Job skills I learned at school

 Tons!!!

I've worked in groups more than I ever thought possible. I didn't think that I would enjoy group work, but I really do! It's amazing how much more you can get done with a group. Some of my most impressive work was always group work because I didn't do it by myself. I find that I'm also much more motivated to finish projects in a timely manner when working in a group. I didn't really think too much about it until I recently had a choice to work on a project with a group or independently. In the future, I would definitely encourage students given the same to choose to work on the project in a group. It does take more work to communicate and coordinate, but especially with recent advances in technology, it's not actually that hard, and you have the opportunity to be so much more productive. 

Really if you delegate specific pieces to different members of the group, you end up being responsible for managing your own part. Then it's just making sure that you're all on the same page and bringing it together cohesively.

So there you go! Teamwork, communication, online platforms for teamwork, coordinating and managing projects. Obviously there's even more than that, but I never imagined that I would be the kind of student to choose a group project over an independent project, so that's something that really sticks with me about this semester.

How I want to use my degree

I imagine that human reasoning is just as complicated as Earth systems models. There's the influence of time and experience, and there's biochemistry. I'm betting that each of these factors is both additive as well as multiplicative depending on the circumstances. I'm not saying this to be difficult but to explain my difficulty. Honestly, when asked how I want to use my degree, I cannot say, "This is the very specific job that I want in this very specific career path with these very specific tasks and responsibilities." I have been alive long enough to know that I am rearranging my choices frequently, as needed. Usually, that is for the better. 

So when I am asked how I want to use my degree... I want to represent science with integrity. I want to contribute to the use of the best available scientific knowledge to better manage the health of the planet and humans. I'd love to contribute to scientific knowledge, but I'd be happy to be able to use the knowledge and make it understandable to others. 

Explaining why seems just as complicated, but for me, it just seems like a good way to take care of people. It's only after studying environmental science for a while that I have a greater appreciation for the dramatic changes that humans are causing the Earth. Before this understanding, I had a different understanding that we were making ourselves sick, and I wanted to understand how we were doing that and how I could help.