Project Reflection
This project consisted of a lot of different components. To start, we studied environmental ethics (sustainability, environmental justice, the land ethic, preservationism, etc.) and how we interact with the land, whether that be through harvesting its resources to supply the world energy or through appreciating nature intrinsically, and working to protect it. From there, our focus shifted more onto energy and what different forms of power plants and refineries entail for everything involved, including the surrounding communities, the energy companies, and the environment. We reflected on how our own environmental ethics can determine our stances on energy production through debates and journals. Finally, we were able to express our environmental ethic and how that affects places that are important to us in our sense of place essays, in which we incorporated elements of nature writing and the grand style, which we learned about in class.
What was most challenging for me in writing my essay was determining how I interact with the places that are important to me. I knew which places were important to me, but I had trouble articulating exactly why they were important. Through the lens of my environmental ethics, though, (which were sustainability and environmental justice), I could finally determine why they seemed so precious to me. Generally an opinionated person, I’ve never had to rely so much on previous material to form my perspective. It seemed a little backward— while I usually have already formed my perspective, then have to use evidence to back it up, this time I had to do the opposite, finding evidence and content first and using that to take a stance.
That said, I was most proud of my essay. What I worked on the hardest to integrate and what I think shone through the most in my paper were my environmental ethics of sustainability and environmental justice. I did this by expressing that a lot of the resources we have we take for granted. For example, when I was talking about my connection to the ice rink I said, “As I pass through the lobby to get to the locker room, I can hear the sound of the generator in the supply closet, that omnipresent humming that powers the refrigeration unit that maintains a slab of ice 3/4 of an inch thick. It’s a noise that’s easy to drown out with the constant cacophony of pucks slamming into the boards and skates carving into the ice.” Here, I expressed that sometimes we are so preoccupied with enjoying the benefits of so much energy production that we are distracted from what goes into providing those benefits, and the fact that others might not have access to them.
What was most challenging for me in writing my essay was determining how I interact with the places that are important to me. I knew which places were important to me, but I had trouble articulating exactly why they were important. Through the lens of my environmental ethics, though, (which were sustainability and environmental justice), I could finally determine why they seemed so precious to me. Generally an opinionated person, I’ve never had to rely so much on previous material to form my perspective. It seemed a little backward— while I usually have already formed my perspective, then have to use evidence to back it up, this time I had to do the opposite, finding evidence and content first and using that to take a stance.
That said, I was most proud of my essay. What I worked on the hardest to integrate and what I think shone through the most in my paper were my environmental ethics of sustainability and environmental justice. I did this by expressing that a lot of the resources we have we take for granted. For example, when I was talking about my connection to the ice rink I said, “As I pass through the lobby to get to the locker room, I can hear the sound of the generator in the supply closet, that omnipresent humming that powers the refrigeration unit that maintains a slab of ice 3/4 of an inch thick. It’s a noise that’s easy to drown out with the constant cacophony of pucks slamming into the boards and skates carving into the ice.” Here, I expressed that sometimes we are so preoccupied with enjoying the benefits of so much energy production that we are distracted from what goes into providing those benefits, and the fact that others might not have access to them.