Reflection: Weeks 1-4

Through these first four weeks of Environmental Health I can honestly say that I have learned way more than I through I ever could in this short of time.  I would like to start out by saying that I never in my life envisioned I would have or use a blog, and now it is part of my everyday life.  When we first learned how to develop a blog we learned multiple things regarding blogging, from blog etiquette to how to create an avatar (an animated version of yourself).  Also within our blogging we learned how to comment on the blogs of our group members.  Commenting is helpful because it provides you with input from your group members on your blog and the things you post on it.  We learned how to manage our blogs by using Google Reader, a website where you can subscribe to your group members blogs as well as any other information you desire that is on the Internet. 

During the third week of class we chose our Read 'n' Seed books, we will be reading these over the course of the next few weeks to inform our classmates (via blog) of the issues and topics our books cover.  The book I chose is Exposed by Mark Schapiro, it is an overview of how the European Union (EU) is addressing the toxic chemicals that are put into everyday products used by people all over the world.  It touches on a set of guidelines that the EU is putting into place to ban these negative substances from use in products throughout Europe.  The catch is that throughout the United States we are doing noting to regulate the ingredients that are impacting us daily, and this book points out the reasons why we continue to cut corners.

At the beginning of this week (week 4) we has class at the new Bagly Outdoor Classroom, where we discussed our ecological footprint quizzes and learned the "ins" and "outs" of the classroom.  Our ecological footprint quizzes were a true 'eye-opener' because it put into perspective how wasteful we really are as a society.  My ecological footprint being almost 4 earths really made me realize how I can do my best to make sure to preserve our earths resources and educate my peer on these issues as well.

This overview once again covers just the first four weeks of this class, and I am extremely excited to see what the remainder of this semester has to offer!