I was excited, though a little apprehensive, at the beginning of the semester. Though there was no pressure to cram for a test, it was really up to me to stay on top of my required blogs and projects. For the most part, I am pretty driven - and mostly by internal motivation. So, generally this was not a problem. However, my general workload this semester was so high, I was afraid I was falling behind at times.
Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed the co-teaching, co-learning concept of this class. I loved reading my fellow classmates' blogs. So many times, I walked away thinking, wow, I never would have heard of this if they hadn't written that blog! Similarly, I enjoyed writing my blog pieces, especially for the readings. Maybe that is surprising? I'm not sure, but I felt like it allowed me to explore some ideas that we might otherwise not have discussed. It gave me a creative outlet of sorts to express my vision for sustainable communities. And, I got to indulge in discussing my home-away-from-home, Indy, on more than one occasion. Since I think Indy is doing some cool things lately, I really enjoyed talking about the city.
As for the other components, I found the outside experiences very useful. In fact, I wish I could have attended more just for personal enrichment! Each of my outside experiences was pretty different and they all provided me with some great information.
My personal project was a great opportunity to try out something I'd been thinking about for a while. I feel like I could have done more with it - tried to use even less plastic, blogged more, etc. I had wanted to contact various companies and encourage them to use alternatives to plastic or to stop using plastic windows on their products (I mean why? Isn't a picture good enough?). But, unfortunately, I did not get a chance to do so. (Though I have in the past...but that's another story). Though at times I felt my actions were lacking, I will say this project was constantly on my mind. If I purchased something fairly unnecessary that was in plastic, I immediately was thinking about why I was doing so and whether I could make different choices in the future to avoid such a purchase.
Finally, the group project was pretty challenging. I found it difficult to wrap my head around what exactly we were trying to do for several weeks. When we finally had some concrete information, it felt like it wasn't enough. I felt a little let down that we did not have a more tangible (ex. GIS) deliverable for BCOS. BUT, I do feel like our group did a fantastic job. It was just the nature of our categories and our personal areas of expertise.
I don't have too many suggestions for changes, but there are a couple of things which come to mind:
- Perhaps put more emphasis on the policy instruments used to make these changes in sustainable communities happen. In the real world, we will probably need to think about such things in a more specific way.
- Don't spend too much time on blogs - we were supposed to read them anyway.
- Provide a little more guidance on the group project. I know we could ask questions, but often I didn't know what questions to ask.
Overall, I really loved being a part of this class! I met some colleagues I otherwise wouldn't have and enjoyed their varying perspectives on the different topics!
Until next time,
Katie :)
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