Reflections week 3 and 4

Week 3

I am finally starting to get the hang of blogging, just like Dr. V said we would. I have been having a lot of fun with it and I have been learning a lot of exciting things! We did not have class the third week of school. Instead we set up a 15 minute appointment with Steve, which was extremely helpful! Meeting with him made me feel on track and more comfortable about the work I was doing. He told me things I needed to work on such as the labels and following everyone in class. I am really happy with my blog so far :).

Week 4 

We started out with a fun game that had to do with questions about blogging. I thought this was the perfect game because this way I could test my knowledge. I felt really comfortable with about 95% of the questions, which made me feel relieved. I got an easy question and had to answer if it was true or false to always comment on Dr. V's posts. This is true, you should always comment on her posts, along with your group members to give them feedback. We all got a prize for answering the question correctly. I, of course, got tampons. I thought that was really funny because I was not expecting that at all :P. 

After the game, we watched a movie called, "The Inconvenient Truth". This movie definitely opened my eyes and made me realize how big of a problem global warming is. The video featured the United States 45th Vice President,  Al Gore , speaking out about how global warming does in fact exist and how big of an impact is will have on our planet. 

I did not realize how serious global warming was until I saw the Inconvenient Truth. Seeing the pictures of how the planet was years ago, and seeing how the same places have drastically changed is very scary to me. It has already affected a lot land, and also animals such as polar bears. Polar bears have been drowning because there is not enough ice for them to swim to. This movie made me realize even more how important it is to help out the environment as much as we possible. They say global warming may not effect us in our lifetime, but the truth is, it already has and it will continue to worsen for our children and grandchildren if we don't change our bad habits.

Eco-Chic Lifestyle Chnage Week: 1 My SMART Goal

My SMART lifestyle change goal is to give up drinking pop and start drinking 3 glasses of water a day in a re-usable water bottle. This lifesyle change is eco-chic because I will stop throwing away several plastic bottles per week, which I feel is great for the environment.

I chose to start using a re-usable water bottle because i started drinking way too much pop and not enough water, causing myself to become dehydrated often. By giving up pop I will hopefully feel more healthy, and also I will be doing the environment a favor by not throwing away multiple bottles per week.

I am very excited to start this process because I have wanted a reason to give up drinking pop. Now, I can help myself and the environment at the same tim. :)

Eye Opener: Ecological Footprints

Before reading about Ecological footprints, I was not sure what it was. I went to wikipedia's ecological footprints and read what it was and found it to be very interesting. I learned that Ecological Footprints is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystem. According to, http://www.rprogress.org/ecological_footprint/footprint_FAQs.htm the Ecological Footprint measures the amount of natural resources an individual, a community, or a country consumes in a given year. Each person living on this planet has a huge impact on how this earth is today.

I took a quiz and thought it was extremely interesting. It asked me what country I lived in, how much meat I ate a week, what kind of house I lived in, how often I use my car and do I carpool, and how often do I fly each year.  At the end, the results told me that if everyone lived a lifestyle like mine, we would need 5.4 planet earths to provide enough resources. This was a huge eye opener for me. I realized I should be more cautious to my everyday lifestyle choices such as what I eat and how much I drive.

After being in Environmental Health for a couple weeks I have already started to change some of my daily routines I felt I should change because of the environment. This quiz really made me realize its not just about recycling, its about driving, eating, flying, living in a house.