Service Learning

I did my service learning at Virginia B. Andes Volunteer Community Clinic, and it was absolutely wonderful--so wonderful that I've continued to volunteer there! It is a free clinic for Charlotte County residents who have no health insurance; it is a semi-urgent care clinic so they handle colds, flu, small injuries, etc.  It has been a rewarding service learning experience because I am a Community Health major and I will someday be working in a hospital or clinic as an Occupational Therapist.  This service learning experience provided me with the knowledge and insight (to an extent) of how a health clinic is run, from policy and procedure, to protocol and practice.  It was so amazing to see all of the different volunteer nurses and doctors who came to give their time in the evenings after they'd already worked a full shift at their day jobs.  These doctors volunteer their time from 5pm-9pm and see anywhere from 10-20 patients an evening, completely free of charge.  They also have specialists that come several times a month, including a chiropractor, a dermatologist, and a heart specialist.  These patients are generally very poor, don't have insurance, and I have seen plenty who are homeless walk into the clinic.  In this economy, with so many people out of work, this clinic is a vital part of Charlotte County and should be implemented in counties all over the US.  It has been an enriching experience to volunteer with Virginia B. Andes Volunteer Community Clinic.

Aldo Leopold

This article really made me think of our environment from a completely different point of view; like the article said, we always think about land as property, with no obligations to it, a stricly economic relationship.  But Leopold begins discussing a concept called land-ethic, in which our "community" is enlarged to INCLUDE our soil, plants, animals, etc.  That way instead of being "conquerors of the land-community" we become members, with a responsibility to help it thrive.  I've NEVER viewed the land (soil, water, plants, animals etc) as a member of MY community; I've never really felt as though I had any responsibility or obligation to it and I've always viewed it as being there to meet my needs.  I think it is safe to say that many people view it this way, and it was only after reading this article that I even thought to think about the land in any other way.  It kind of makes sense as to why our environment is being so mistreated and depleted; if no one feels responsible for it, but feels that they are entitled to any/all the benefits that come from the land, then who is there to take care of it and defend its continued existance? Until people start viewing the land as a part of their community, and each one partake in the responsibility of caring for it, then the environment is going to continue to perish.

Weaning Ourselves off of Energy

There are many things we could do to try and wean ourselves off of energy; it is just a matter of sacrifice.  This is not something most of us are too familiar with, especially myself.  The first thing that we could all do (if it was remotely feasible) was to invest in electric cars; I know that electricity is a form of energy, but compared to oil, it seems to be the lesser of two evils, don't you agree?  If we can we ourselves off of oil, it will reduce our consumption by staggering amounts.  The problem? We aren't prepared to make that transition, not even close to making it;  there is no way that most of us can afford a fully electric car, and even if we could, where are my public charging stations?  Another thing we could all do to try and decrease our dependence on energy is to go natural; what I mean by this is hand wash our clothes to conserve water--hang dry our clothes to conserve electricity; how about we buy our food from farmers markets and grow our own gardens so that we can reduce the amount of transit that our food takes.  These are habits that may take awhile to root, but can make astounding changes towards our goal of being less dependent on energy.

Tragedy of the Commons

So, I did like the journal prompt said, and I typed in Tragedy of the Commons into Wikipedia search bar; what came up was a summary of Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay about how the concept of individual gain, short term gain, can have long term negative consequences.  His example was about how a group of herders sharing a "common" grazing area will keep adding cattle to the "common" because he reaps 100% of the benefit, but the consquence is spread out among the group and eventually the common is depleted for everyone.  This concept can be applied to many different "tragedies" such as pollution, water supply, forresting, energy sources, etc.  It made me think of how selfish people really can be with resources and how most of what we do and consume is for our very own benefit, without thinking much of the greater good or how it may turn out it the end for everyone involved.  I've never really thought about it in this way before, and this concept seems very accurate to our way of living.  Tying into this concept is the free-market issue; if we continue to all have free for all on our resources with very little government intervention, the rate at which our varying "commons" is greatly increased. 

