As a teenager going through an ever lasting identity-crisis and uncertainty about what I want to do with my life in every sense (socially, academically, physically), pinning down specific beliefs of mine is really difficult for me. I know that I believe strongly in the importance of nature to help humans understand both themselves and the world itself. I have lots of stories about nature that I am considering, and a few beliefs I could use to frame them, but it’s still pretty wishy-washy. Once, when I was 12, I participated in a summer camp where we went spelunking (caving), and when we were deep inside of the cave, we all turned out our headlights and awoke to a world of darkness where we were left alone to think. The summer between junior and senior year I snuck out of my house to lay on the driveway and watch a meteor shower, only to be scared back inside by an early morning paper boy. Once, on a pilgrimage with my church, I went on a two hour hike up and down huge dunes of sand and wearily was presented with the beauty of lake Michigan in front of me. I have plenty of other stories like these that I think I could tell somewhat eloquently, I’m just struggling to come up with a specific belief. Maybe that nature gives us an opportunity to self-reflect, which helps us grow as humans? A second belief could be that nature connects us all when we stop to admire its beauty, and it can bring any people together.
For my passion blog, I don’t have any real desire to keep writing about just hiking, so I’m trying to think of ways to frame different activities involving nature with how the environment and climate affect us all. I read an article about how climate change is changing our National Parks, and I found it extremely fascinating. Writing about various topics like this and pollution and how it affects out-door recreation is basically what I’m considering. I think this fits into the updated assignment.
Two ideas for my CI blog that I got from reading the list included writing about college towns and writing about the environment in terms of food. The first is because I grew up in State College and now live in State College as a student. I could write for pages about town and gown and how universities affect the lives of residents in college towns. I also could write a lot about how much of a sheltered environment college towns supply, especially when almost all of your classes in high school included other children of professors. Many advanced class is my high school were full of extremely liberal students, and even Penn State’s campus is much more diverse in terms of ideologies than those classes were for me. Honestly I could probably write multiple CI blogs about college towns! For environment and food, I am actually taking a geography class specifically about these topics, so I assume I will quickly have a lot to say about how the two interact.
This I Believe: I think you have a lot of personal experience that you want to tie an overall belief you have in nature too. You may want to consider a person journey with nature you’ve had within yourself? Have you always felt a connection to nature and its beauty? Has your transition in life corresponded with your belief in nature at all? I know this is going to sound super cliche, but a seed into a flower analogy comes to mind. People often think about a plant and things in nature as a growing process. Is that something you’ve experienced? While I seed needs certain things to grow, do you feel your life has been hindered or accelerated by different things? I realize how “idealized” the questions I asked were, but you might want to consider a unique spin on something in those regards. I think your belief stems from appreciation for something that often people don’t regard. I think your self reflection and your identity questions could go really well together to form a belief.
Passion Blog: I think changing your passion blog in this way is going to be really effective. I think you will be able to draw on current changes as well as personal experience to engage an audience as well as inform them on something that is affecting people in various aspects of life.
Civic Issues: I think the college town idea is really good! As someone who has grown up here and experienced life in State College from both sides, I think you could offer up really credible thoughts. I think you can really drawn on aspects that both pertain to people who are here regularly and those that are just here for education. More than that, incorporating aspects of culture and environment could acknowledge things that some people fail to recognize. I think you will have enough topics and information to sustain this blog well. I look forward to reading it!