"Outdoors" is not an official category of experiential learning in the Honors program, but I felt the need to include it here anyway. On their website, the UW Honors program says of experiential learning: "Participation in activities outside of the classroom enhances and enriches the undergraduate experience, helping students connect their education to the larger world." The idea is that the best way to learn is by going out into the world and getting your hands dirty. Instead of confining your education to the walls of the classroom, you choose to engage in critical learning everywhere you go. Over the years, I have learned just as much from being out in nature as I have in any classroom. These lessons have shaped my worldview permanently and will stay with me long after I forget how to solve organic reactions or write an expository essay.
There is a certain feeling that tends to accompany me whenever I go to these wild places. There is something about being surrounded by such vastness and ancientness that never fails to bring it out. I've felt it in my neuroscience classes as we learned about the immeasurable complexity of the brain, which contains more synapses than there are stars in the Milky Way. I've felt it in my biology and chemistry classes, learning about the infinitesimal mechanisms that drive life in all of its diversity and resilience. I've felt it in astronomy classes, realizing the millions of chance events that lined up to allow our planet to form, the astounding improbability of our existence on this pale blue dot. It is a feeling of wonder and connection, a humbling reminder that there is so much more to this world than the limited personal narratives that we all live in. We each have a responsibility to protect this world and each other. There are countless stories beyond the ones that we are familiar with, all it takes to discover is a curious mind and a willingness to listen. This perspective drives my exploration of the world, and it provides a context for my education as well as my goals moving forward. Our planet is strange and wonderful and full of mystery. If I spend my whole life seeking out these mysteries, it would be a life well spent.
There is a certain feeling that tends to accompany me whenever I go to these wild places. There is something about being surrounded by such vastness and ancientness that never fails to bring it out. I've felt it in my neuroscience classes as we learned about the immeasurable complexity of the brain, which contains more synapses than there are stars in the Milky Way. I've felt it in my biology and chemistry classes, learning about the infinitesimal mechanisms that drive life in all of its diversity and resilience. I've felt it in astronomy classes, realizing the millions of chance events that lined up to allow our planet to form, the astounding improbability of our existence on this pale blue dot. It is a feeling of wonder and connection, a humbling reminder that there is so much more to this world than the limited personal narratives that we all live in. We each have a responsibility to protect this world and each other. There are countless stories beyond the ones that we are familiar with, all it takes to discover is a curious mind and a willingness to listen. This perspective drives my exploration of the world, and it provides a context for my education as well as my goals moving forward. Our planet is strange and wonderful and full of mystery. If I spend my whole life seeking out these mysteries, it would be a life well spent.
What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use - Ada Limón
All these great barns out here in the outskirts, black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass. They look so beautifully abandoned, even in use. You say they look like arks after the sea’s dried up, I say they look like pirate ships, and I think of that walk in the valley where J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said, No. I believe in this connection we all have to nature, to each other, to the universe. And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there, low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss, and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets, woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so. So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky, its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name though we knew they were really just clouds-- disorderly, and marvelous, and ours. |