UCSD GELS SIO/DC 2019

July 7th, 2019 The First Day in D.C. by Robert Burch Today is Sunday and we are just over halfway through our Global Environmental Leadership and Sustainability program. Our day today was full of activities such as visiting the zoo, an informative monument tour, and detailed work on our issue papers to present to our representatives. No matter what we did, all of it was exciting and interesting. The group outside of the National Zoo. Our first activity on our first full day in D.C. was leaving immediately after breakfast to take the metro and then walk the rest of the way to the Smithsonian National Zoo. The group was given around two hours where we got to walk around the zoo, look at the animals there, and learn about them and their place in our world. The animals there were very diverse and fascinating to learn about and helped remind me of the importance of protecting biodiversity in the ecosystem. Sadly, however, a lot of the animals and plants we saw there were...

Saturday, July 6 2019 As we shift our focus and time zone, and arrive in Washington DC, we have taken the time to think back on the best moments of the past week and the anticipation of what is to come. Here are the thoughts of the participants as they reflect and prepare for what lies ahead. LOOKING BACK -- Submitted by Audrey Dickenson: One of my favorite activities from the past week was the crash course about public speaking on Tuesday. We worked in teams of five to address fluency, body language, and filler words. For each of these areas, we delivered one-minute speeches on randomly selected topics; at the end of the night, we evaluated overall quality in individual two-minute speeches to the entire group. I had an amazing time during this session because I’m rather opinionated and a natural storyteller. With my captive audience, I delivered hot takes on everything from childhood nightmares to the movie The Silence of the Lambs. When I received my evaluations from my ...

July 5th, 2019 Day 6: One Last Ride (Kind of) by Dexter Lim It is both exciting and melancholic to write this on our group's last day at UCSD. In the 6 days here, I have met some of the most dedicated, forward-thinking, and involved people in my entire life. During the week, through research and team-building activities, I feel that the group’s camaraderie and trust has become much stronger, and that we have all been working together towards the common goal set forth by this program: to learn to become responsible and well-informed leaders in sustainability.  Today, we made a monumental step towards that focus as we drafted our issue papers, as well as learning how to research our congressional representatives and their political stances. I personally found my research into the numerous bills introduced and cosigned by my representative, Susie Lee, frustrating as I could not find any decisive policy to help protect the environment that she had endorsed. Additional resea...

July 4th, 2019 Day 5: Fun in the Sun by Guadalupe Torres During the course of the week, I’ve been learning so many new things and meeting incredible people. I have had the chance to go on ships, visit a freezer, and practice my presentation skills. Due to all that has been happening this week, we have not been outside much. Even though the ocean is right next to Scripps, we still had not gotten the opportunity to go in. I come from Imperial Valley so going to the beach is really out of the ordinary. I was especially excited to go in because of how hot it gets at home . Today we finally got the chance to go to the beach to do some data collection. We first got a lecture about Congress 101 which will be very helpful for our trip to Washington D.C. this weekend.  After learning about Congress 101, two of our instructors, Kara and Maya, taught us about data collection and how to analyze different data, as well as teaching us about longshore currents. They also showed us ...

July 3rd, 2019 Day 4: Policy, Microplastics, and Paleoclimatology by Audrey Dickinson We spent most of our Wednesday presenting on climate change and learning about microplastics and environmental policy. Though these subjects are ostensibly why we are all here, the most engaging lesson took place beyond our quaint classroom at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Shane the paleoclimatologist was kind enough to bring us inside the ice core lab: the freezing room in Scripps where samples of ancient ice are stored and analyzed.  Audrey and her research group "Heat" present the environmental and economic implications of climate change. Before we toured the lab, Shane gave a short presentation describing his work analyzing the history of the Earth. It was incredible to learn how paleoclimatologists test tiny bubbles of gas trapped in ice and examine patterns of layering, then use this data to make inferences about the composition of the atmosphere and temp...

July 3rd, 2019 Day 4: Building Trust by Hannah Griswold Today we presented our data analysis to our peers and experienced a series of educational lectures. These lecture topics included ice cores and microplastics. In addition, we had the privilege of touring Hannah touring the ice core lab at SIO. the ice core freezer and held a 20,000 years old sample in our hands. The educational experiences throughout the day were extremely valuable, however the highlight of my day was the Trust Circle Activity.  During the Trust Circle Activity, every group member shared a personal story as a demonstration of their willingness to be open. I loved this activity because everyone was so accepting, engaged, and supportive. Many people shared extremely sensitive experiences, while everyone else listened attentively. Personally, I am less inclined to share about my own life, which I was determined to change this year. During the GELS Biosphere 2 Program that I participated in last...

July 2nd, 2019 Day 3: Practicing Presentation Skills by Ashwin Rhodes Today we did lots of activities and learned many things, but the most impactful part of today was the presentation workshop we did this evening. This evening we broke into three groups so that we could practice for our presentations tomorrow, and in our groups we went to three stations. The first station focused on the tone and pacing of your speech. We were given a piece of paper with a prompt on it and we then had to talk about it for one minute, with no preparation. I got to talk about cars which I love, so my speech was easy and I did pretty well , except that I forgot to look at Mrs. Moerder at all. Everyone in my group did well, which made me feel better for tomorrow when we have to give a presentation together. At this station, I learned to better connect with my group as we learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  At the second station, the focus was filler words like "umm"...