Tag: Education

Sustainability: Rethinking Our Connection With Nature and How We Go About Affecting It

Ivan MartinezLeave a comment

It is crucial that we incorporate sustainability into our societies to ensure that we can continue to develop and thrive without creating extensive harm, both to the planet and to our communities. Yet, sustainability continues to be something that is not fully understood by many and ends up falling in line with being a trend rather than an entire mindset change. To create a lasting impact, there not only needs to be action taken by companies and citizens alike, but there also needs to be education put in place that allows the citizens to truly understand what it means to be sustainable, and what actions will actually have an impact versus which are being done simply as a means to appear more “eco-friendly”.

The idea of sustainability that we most often refer to is the “avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.” In other words, the focus is on how we can minimize the amount of resources we consume or the amount of damage that we produce so as to not interfere with the viability of future generations. This has caused us to focus more on reduction, especially of greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions, yet this emphasis has also provided companies, as well as citizens, with the ability to mitigate their responsibility thanks to carbon offsets. Carbon offsets are meant to be a way of neutralizing your carbon footprint by allowing you to fund environment-oriented projects that are focused on reducing greenhouse gasses, protecting forests, promoting renewable energy, and many more. The problem is that now you don’t necessarily have to reduce any of your own carbon footprint or live a more sustainable lifestyle whatsoever as long as you purchase enough carbon offsets to make you seem more “eco-friendly”, because the reality is that they haven’t been proven to make much of a difference when it comes to climate change, and many carbon offsets have been found to be scams. Continue reading “Sustainability: Rethinking Our Connection With Nature and How We Go About Affecting It” →

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What Makes Someone Successful

Lawrence KotovetsLeave a comment

Skyline

My father was a violinist. My uncle played the saxophone. My cousin’s grandfather sang and played the accordion and the piano in a restaurant he owned.

I felt that I was born with musical talent. So, I decided that I would learn how to sing. I gathered my friends and enrolled into a singing class at my community college. We learned scales, went to karaoke, got a practice room to practice in daily, and took advantage of all office hours. I was ambitious and put in a lot of effort. I took singing classes for a year and a half and even took a couple of private lessons. And I’ve got to tell you…I still can’t sing. As much effort as I put in and as much musical I believed I had, the other classmates were years ahead of me. They were improving faster. And it made me wonder:

What is it about some people that makes them just so good at things?

and

Is there anyway to tell if someone is more likely to be successful in life?

But first, what does “Success” even mean? Continue reading “What Makes Someone Successful” →

How Can We Create a Better Future?

Lawrence KotovetsLeave a comment

The Rocket of Wonder

Children are our future.  All of the work that we do, whether indirectly or directly, will end up in the hands of the next generation.  The future is prevailing generations, and so to create a better future we need to focus on creating more leaders, and innovators.  This article is an idea of how we can create better scientists, doctors, artists, writers, educators, you name it; through the analogy of the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. We’ll see how inspiriting children is not the most important thing, and how we can make STEM fields more fun by making them more awesome.

Continue reading “How Can We Create a Better Future?” →