Hey! My name is Rachel and I’m a sophomore from about 15 minutes south of Washington, DC, majoring in Political Science with a minor in Energy, Environmental, and Mineral Economics. I’m taking this class, like most of you all, to satisfy a GQ, but also because the topic is genuinely something that I am interested in. When I was a sophomore in high school I was required to participate in my school’s science fair and when looking for a project idea, I stumbled on one relating to the resilience of certain ecosystems. Ever since then I’ve been overly interested in the environment and sustainability and it’s led me to various internship programs and even to a Youth Environmental Conference in Costa Rica where I was given the opportunity to give a presentation to Al Gore. What I understand of sustainability and resilience is that they are both a measure of strength. I think that resilience is a beautiful, naturally occurring process and sustainability is something that we can help attribute to.

I love watching TED talks and here is a pretty cool one on environmental folklore with regards to humans and their decisions and then what impact those decisions have.