My life has been filled with an awful lot of this kind of thing lately:
(My iPhone does make a good study tool...)
So, what's going on in my life right now?
Well, there's school, of course. I'm taking four classes this term, three with labs.
- General Chemistry 2 + Lab
- Sedimentology + Lab
- Lithology + Lab
- Forest Ecology
It's more than I've ever taken on before, and they are much much harder classes than I've done in the past. I think that this might be the term that drops my GPA, but I'm okay with that. I could spend all of my time studying and doing homework, if I did I would probably be able to get A's in most of those classes. But I have been doing a lot of other things that are equally, if not more, important in the big picture.
I've still been spending a lot of my time volunteering at the North Mountain Park Nature Center. They have asked me to help develop a Junior Naturalist program for them... I'm really excited about it. We've got some great ideas for the program and I'll be doing a test run for some of the activities this Saturday! Eeek, it will also be my first solo program at the park... I can't wait!
I've also started doing some work with a nonprofit called Oregon Stewardship. Oregon Stewardship works with 11 high schools in 5 counties of Southern Oregon, teaching high school kids about the environment and why its important to help protect it. They also plan field trips and workdays with the schools to get kids out in the field, doing something that matters. One of my professors recommended that I shadow the founder of the group, who is also a good friend of my professor's. I've met with him a couple times and was out on Saturday morning working with a group of high schoolers building bioswales in Medford. It was so much fun, I can't wait to get more involved! The kids were really motivated and excited that they were doing something to help, it was nice to see that in teenagers.... I don't see that in a lot of the people I got to school with.
If you didn't know, bioswales are a really neat bit of bioengineering designed to mitigate the effects of runoff from roadways. Essentially it creates a break point (usually large rocks) to slow the water that comes off the road via pipes, to prevent erosion. Below the rocks are a series of natural filters (smaller rocks and plants, included reeds and sedges right at the water's edge) that filter oils and other nasty stuff from the water. Where we were working the drain pipes used to go directly into Bear Creek, now they are slowed and filtered which will drastically increase the stream health.
In addition to all of that, I've been working with my friend Erin to design our senior capstone project. In order to graduate, we have to complete a major project that demonstrates many of the skills and knowledge sets that we learned at SOU. Erin and I both wanted to do something that was not only beneficial, but fun and memorable for us since we will be completing it next summer, our last summer as college students (I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I will be graduated a year from this April!)
The project is big and deserves its own post to really explain... If you would like a sneak peak (I promise to explain it in more detail later) you can check out the website we made: www.travelingtandem.com.
