Changing My Environment

GPA = 3.925!!

THAT’S THREE A’s AND AN A-. HOLY SHMOLY SHMOKES!!

Well lookie lookie, I’ve made it through my first semester of grad school. Granted I still have finals (joy), but today is the last day of classes! I’d like to think that I’ve done pretty well these past few months. Tests, papers, projects and presentations, along with a work-study position, and I still made it through. Although, I didn’t make it through without help. No one else would’ve stayed up with me late into the night as I finished a paper or a project, except Danny. Thanks for always believing in me. <3

All I have left now are two finals at school, one take home final, and a lesson plan to turn in. I’ll wrap up my work-study position (oh, I have to post pictures from this past Friday!), and then I have a short break before I take a Maymester course. Oh man, what was I thinking when I signed up for that course… Right now all I want is a vacation! It’ll be a long two weeks, but at the same time, it will only be two weeks, so I’ll suck it up and muscle through it. At least it’s three credits.

Then I have a little bit of time off before I start my summer job! =]

Back in January, I interviewed for and got a Federal Work-Study position with the New York State Parks Department. Whooot! I’ve been working to plan two Stewardship Days at a nearby state park with a local private school.

Well, tomorrow is the first of those two days! I have been running around like crazy, meeting with school administration, park managers, volunteers, and coordinating with partner organizations. I spent my day picking up supplies, conferencing with my boss, texting and emailing volunteers and following up with last minute details.

Tomorrow morning, the sixth graders are going to work with an organization called Project Watershed. They’ll learn about stream ecology and then put on some waders and take stream samples. Then they’ll provide service to the park by mulching a trail near the lake.

And while the sixth graders are down by the lake, the seventh graders will learn about tree health, rake up pine cones from one of the camp grounds (don’t be fooled - it’s quite a daunting task), and then create recycled flower pots out of shredded newspaper.

In the afternoon, the eighth graders will be led by an organization called OCRRA as they sort trash bags from the park to see what people throw away. Don’t worry, gloves will be provided! It should be an interesting lesson as to how much could be recycled, instead of going into our landfills. For their stewardship project, they’ll mulch a different trail, and then they’ll decorate recycle bins, as a way of encouraging people to recycle.

My head is swarming with details for tomorrow. Times, activities, phone numbers, supplies, and “don’t forget your camera!” It’s certainly shaping up to be quite a day. And then we do it all again next week!

Here I am, about to register for the fall semester, and I’ve barely told you about the classes I’m taking right now! Let’s start with my first class of the day.

Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I trudge all the way up to Bray Hall for Ecosystems, taught by Charles Hall. Yep. He has a wiki page. He’s definitely knowledgeable, but since he’s been teaching so long, sometimes more of the lecture is taken up by his tangents than by applicable learning. He’s pretty set in his ways, and though he might ask for suggestions about the course, he’s not going to change anything. He’s retiring in a year. Why change anything now?

The concentration of the course is mostly on the biomes of the world: temperate forests, estuaries, the tropics, ocean ecosystems etc. We do a section on nutrient cycles and energy flow, which relates to everything else. And Dr. Hall’s big push, what he’s spent most of his career on, is energy. Oh, you don’t know an answer to one of his questions? Try “energy.” It’ll work 90% of the time. lol.

It’s interesting to learn about different ecosystems, and even more interesting to see them through the perspective of energy. The sun beats down on the equator (energy), heats up the air and water (energy), and starts moving everything around. On a local scale, energy runs every aspect of life. Did you know that plants take in less than 1% of the available energy from the sun? Less than 1%! Most of that is lost in respiration as the plant puts energy towards homeostasis. Once the plant knows it’s not going to die, it can put extra energy towards growth and reproduction. And then something eats it.

As you go up the food chain, it’s pretty much the same. Organisms acquire energy through food, spend most of it on respiration, and only after they’ve satisfied their body’s needs to maintain homeostasis, they grow and reproduce. And all of this energy has to start with primary producers, mostly plants on land or phytoplankton in the water. Oh, and fun fact for the unaware: phytoplankton are eaten by zooplankton. (Phyto is Latin for plant, and zoo is Latin for animal.) Who knew? =]

So I’ve written two papers for his class (I just turned in one today) and I’ve survived one test. Dr. Hall wants you to write on his exams. Short answers are 1-2 paragraphs, medium answers are 2-3 paragraphs, and then there’s “the biggie,” which someone could write an entire book on, but you only have to fill two or three pages. Ha, how generous. Plus there were definitions at the beginning and a brand new section (wait! I thought he wasn’t going to try anything new!) where you had to compare two pieces of scientific literature. Don’t even get me started on this exam. I was so mad, I spent twenty minutes after the test venting to Danny.

