“Eating is an Agricultural Act”?: The Ethics of Food in America
During this project we dived into the chemistry of food and the ethics of how its grown and delivered to us. In chemistry we learned about macronutrients such as fats, protein, and carbs. We also looked at calories and the energy you get from them. Using this knowledge we created our own dish and manipulated an ingredient for a result. For my experiment I made banana bread and manipulated the amount of baking soda that was put in it to see how it would affect the density of the bread. On the humanities side we read the book The Omnivore's Dilemma. The book took us through the process of how food is grown and then offered alternatives to the current system. Some of us also got to visit James Ranch to see in person how sustainable farming works. Other sources, included a documentary that was very similar to the book we read. After gathering this information we wrote an essay on our personal food ethics.
The interdisciplinary nature of the project was interesting. It was cool to see how the science of food can be intertwined with the ethics of where it comes from. At times it was overwhelming because there was a lot of information. Other times I didn’t really feel much connection between the projects. The reason for the disconnect was that we would be focused on the different products of the project and I was struggle to try to tie the two together. Other than that combining the projects enhanced my learning.
My main takeaway from studying food academically was that I need to be more conscious of the choices I make. I always thought that I made good choices with the food I ate especially because I have Celiac Disease. Now I better understand the chemical impacts certain food has on my body. I also realize that there’s more to food than what you eat. How food is grown and shipped is important because of its environmental, ethical, and health impacts.
Your Life on Earth: Philosophizing Purpose and Place in the #21C
For this project dove into our own philosophy. We looked at different works such as Thoreau and Fuller. One of these pieces that stuck with me was the Thoreau poem Simplicity. The reason it is so impactful is that it something that I hear a lot in soccer. Coaches always say to keep things simple or play the simple ball, or do the simple things good. In soccer the best way to execute plays is to do the simple things. We also read the book Into the Wild, which was the main part of our project. Throughout the book we journeyed through the Alaskan wilderness with Chris McCandless and got a window into his life and his reasons for going to Alaska. I felt like I had a lot in common with McCandless, we both lived in our own heads and thought that we could do anything. The biggest different, however, was that I respected the wilderness and I feel that McCandless wanted to conquer it. Using these reading materials, I took my project to my experience backpacking in Leadville and I used a lot of Into the Wild as a base for my ideas. I wrote about when I got HACE hiking up Mt. Massive and for the art piece I learned how to do wood burning and burned a picture of the mountain into the wood.
Some insights I got from this project was that what we do now matters. When we were studying existentialism, I realized the amount of time wasted on wondering if anything really matters. To me this shouldn’t matter, what matters is what we choose to do in the present and how it affects others around us. True, what we do won’t affect the universe because we are small and insignificant to it, but we are significant to each other and that’s what truly matters. I also learned that human connection is an important part of our lives. In Into the Wild McCandless set out to find meaning and to be self-reliant, it wasn’t until he lay dying did he realize that meaning and happiness is only real when shared. I agree with the conclusion, it turns out that no matter how self reliant you are you still need people. Before I got HACE I thought that I didn’t need anybody and if I did I was a burden. Having this mentality made it impossible for me to ask for help from others. Doing this isolated me from others and even though I felt self reliant, I was sad and alone. After getting HACE, I got more comfortable relying on others and I am much happier for it. My current intellectual quandaries are a lot more morbid. During LINK I saw some unfortunate and violent manners of death. After seeing the body of a murder victim and a accidental death, I wonder more about our culture around death. I also wonder if there is anything after death. I also feel like nothing can truly happen for a reason (by a higher power) because what could possible the plan for someone's death. The deaths I saw have definitely made me think more about life as well. I realize how precious life is and in a second it can be taken away. |
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The Labor Project
At the beginning of this project, we looked into the labor issues of the industrial revolution and how it shaped labor today. We looked into child labor, politics and movements, living conditions, and other issues that were presented at the time. We then wrote an in-class timed writing on a specific historical topic. I wrote mine on the political movements and strikes and unions. I looked into the violence caused by them and the benefits they brought. The next thing we looked at was the labor issues of today such as outsourcing and the effects on American workers. We also looked at specific concepts of labor and the economy. For example, we learn about and did a presentation on the Gig economy. The Gig economy is a economy of workers who do temp jobs week to week as their source of income. For our presentation on the Gig economy, we made a mock version on it using candy as rent and income. After these presentations, we choose the topic for our podcast. My group and I did a podcast on education and how it hasn’t helped students prepare for the workforce. After completing our podcast we then prepared for exhibition and created activities for the podcasts that would be played out loud.
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1. What was the greatest challenge you faced in the project and what did you do to overcome that challenge?
The greatest challenge we faced was the sound not working well and our podcast continued to get cut off when we tried to download it. The sound was frustrating because when we had it played out loud it would fluctuate in volume. As a result of this we needed to edit the sound so that it wasn't too loud or too quiet. Once we did that the podcast was much better. Also when we tried to download our podcast it would cut down the time and cut off in the middle of the podcast. This cause a lot of stress because we had no idea why it was doing that. Once we were able to download the podcast through trial and error we were able to breath a lot easier.
