T.G.I.F.

Salvador Giving His Presentation

Today was our first Friday of the program and, to say the least, I was really happy to see this day. One of my class mates, Salvador, gave us a presentation on an invention of his which involves reworking disposable diapers to make them more sustainable. Disposable diapers are one of the top contributors to waste landfill and this is because diapers are made of mostly petrolatum derived materials like super absorbent polymers that make the diapers more absorbent. Salvador's idea was to replace this super absorbent polymer with sugar cane bagasse. He tested out this strategy and it worked really well. I think that his idea is incredible and that it has the potential to make a huge difference environmentally. I also think that it is really mind blowing that somebody my age could accomplish something like that.

Working With My Partner Ziang

The rest of the morning went by really fast as we reviewed topics that we learned over the week and we looked a little bit ahead. We had our lunch assignment which was to do a power point on the life cycle analysis of different products, my partner and I had to do it on a computer. Once we got those done, we presented them for the class. This took more time than our professor thought it would so we moved our book discussion to Monday and we watched a movie in class instead. The movie was called Carbon Nation and it was about the different ways that communities are coming up with different ways to solve the carbon emission problems and reduce the ecological footprint. What really stuck out to me was that a Richmond, California community member was getting the word out about solar panels in his town and he stared an organization where homes could get solar panels and they would be installed by people who lived in Richmond, creating jobs for them. I was surprised to see that something like this was available and especially since it is so close to home.

Movie Time

After we watched the movie, we were let out of class. My professor decided to let us enjoy our weekend so she didn't give us any assignments. I was really thankful for this because my first week of class felt really long and hectic as I tried to balance school work with fun time. When I got back to my dorm room after class, the first thing that I did was take a nap. I felt like if I didn't take that nap, I would have crashed sometime later in the day. After my nap, I went to dinner with my cohort and we decided to have a light night so we just watched movies and ate pizza together. We decided that tomorrow afternoon, we would go into the city and explore Chicago.