For my quantitative and scientific perspective, I took an environmental science course focused on the impact, behavior, and management of humans and coastal environments. I had never taken an environmental science course before, so I was excited to learn more about it and see if I could take anything away back into my future career or life.
This course posed multiple challenges throughout the semester, but none based on the content of the course. For example, I was not expecting this course to be run more like a public speaking course. Our major assignments were presenting speeches, which our grades were based on how well we delivered different types of speeches rather than the content in them. This was tricky for several reasons. First, since I did not have a background with this type of content, I did not have confidence that I was understanding the concepts correctly, and second, all of our speeches were presented via Zoom. I learned very quickly that I had to stare directly into the camera, something very unnatural to me, while delivering the speeches in order to achieve the important eye contact element of presentations.