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!