2. If you could go back and do the project again what would you do differently and why?
I would defiantly leave more time to edit and put together the podcast so we wouldn’t be on such a time crunch. Some ways of doing this could be that as we recorded our lines and interviews we put it in Soundtrap and put the podcast together at the same time as we recorded. We could’ve also better scheduled our interviews to leave more time to write the script and record. Using these methods we might’ve been able to finish our podcast on time and edit the sound and other errors before we presented it.
3. What is the greatest insight you gained about the state of labor issues today? Think back through the entire project, historical context, the presentations, globalization, and your podcast production.
The greatest insight I gained about the state of labor issues today was how the education system doesn’t benefit current workforce needs. For instance, the system hasn’t changed since it’s inception and through our interviews, it didn’t help individual anomalies and it didn’t benefit individuals.Due to this fact, students could buck the system and dropout or constantly struggle. If they dropped out they would be suck in a feeling of inadequacy and lacking the necessary skills to keep a sustainable job. In the past, low skilled jobs could be a middle-class job and people could benefit without and education. Now that these jobs are outsourced workers need higher education in order to have a middle-class job. Due to the lacking features of the education system, this can be hard for some. These lacking features are an outdated system and lack of funding. Ways to fix that could be to move away from teaching standardized tests and having businesses invest in schools and essentially buy their workers.
4. What are you most proud of in your project? This could be something very small and not visible to me or the audience. Help me understand why you are so proud of this piece.
I am most proud of the content and flow of our podcast. I feel like we gained a lot of insight through our research and interviews. I wish we could put our entire interviews in our podcast because the content was incredible and the perspectives gave a 360-degree view of the problems people see in education. I also think our podcast discussed more than just problems, but solutions as well and I really liked that because it gave a note of hope and that’s how we wanted it to flow.
5. Explain one way you grew as a student during this project. It is not when we are comfortable and know how to do a task that we grow, it is often when we are the most challenged or have struggled through something that we grow. So what will you be better at now?
I grew in my ability to trust my group mates. In the past when I would lead a project or be apart of one, I felt like I would either take too much control or too little. I defiantly would try to do all the work on projects because I wanted it to be perfect. However, throughout this project, I had competent group mates and they did such a good job with the work they did. I learned that I could trust them to share the workload and do a good job. I was hard at first because I wanted to do a lot of things my way because I thought it would be the right way when in reality that wasn’t always true and their input made our podcast so much better.
The greatest challenge we faced was the sound not working well and our podcast continued to get cut off when we tried to download it. The sound was frustrating because when we had it played out loud it would fluctuate in volume. As a result of this we needed to edit the sound so that it wasn't too loud or too quiet. Once we did that the podcast was much better. Also when we tried to download our podcast it would cut down the time and cut off in the middle of the podcast. This cause a lot of stress because we had no idea why it was doing that. Once we were able to download the podcast through trial and error we were able to breath a lot easier.
2. If you could go back and do the project again what would you do differently and why?
I would defiantly leave more time to edit and put together the podcast so we wouldn’t be on such a time crunch. Some ways of doing this could be that as we recorded our lines and interviews we put it in Soundtrap and put the podcast together at the same time as we recorded. We could’ve also better scheduled our interviews to leave more time to write the script and record. Using these methods we might’ve been able to finish our podcast on time and edit the sound and other errors before we presented it.
3. What is the greatest insight you gained about the state of labor issues today? Think back through the entire project, historical context, the presentations, globalization, and your podcast production.
The greatest insight I gained about the state of labor issues today was how the education system doesn’t benefit current workforce needs. For instance, the system hasn’t changed since it’s inception and through our interviews, it didn’t help individual anomalies and it didn’t benefit individuals.Due to this fact, students could buck the system and dropout or constantly struggle. If they dropped out they would be suck in a feeling of inadequacy and lacking the necessary skills to keep a sustainable job. In the past, low skilled jobs could be a middle-class job and people could benefit without and education. Now that these jobs are outsourced workers need higher education in order to have a middle-class job. Due to the lacking features of the education system, this can be hard for some. These lacking features are an outdated system and lack of funding. Ways to fix that could be to move away from teaching standardized tests and having businesses invest in schools and essentially buy their workers.
4. What are you most proud of in your project? This could be something very small and not visible to me or the audience. Help me understand why you are so proud of this piece.
I am most proud of the content and flow of our podcast. I feel like we gained a lot of insight through our research and interviews. I wish we could put our entire interviews in our podcast because the content was incredible and the perspectives gave a 360-degree view of the problems people see in education. I also think our podcast discussed more than just problems, but solutions as well and I really liked that because it gave a note of hope and that’s how we wanted it to flow.
5. Explain one way you grew as a student during this project. It is not when we are comfortable and know how to do a task that we grow, it is often when we are the most challenged or have struggled through something that we grow. So what will you be better at now?
I grew in my ability to trust my group mates. In the past when I would lead a project or be apart of one, I felt like I would either take too much control or too little. I defiantly would try to do all the work on projects because I wanted it to be perfect. However, throughout this project, I had competent group mates and they did such a good job with the work they did. I learned that I could trust them to share the workload and do a good job. I was hard at first because I wanted to do a lot of things my way because I thought it would be the right way when in reality that wasn’t always true and their input made our podcast so much better.
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