My Ecological Footprint

Soooo I was pretty horrified when my results said that if everyone lived the way I do, we would need 7.25 Earths; that is so ridiculous!! It was a short, simple quiz that spoke volumes of my careless lifestyle and my nonchalant attitude towards the environment.  Its scary to think of how many "me's" there are out there!  Some things that I could do to reduce my ecological footprint would be to eat more organic foods with less packaging and to eat less meat; according the quiz results it is estimated that up to 18% of all greenhouse gases are from meat consumption.  I didn't even know that! I can't think of a meal where we don't eat meat, we are definitely carnivores! Pork chops, tacos, chicken alfredo, etc.  Chicken sandwich or beef burrito for lunch....it never ends!  It actually seems odd to me NOT to have meat at a meal....if I even take meat off my menu for one day a week, I could make a difference.  Another thing to do is to walk or ride a bike more, or try to use public transit; where I am located, it is somewhat difficult to arrange that, but only because a 45 minute bike ride to work seems extremely unreasonable to me.  There is little in the way of public transit for my area, especially since I live on county lines;  I live in Sarsota County but work in Charlotte County, and I don't think the sarasota county transit drives into charlotte county, so this proves to be a problem.  I could also flush less often, brush with the water turned off, turn off all the lights, use energy efficient light bulbs and appliances.  There are so many things we can do to reduce our ecological footprint, and most of them aren't that difficult!!

The One Degree Factor-Reflection

The One Degree Factor was a chilling video; it was well represented and as always with National Geographic, the videography was stunning. The concept of the video was about how the temperature keeps rising and how this is going to affect the way we live our lives and how it will affect our environment--the first thing that really caught my attention was how the rising temperatures of the water were affecting the crab species; they hooked heart-rate monitors up to the crabs and monitored them during a rise in temperature.  Their hearts stopped beating when the water reached just 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer...this is astounding!  If our waters/climates keep rising in temperature, incidents like this will happen to many, many species of wildlife.  Another species that was discussed in the video was the Caribou--as the climate gets warmer, these Caribou are swarmed with mosquitoes that have longer breeding periods due to the warm weather.  This causes them to get distracted and wore out from trying to rid themselves of the mosquitoes all day, and from the blood that is being sucked from them all day long; this keeps them from foraging for food.  In addition to this annoyance, the warmer weather is bringing more snow/precipitation which in and of itself makes it harder to find food--this leads to more death and less calves being produced.  It amazed me that these sort of things were happening across the world due to climate change, things I've never thought about before watching it.  On a day-to-day basis we may not notice much change, but if we are to look at the world 10, 15, 20 years ago and compare it to now in terms of wildlife and plants, we would see how much has changed...

Fort Myers Downtown Trip

I absolutely loved the trip to downtown Fort Myers! It was by far the most fun in college that I've ever had. :) I live in Port Charlotte, so I only drive to Fort Myers for school, never for fun, so visiting downtown FM was very new for me.  I took in all the sites and had fun exploring my surroundings.  I think the thing that fascinated me the most was how much history and culture was in downtown FM!  I always assumed it was just nightclubs, but there are so many little boutiques, museums, art galleries, and performing theaters.  It was very interesting--the scavenger hunt itself was difficult! I thought it was going to be much easier than it actually was and we did not come in first place; on top of that my legs were burning and I could barely walk the next day! Haha! I must be out of shape....but I kept up!  It was hot, sweaty, and hard work, but very worth it.  I think that it was a great field trip and I'm pretty sure everyone enjoyed themselves.  At the end of the scavenger hunt, we were all allowed to sit and eat and relax--this would have been fine if we hadn't lost track of time, got lost on the way back to the bus, and were so late the bus had left its spot without us!  We ran (yes RAN) around looking for it, and then we saw it driving toward us-thank God. I thought we were going to be stranded; I should have known Prof. Muldoon wouldn't leave us but whatever, it was a stressful situation nonetheless. ;)