But, when all was said and done (he gave us more time in class the next day to keep us all from complaining about time constraints), I did well. Here’s a “short answer” question from the exam:

Discuss why fitness is sometimes perceived as a tautology. Discuss a solution to this problem and use a real or hypothetical example to illustrate the solution.

The traditional definition of fitness is as follows:
An organism is fit when it passes on its genes, and an organism passes on its genes when it is fit.

This circular definition is a tautology (something that is true by definition) and lacks a concrete method of testing its truth. By using energy, however, we can create a linear definition of fitness, and a definition that is testable. (Hall)

The following definition could be used to explain fitness with respect to energy:
An organism is fit when it has an energy surplus, allowing it to first maintain homeostasis and then put energy towards growth and reproduction.

An example of this is the experiment done by Thomas et al (2000), where they tested peak vegetation and nestling growth. When offspring were born too early before peak vegetation, the mother expended too much energy to find food for herself and her young, reducing the likelihood that any of them would survive, and thus pass on their genes and be fit.

Did make it through all of that? Yeah, that was a short answer. 10 points! Oh, and did you catch the two sources (in parenthesis)? I’ve never taken a class before where I’ve had to cite references on an exam.

So there you have it, Ecosystems in a nutshell. Well that was long, so maybe a large nut shell. Perhaps a coco-nut shell. lol.

I have successfully made it through a paper, a presentation, two projects, and three exams. I finally feel like a grad student!

It’s an interesting switch of perspective. When I started the semester, I simply felt like I was going to school. I was a student in a classroom. The amount of work ahead of me was daunting, but I hadn’t really thought about it too much. As the due dates got closer though, I felt the pressure to do well. Err, I should clarify that. I felt the pressure to do as well as I’ve done in school before.

I’ve always been a good student. An “A” student. Being academic came easy to me, especially math. English and history weren’t my strong points, but I still got good grades. Yet now, I’m faced with subject matter I don’t know, and it’s at such a high level. Sure, I could find my way through an earth science book, even enough to tutor high school students, but I never thought about how I would fair being a science student myself.

So with this mindset, a 75 or even an 85 on a test just isn’t good enough. I know I can do better. And truth be told, I have! I’ve done really well on all of my tests and assignments. Well, except for my wetlands exam, but we won’t talk about that lol.

But knowing that I’m not going to flunk out of grad school is a confidence booster. The week before spring break I studied for two tests and prepped for a presentation. I also had to pack, as Danny and I were headed to California for a week right after I finished my last class. I don’t know how much sleep I got that week, but I survived. Danny picked me up from school that last day before break (right after I had given my presentation), and I could feel it. I was a grad student. I had made it. I was no longer just a student in a classroom. I was actually earning a degree.

I don’t want to get a false sense of security though. I still have three projects, three papers and four exams left for the semester. And out of those, I have to hand in a paper and take a test this week (both in dreaded wetlands!).

I guess I should get to work!

Below is the essay I wrote for one of the scholarships I applied to last month. I hope it helps answer the question about what I’d like to do once I survive three or four semesters here. Enjoy!

“Ten years from now, I see myself running environmental programs aimed at communities that typically don’t recycle, compost, or have an awareness of the importance of conserving natural resources.

Generally, people who attend environmental workshops and seminars are aware of the human impact on the world and have some vested interest in learning how to reduce it. Conversely, people who live in economically disadvantaged communities tend to have multiple issues consuming their daily lives, leaving them little, if any, time or energy to put towards environmental concerns. Growing up in New York City, I saw instances, time and time again, in which people were unable or unwilling to recycle and conserve resources, from using dozens of plastic bags to bring home groceries, to not sorting trash into respective categories.

I want to make environmental conservation easy and accessible to everyone. As this would require an organization that supports my ideas, and most likely a managerial position on my part, I would need to spend the first part of my career working for an organization that already has educational programs in place. From there I could learn how to properly plan and implement community programs.

Yet before I can do any of this, I need to earn a master’s degree in environmental education, which I will do in January 2012 at SUNY-ESF. I want to work towards a cleaner world, a cleaner country, and cleaner communities. For me, that journey starts with an education.”