenge was the hardest. I tried to go vegetarian, and it was a lot harder than I thought. I did well with the past three weeks, but I found myself eating (a lot) of meat still this week. I’m so used to eating meat for protein it was hard to remember going for another option. I did go out to eat a few times this week, for the Columbus to-do list, and that helped to remind me that there are vegetarian options available. I did better at the end of the week, after a week of almost remembering to not eat meat, I finally made it Friday night through Sunday night full on vegetarian. I ate more vegetarian meals than usual, though. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go full vegetarian, but it I will consider vegetarian options more often now. Overall, I liked the Earth Month Challenge. It made me consider how to live my life in an even greener way! I would like to think I’m already fairly green, lifestyle-wise, but I liked that this made me think of new ways. I will continue with these challenges in the future. It will be easier to do some, now that I’ve started them. Since it is summer, it will be even easier to do the food based challenges, since I can make more of my own sustainable (vegetarian, optional), in season, foods to reduce my carbon footprint from food transportation and the packaging of individual foods. The Earth Month Challenge taught me that it can be pretty hard to do some of these activities. I needed to think about my actions more consciously during a few of these weeks. I still am green in my day to day activities, though, since I do do a lot of the things that others were using as their challenges. I walk everywhere, unless I have no choice but to take the bus, recycle as much as I can (which is hard with Columbus’ recycling policy), turn off the lights, take the stairs, and wash laundry in cold water. With the Earth Month Challenge, I still learned of more ways to be green though, and I now have a full list of even more than the four I picked for my challenges this month.

In the third week, this challenge went fairly well. My goal was to make my own food and make it more sustainably, to limit the waste. The reason this challenge went so well this week is because I went home for a dinner this past week, and I took the opportunity to make some dishes to bring back that were made from sustainable foods. This last Friday, a group I am a part of also held a sustainable cookout made with food that was locally grown or sustainably produced, like veggie burgers and grilled vegetables in season and locally grown. One opportunity that I missed this week to work on my goal was the Lucky’s trip and cooking workshop held by scholars on Saturday. This would have also been a good opportunity to learn more about sustainable foods/cooking/recipes. I ended up having enough sustainably cooked foods this week to eat most of my meals. When I didn’t eat my food, I went to the dining halls, and tried not to eat a lot of the excessively packaged microwave foods sold in the stores. I think that continuing this challenge forward will be more difficult for the rest of the semester here at college, but would be much easier at home where I have easier access to these resources, and a kitchen. I would like to continue this challenge going forward into the future, since the food I made was delicious, and it’s fun to look at the different in season foods, and trying new recipes with these foods. Next week, I will be taking this challenge a little further by going vegetarian. This will be the hardest challenge week for me, for sure. I enjoy ribs and wings, but I also very much want to phase into eating less meat too.

This week, my goal was to cut down on water waste. This was a very general topic for me, and I tried to cut down in every way I could for this week’s challenge. The main way I changed my routine this week was to cut my showers down to 5 minutes, since I often take unnecessarily long showers. This was much easier than expected, and I will definitely keep up with this challenge in the future. I also drank more water, and less processed drinks, turned off the water while I wasn’t using it, and used way less water to do my dishes (which were all reuseable!). One big waste this week was laundry. No matter what, laundry takes a lot of water and energy. I always wash in cold water and dry at low temperatures to conserve water and energy. This week, however, I made the silly mistake of not putting detergent into the washing machine, and it locked before I could get the soap in. Sadly, I had to do two loads of laundry, wasting much more water than I usually do, in the week of water conservation. The most important thing to think about is conserving water when you can, even if it’s just when you wash your hands or brush your teeth. Every drop adds up, and it’s much easier than expected to find small ways to conserve. Next week, my goal will be to eat more sustainably. This sort of relates back to the first week challenge, but I will be trying to make my own foods more sustainably in ‘bulk’ and eat the leftovers throughout the week. I think this coming week will be more difficult than the first two, simply because of the nature of the dorm life and the convenience of the dining halls.

My first week challenge was to cut down on food waste and food packaging waste. I feel like I did a little better this week than I usually do. It’s harder on campus to limit packaging since most food is individually packaged or in packaging (chips, sandwiches in containers etc.). I did go home this weekend, and was able to go shopping, and buy fresh, bulk foods which helped my goal. In the future, I need to be more careful about the choices I make in the simple things, like taking the time to make a sandwich rather than buy a premade one with all the plastic wrap and plastic boxing. This week’s challenge is something I will focus more on in the future as I think this is an important part of reducing my carbon footprint overall. In globally, we waste about 20-35% of the actual food products we buy every year, and the packaging that those food come in is also disposed of, often. To reduce this impact, everyone should try to go for zero food waste- buy only what you can eat. Buying unpackaged vegetables and fruits will also help reduce packaging waste, as packaging has no effect on how much longer fruits and veggies will stay fresh. Buying in bulk is also a benefit as well, not only is it cheaper, but you only take what you need, or get more of that item at once, and there is less plastic packaging. Next week, my goal is to keep my showers under 5 minutes. I know nearly all of my direct water waste comes from taking long showers, which I know I shouldn’t do, but I still take anyways.