First Post

     Hey, so this is my first ever blog post. I am a Tufts University student passionate about social justice, nerdy/geeky things, and the environment, among other things. Wednesday, September 7th, 2016, marked the first day of one of my classes, Sustainability in Action. For those at Tufts reading this, you should totally sign up for this course. The professors are amazing and really passionate about what they do (totally not doing this for extra credit, I swear!). You learn about how to apply sustainability in your jobs, career, and daily life. For environmental studies students, this course is especially helpful because a lot of us don't know what direction to go after graduating, and this course helps prepare you for the real world. Some highlights we will be expecting are guest speakers coming in to talk about their profession in an environmental field, doing mini research projects about how the environment intersects with other disciplines (they're really not that bad for those interested in this course!), and job shadowing or volunteering at an environmental profession or organization. Another cool aspect of this course is the numerous fun facts we learn in class. For example, the first class, we learned that narwhals (the unicorns of the sea) can help climate scientists measure the temperature at different water depths, due to their ability to dive 6000 feet (!) and their friendly nature with humans.

     So less about this course, and more about me. As I said before, I am interested in many things, and especially in combining more than one of my passions. All I want to do with my life is make the world a better place, and I don't really care if I'm recognized for my efforts a hundred years from now (although one of my passions is to become an author, so it would be cool if my book is recognized a century later).  Currently, I am really interested in documentary making, because it unites a lot of different elements. For example, the documentary "Chasing Ice", had great music, great cinematography, lots of beautiful pictures, great script, and I can go on. But the most notable aspect of this film was the story it told, and the connection it made with the audience. It didn't bombard us with statistics and scientific arguments, but rather told a story. It made us feel like we were hiking the Solheimajokull Glacier and feeling the frustrations of the technology failing. Most of all, we were in awed by the tragic, horrifying beauty of the melting glaciers. How could such beauty prophecy the demise of this world?