Class Reflection

This is one of my absolute favorite classes I've taken at SPEA. I love blogging as a way of submitting work and showing progress throughout the semester. I think it is a very creative way to get the class to interact with one and other, while allowing students to be creative and write about what they want. Plus its a lot more fun to post a blog for an audience instead of writing a paper for one set of eyes.

I also loved the books we read. My favorite classes have been those that look at a different topic each week. I find it creates an over-arching knowledge base which is very helpful for understanding a broad topic like sustainability.

I learned so much about topics I haven't studied before, and some of those that I have. Such as understanding the issues with sustainable water sourcing and conservation. It is a subject matter I didn't think I was interested in until we began to study it. And doing that blog post about sustainable water appliances helped make me aware of what's out there and what works.

I also really loved reading about transportation and seeing other student's blog posts on that subject. That was another cool thing about this class; my personal project connected with the reading, which connected with the blogs. I learned so much from reading other people's blogs - and I thought it was so cool to see examples on the topics we read about.

This semester, I've learned creating a functioning, sustainable community is very difficult. However, there are so many resources to reach out to for support, knowledge, and idea sharing. Many cities and planners before us have dealt with issues I might face in the future. It is so beneficial to see communities problem solve issues I haven't even thought of as problems yet.

I really, really enjoyed this class. I learned a lot about sustainable communities from it, and through the group project about Bloomington's own progress towards sustainability. Thank you!

Personal Project Reflection

This project was challenging for me, but not in the ways I thought it would be. I was hoping to ride around town every day and gain lots of insight about the challenges and benefits of life on a moped. But in reality, most days it wasn't working. It was in the shop a lot this semester unfortunately, so that kind of stumped my personal progress on this project.

However, it gave me insight into how difficult travel with motorized vehicles can be. I worked tirelessly for hours on the moped, the guys at the shop worked for about 20 hours pro bono just because they were interested in why they couldn't get it to run properly, and it is still having problems.

So the moped was driving me crazy, but I wasn't driving my car. I was committed to using alternate means of travel until I got the moped running. But then I ended my relationship with my partner, and moved out of our house (explaining some absences and absent-mindedness, I hope). And I realized, it is extremely difficult to go through a breakup and not have easy access to independent travel! I could've really used the moped in those weeks where I was in limbo, not fully living in one place or the other. In the end, I used my car far more than I hoped this semester.

All this is to say, I've learned how challenging it is to deal with the ups and downs of life and not have reliable transportation. I hoped to show how using a high efficient moped is manageable and beneficial on a low-income, but I just found out how difficult it is to depend on motorized vehicles. I was trying to find a loophole in the system of modern transportation, or a way to work-around a flawed system that makes people dependent on cars, but what I actually did is prove how deeply flawed it is to depend on anything motorized, not just cars.

When I think about solutions to this problem, a few things come to mind: bikes, bus systems and walking. Of course, living in a walkable city would be a wonderful solution. And I can walk to many things in Bloomington, but not to a grocery store or campus. Or maybe I should say, I would prefer not to. I think that might be a bigger problem for me than I've realized in the past. It is inconvenient to ride my bike when its cold and snowing. It is inconvenient to walk to the bus stop and take a bus everyday. It is inconvenient to spend two hours walking everyday. But, it is far more inconvenient to have a broken moped in my garage and not know how to fix it. It is far more inconvenient to not know if my moped is going to run today or not. It is far more inconvenient to rely on unreliable means of transportation.

So, what I've learned this semester, is that my ideas of what is inconvenient need to change. I am far too reliable on my car, and I need to branch out and use my alternate and reliable means of transportation to get around more.

Or, maybe I just need to buy things that work! ;)

Thanks for reading!