As I went through college, I started to learn that I wanted to learn more about the environment. This started after I took some Oceanography classes back in 2013-2014. I wasn't in the Interdisciplinary Arts program yet, but I had already started to learn about how to think critically about the environment. Problems that arise in science also need to be fixed by thinking outside of the box, finding creative solutions to the problems. As I started my I&S career a few years later I realized how imperative it is to learn these two skills.

One of my first papers I wrote about in the environment genre was my Wetlands Appreciation study. I was still new to research papers, so this work does not have a lot of extra information in it. However, I started to learn what it meant to think critically about a solution. In my paper I did research on how a biome is important to the planet and its people. I use a lot of research to then show what I thought that data meant in my conclusion. Most notably how wetlands have provided fresh water for people in Washington State and how many species are given a place to live. My biggest takeaway from this paper was understanding how the University of Washington campus rebuilt the wetlands near its structures. They did this for future research, educational purposes, and general local enjoyment. The idea of creating a natural biome stuck with me for several years until I wrote my second artifact with more creative thinking in mind.

In 2023 I was in a class that focused on urban planning for towns and cities. I never thought about city planning before but then I realized that the future of environmental health is people living with nature in harmony, not destroying it. My second artifact, Building the future with Salmon In Mind, focused on developing a city without destroying the local salmon population. This was a group project with three other people where we all showed creative solutions to fixing a growing population. The City of Lynwood had several employees come to our class for this presentation and my main focus was on scriber lake in Lynwood. I compared two other cities, Yonkers in New York and the Ballard Locks of Seattle, to show critically how nature tourism helped their cities flourish. I gave several creative solutions to why saving salmon rivers was a good idea including presentations of native tribes, fishing competitions at scriber, and scientific grants from the government to study ecosystems. From this paper I had more experience in my critical and creative thinking. While this was a springboard off of other ideas, I wanted to see what I could do without other work or studies to pull from.

My final and most successful paper was written in 2024 called Ecological Anxiety on the Green Front. This was in a class that focused on anxiety that people have received living in a world with climate change. This seemed like an interesting topic to me and something that hit very close to home– Our final paper was a research topic of our choosing that linked anxiety to climate change. I realized that the ones who are trying to fix climate change are more likely to have anxiety about the climate, they clearly care enough to want to fix the world. My paper focused on if workers on the front lines of the climate fight receive extra health benefits or more help with mental health. I came into this paper hoping this was true, but I quickly realized that there is not enough data to prove one way or the other. My critical and creative thinking came into play here as I tried to find anything that could help me. Ultimately, I ended up comparing green workers to doctors in a hospital. After all, doctors know best about mental health, but they are in extreme situations every day sometimes with little help. By the end of this paper, I learned that I creatively found a problem that people aren't studying yet. I then found a solution by critically comparing it to another problem that has more data and research.