Tuesday Speaker

Today in my sustainability class, we had a guest speaker come in and talk to us. His name was Drew Solomon and he was a volunteer for The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit organization involved in education and advocacy on climate change. Him coming to our class today was all voluntary and he had to take off from his day job to do this.

Drew's presentation showed the reality of climate change and how it is effecting the environment and how we are all in the middle of this. He highlighted all the recent natural disasters that have occurred all over the world. Disasters like floods, hurricanes, and landslides were some that were shown in a very real way. I was aware that all of this was happening all over the world but the severity of it all didn't hit me until I saw the pictures from the places that suffered from the natural disasters. After his presentation, we compared the information that was given to us by him to the presentation that was given to us in Carbon Nation. I liked the Climate Reality Project presentation more because it made the climate issue more real and it had a lot more compelling proof.

After our Q&A with Drew, we did our presentation on alternate energy. I was very excited to do this because I feel like I have gotten better at public speaking and I wanted to see if it was good. My presentation skills have definitely improved from the first time that I presented for the class. I had all my facts together and the delivery was confident and educated. After all the presentations, we were given $10 million hypothetical dollars to invest in whatever form of alternate energy presented to us. I was really skeptical that anyone would invest in us because fracking, which was ours, isn't very regulated right now and there are a lot of risks that come from it due to this. Surprisingly, we got $13 million dollars invested in us. 

I did a lot better with speaking and asking questions in class today. I sat closer to the teacher and I put myself out there more even though there could be a slight chance that I was wrong. I feel like this made The afternoon portion of class go by much quicker and before I knew it, class was over. I went to Dani's room to work on my homework with my cohort. I wanted to get as much as I could done because we were going out later to get deep dish pizza with Alie. Once our car was outside, we got in and drove into the city to Gino's Pizza. We ordered a vegetarian pizza and a meaty pizza. The wait was kind of long but it was worth it. It felt nice to leave the campus and go out for a change.

Deep Dish Pizza

Group Project

I woke up this morning, my legs are still sore from the run on Sunday. I didn't want to wake up but I had to. I got ready and went down to the Dining Hall to eat breakfast. I finished eating my breakfast; I started walking to my class. When I got to the building of my class the doors were close so I needed to find another way to get in. There was another door in the side of the building and I went to see if it was open. Lucky I, the side door was open and I was able to get in the building and get to my class. Today Class was short we just needed to do our journal and then Achy let us out to work on the road trip project with our groups. We needed to come back at 3 PM and the project is due before 3 PM.  My group and I came to the South Residence Hall were my room is at. We went to fifth floor to work on our project. It took us about one hour and half to finish our project. It was about to be 12 PM, so I decide to go get lunch because I was getting hungry. Now, the Dining Hall gets fuller because on the weekend two other groups came to the campus. One group was teenagers and the other one were little kids. Before there wasn't any line to get inside the Dining Hall and now there’s one. I got there before the line was starting to get bigger.

The entrance of the gym

When I was finished eating I went up to my room and started working on the first assignment Pamela left me. It was to correct the assignment of the last book I read. When I was finish with that, I went to the gym to go clear my mind out. I work out from 1:30 PM to 2:25 PM. It felt good being away from work and just have time to myself and doing something I like to do. I had a sweater on, so I decided to go to my room to change because it was getting hot. I walk with a fast pace to my room, so I wouldn't be late to my class. I made it to my room and changed real fast to a T-shirt. I started walking to my class and got there on time. We started talking about our project and who was our character POV and their desires. Then Achy asked the class, what if the character desires never happens and they end up losing everything they have ever want, what would be the worst scenario, how would they react? Achy then gave us another assignment, to revise another group story and give them comments about it. Then, she let us out at 3:20 PM.

A beautiful building I saw when I was walking  back to my room

At 4 PM I went to meet up with Pamela, my tutor, she showed me ways I can organize my writing. One way is chronological, time, kind of like a recipe, it tells you want come first and what comes next. It needs to be in order by time, date, season, months, years and the list keeps on going. Next, is more direct, meaning you labeling or give it a title, such as, books are characterized by chapters and sometimes the chapter have names and their names means that’s what the author is going to talk about. The last one is evaluating, meaning you give your ideas and your own opinion. This benefit me because I kind of getting the idea of what she was talking about and it gave me a sense of structure on  how a story can be writing.

On our way to meet Alie for our deep dish.

Then, at 6 PM, my friends (cohorts) and I we were going to meet up with Alie for a deep dish at Gino’s East Pizzeria. Alie wanted to know how class is going what we have learned and if we ever need help to email her or give her a call. Oyin, Vicky and I picked the Chicago Fire pizza because I love spicy food and they like it too, but not a lot.

Foosball Table

Then, we came back to the campus and my friends and I decided to play Foosball before we start working on our homework. We played for at least half an hour. We were all having fun and everyone played at least two times. Then, we started working on our homework and that’s how we ended our night. 

Group Study

Just Another Day at School

As usual everyday I go get breakfast and walk to class at 8:45 AM. Today was a relaxed day for me in class. I went to class and we had a lecture and then went to the lab. In the lecture I learned more about the 1918 Pandemic and that 1/3 of the earth population got infected. In November 1918, the flu spread in Alaska and killed 72 people. Then we went to the lab after an hour.

The Lake Water Plates

In the lab we looked at our lake water that was plated to see if they changed color and if it was coliform or E.coli. After we made that observation we got our TSA plates and started to inoculate each plate, the coliform and E. coli plates. We used two enterotube to extract one of the colonies from each plate and then we poked holes in the last 8 compartments of the enterotube. Then we incubated them at 37 degrees. We got out 30 minutes early for lunch. I went to my room first to put my stuff down since I didn't have to be back in class until 2:00 PM. Normally we would have to come back at 1:00 PM but she let us come later because we have to do a project where we have to make a poster about  a disease we researched that we haven't already went over in class. But for lunch I had salad, fruit, pizza, and eggplant. The eggplant kind of tasted like lasagna.

Deep Dish!!!

When we got back to class we only had an hour left so we went straight to the lab. In the lab we started to record data of the Rifampicin concentration plates. We recorded the control, the mutant 1, and the mutant 2 and how high the concentration of each were. A couple of them didn't grow but the rest did. After we were done the TA dismissed us and I walked back to the dorms. When I got to the dorms I went to Dani's room. I waited there with  Oyin, Alexa, and Dani from 3:30 to 6:30 PM so that we could all go to Gino's Pizza with Alie. I had a wonderful nap before we left which was nice. When we met Alie at Gino's we waited so that they could find a place for us to sit and then we had a deep dish pizza. We ate two types, a spicy one and veggie one. It was good but I think that Giordano's is better.


The Cohort in Action

When we got back we came to one of the dorm houses and played foozeball before we got to business. We had about 10 good games where I won at least 4 and then I stopped playing to calm down because the game was so intense. After we finished we went to check-in for curfew and later started doing homework and whatever we had left to do for class. It's nice to have fun and then do our work. I think coming together helps me to be motivated to do my work and finish things that needed to be done.

Oyin and I in Deep Thought