Post-Mortem

This class has been intense, wonderful, enlightening, informative, and exhausting. And I loved it all. I think that the Learning Journals were a great way to get my thoughts out on what was going on with school and hope to continue this practice in the following quarters. I think it would be great to incorporate them into BGI’s curriculum from day one. Another valuable part of this was branding myself. It felt a bit rushed trying to create my brand but it was incredibly useful to think about how I wanted to put myself out there to the public. The tagging exercise was an incredibly powerful tool to teach me how others saw me and how I perceived myself.

I also appreciated the BGI beats and enjoyed reading others’ blogs. I don’t think I’ll continue my blog the way it is but I hope to use my new found skills to create a Sustainable Fort Lewis blog. I plan on creating the template for one with a couple of possible entries to present to the Public Affairs Office in hopes of persuading them.

As I’m sure everyone else has pointed out, the social change part of the class was what we were all craving and we all loved. This class brought such an empowering view to social change and really made me feel like I could change things now. Learning to create a video was also a great experience and I will actually be making a couple of videos as Christmas gifts to family. I can’t imagine a better present to my grandparents than a video of their grandkids and great-grandson. They live in Virginia so miss out on a lot.

What was a bit difficult for me was the amount of work involved. While I felt it was all valuable, it was difficult to keep up with. I wasn’t able to even think about checking out the suggested readings. However, I appreciate that they’re there because I plan on going back to it and reading it. I also feel that some of the behavior change information could be incorporated in a different class. In fact, earlier this quarter I participated in a Fostering Sustainable Behavior workshop by Dr. Doug McKenzie-Mohr that touched on a lot of these topics. This workshop was based on his book and would be a good one to read in a preceding class.

Overall, this was probably the best class I’ve taken at BGI so far. I think that I’ll continue using the things I’ve learned for the rest of my life.