Guardians of the Earth:
My Environmental Journey
Kendra Mohle
Introductions Discussion Page My Environmental Story
Hello! My name is Kendra and I am a senior computer engineering major. I don’t have much experience environmentally other than volunteering at a nature center once and just camping and hiking trips. As for career after college, I plan to do embedded software engineering within defense and get a masters in AI to apply to that field.
When I think of the environment, I first think in images and experiences I’ve had in the middle of nowhere and the memories I’ve made there. But also, it brings the idea of sustaining and preserving the environment. I grew up in a household where that was heavily promoted with my dad being a civil engineer with a passion for lowering carbon emissions in construction and a variety of other ways to make the infrastructure for people more eco-friendly. Conversations about that come up often at home as well as solar and different new technologies there and electric vehicles. The environment has shaped my life in meaningful way by being my escape from day-to-day stress and has been a core part of some of my best memories.
Save the Recharge!
As for changing my relationship with the environment, as I have gotten busier in college, I have had less time to enjoy the environment and get out there more, which is definitely something I need to fix. Additionally, I could do more actively to preserve the environment. I do some with regards to carbon but could be more active in other areas.
One thing I am curious to learn more about is renewable energy options, this may be slightly influenced by my electrical energy background, but there are so many ways to create and utilize energy more efficiently and environmentally friendly and I would love to learn more about that.
Interacting With Classmates
Hi Natalie!
It's so cool that your view growing up was that volcano. Getting to see that each morning and get to hike that often much have been such a great experience. I also think you work volunteering at shelters and helping rebuild homes after wildfires is really admirable. Those fires cause so much damage and so many people lose everything in those. I also try to avoid single use plastics but there are so many that are used in food packaging and packaging for most anything you purchase. So many countries are able to succeed with more environmentally friendly packaging and I really wish that we would shift our manufacturing techniques to adopt something like that as well.
Hi Patton,
I really enjoyed reading your post here. I think camping and road trips are a great way to experience nature and connect with it. I really enjoyed the puffin story you shared and I hope you can steal one someday! Also thrifting and buying used goods is a great help to reducing waste and protecting the environment. So many people throw out items of clothing and furniture and other objects that are in near perfect condition and would be useful and make a difference to someone else.
Hi Sara!
I love the ocean and exploring the different plants and animals there is such a great way to connect with nature. Also, I love your point about food preservation. I work for a catering company and the amount of food we have to throw out is ridiculous. Due to all the regulations we can’t send it home with guests, take it back to the restaurant, or donate it and so much food gets wasted due to all the regulations. There is definitely a lot of work that is needed in that area.
Each classmate also wrote their own environmental story in a way that was meant to allow us all to get to know each other better in the beginning of the semester. After reading all of my classmates stories, I chose to respond to three that spoke to me where they wrote something that made me laugh, something that inspired me from their story, or something they said that I related to. My responses to my classmates ca be found below.
Ecological Footprint Assignment
After taking the ecological footprint calculator quiz, If everyone lived like me, we would need 3.6 Earths to sustain human life. I found this number shocking. I was expecting that number to be so much less than it was. I think I live fairly sustainably. I drive an electric vehicle, I grow a lot of produce, we power our house with solar power and practice energy conservation measures with the electricity used in our household. Even with following a lot of the standards for sustainability, we have still more than exceeded the earths needed to support human life and that is an unfortunate sign. I strive to reach sustainability goals and practices and if even that is so far over the carrying capacity of the earth that is very concerning for the future of the planet and ecosystem. Sustainability goals should strive to be sustainable within one Earth but our standardized goals would still put us so far above that one Earth amount and that is a very disappointing and saddening fact to have learned.
The breakdown below shows the breakdown of my footprint by land type and by consumption category. Here we can see that most of my footprint comes from carbon and cropland. The carbon footprint is likely high due to the animal products I eat, the fact that I do drive more than the average person for work and school, and the electricity and resources used at home. My other large land category is cropland which would directly relate to the fact that I do not grow all of my own food and do heavily rely on agriculture as a source of food. This is also reflected in my consumption categories as the highest one is food. Mobility, goods, ad services are categories of my footprint that would contribute to the carbon footprint. The structure of our society makes it hard for people to achieve true sustainability currently but hopefully we can make changes and achieve a sustainable earth before it is too late.
Photo Page from the Sustainability Tour
During the sustainability tour, we learned about and explored Sac State's sustainable garden. We saw different produce being grown, the tiny house project, bee boxes, the composting system, and solar panels. We discussed renewable energy and resources and how composting and this garden supported the sustainability movement here on campus.
Multiple Intelligence Survey
I took a survey to learn about what kinds of intelligence I am strongest in and what my weaknesses in intelligence are to best learn and grow and use the information gathered here to help me find habits and methods to enhance my learning.
My strongest areas of intelligence are Logical/Mathematical and Body/Kinesthetic. This was what I was expecting as far as strongest intelligence types go. I have always had a love for logic and math and that is what inspired me to go into engineering in the first place. Math and logic subjects have also always made a lot more sense to me than any other subject. Kinesthetic also did not surprise me as I have participated in various sports my entire life and have always loved being active and picking up new activities and sports, with the most recent one being I started an intramural flag football team this semester and learned how to play this new sport as well.
My weakest form of intelligence is musical intelligence. This I did anticipate as I have never really done anything with music and while I can often sing along to songs on the radio, I have no knowledge of notes or how to read or play music in any way. As I have not really ever developed this area of knowledge I was not expecting it to be very high.
The rest of the intelligences fell somewhere in the middle in the following order from highest to lowest, Verbal/linguistic, Interpersonal, Visual/Spatial, Intrapersonal, and Naturalistic. With Verbal, I am a very extroverted person and have no problems talking to new people and starting up conversations but sometimes am not in the mood and kind be somewhat awkward depending on the situation so it being high but not the highest makes sense. naturalistic being the lower of the middle areas also does not surprise me as when I took this survey, I do care about the environment but I was not a very active participant and did not notice much with regards to the state of the environment that was not obvious. I was not surprised that my interpersonal intelligence was higher than my intrapersonal intelligence. While I am comfortable with my emotions and dealing with them and have very good self understanding and strong opinions, I am more of a group creature and my mental recharge comes from being surrounded by other people. I can read and understand people very well and am at my best when working with others.
