The morning after the Missouri game, I went with a group to clean up litter around Ohouse and Tanyard Creek, since the cleaning crews removed all of the tailgating garbage before we had a chance to. I had never been to the area of campus where we focused much of our cleaning, so I enjoyed having a positive impact on the area the first time I was there. I had a trash bag to collect small items, such as wrappers and cans, but I focused most of my efforts on removing larger items, such as the ones pictured above. These items were more difficult to remove, which is probably why they were still there. These items often had vines or roots growing around them, demonstrating that these items were not meant to be where they were. My primary reaction when finding these items was confusion as to how they got there, since I did not expect to find a tire and ironing board above the creek bed. It felt good to improve the health of the UGA ecosystem by removing items that could have harmed it. Doing work like this helped me understand the importance of cleaning up after myself around campus. Ideally, work like this would not be necessary, but I was happy to help maintain the cleanliness of the campus.
For my outreach, I visited the Rivers Alive Watershed cleanup event on the 5th of October. As you can see in the image above, during this event we gathered a lot of trash from the riverbed of the Oconee River. Metal, plastic, electronics – one of the biggest things we hauled out was an old TV filled with dirt and having vines growing out of it. We also pulled a screen door, a bicycle frame, and many other interesting things out of the ground. To be honest, I didn’t know much about what we would be doing beforehand – I just knew where to go, when to go there, and to come ready to get dirty.
I learned a lot from this activity, one of those being the sheer amount of trash that the cleanup location had. It was near a few apartment blocks, as well as a frat house, so it would make sense for there to be a lot of garbage, but I was still surprised at just how much there really was. Beer bottles and cans, diapers, disposable food packaging, etc. If there weren’t an organized activity to clean this place up, what would have happened to it? Things would continue to pile up until it’s no longer a riverbed, but a landfill that just so happens to have a river near it. But while I was cleaning, I spoke to some of the other participants. Some of them had been doing this activity every year for as long as they’d been in Athens, others were immigrants to the US who were helping as a way to get to know the Athens area. Others were students at UGA from an English graduate student program. But despite all being very different people, they had one thing in common: they were good people who felt motivated to help. And despite the fact that there was way more trash than I expected at the site, the presence of these amazing people gives me some hope.
I definitely feel that this experience was very interesting. I was in Beta Club in high school, so I’ve done volunteering in the past, but for Beta I was mostly doing activities I knew I would enjoy and was kind of just looking to finish my required 20 hours of service. I never really pushed myself or left my comfort zone, so this activity was a good push. Because I enjoyed it, I think I now feel more confident in leaving my comfort zone more often, which will allow me to do more things I wouldn’t have in the past. In addition, it was informative; I learned more than I did before about recycling, disposal of trash, and, as mentioned before, just how much stuff people throw away in improper places. I think that in the future I’ll probably make a conscious decision to actually pay more attention to littering in places like riverbeds and greenways, because seeing how much trash there was was very saddening to me.
Volunteering in this event caused me to have a shift in my feeling towards my environment. I’ve always felt that the corporate individualization of blame and deflection of responsibility onto consumers was the biggest problem, and while I still feel that, I now know that there is actually something that people can do to help. I’m now more motivated to learn about opportunities to help and even participate in those opportunities. I truly do plan on helping with these sorts of things more in the future.
On Saturday, from 2:00 to 4:00, I went with Nate, Richard, Stephen, and Will to promote awareness about waste and sustainability for our Tailgating Service Project. We traveled across various areas in the campus, including Myers Quad and the Physics building, to educate tailgaters about recycling and gave them pins, informational cards, and trash bags to help promote their incentive to clean up after themselves. We switched around when we walked up to tailgaters in regards to promoting awareness about recycling and sustainability. Because it was a game day, we were all also expected to promote school spirit, such as by saying “go dawgs.”
I was very pleased in regards to the experience. The tailgaters were very friendly, and they were all interested in regards to the messages that we had to say. Before the experience, we all realized that we needed to give a speech to tailgaters about sustainability, but we were all somewhat anxious about giving such a speech, as nearly all the tailgaters were strangers to us. However, their friendliness helped us better give such a speech, which helped us spread the message about sustainability.
The experience helped me better understand the knowledge that some tailgaters are unaware of in regards to recycling and the sustainability incentives that the campus itself has, such as how UGA has various cardboard boxes around the campus so that tailgaters can easily dispose of their waste. After the experience, I was able to better build up my social abilities as a result of traveling around the various tailgates. Before the experience, I thought that spreading a message could ruin the tailgating experience for others. However, after the experience, I realized that this is not the case.
As a result of this experience, I will use the knowledge about recycling and sustainability for future events to encourage others to clean up after themselves. I understood the importance of recycling, but after the experience, I learned more about the items that can or cannot be recycled. In the future, with the knowledge that I have gained about goods that can or cannot be recycled, I will ensure that I properly dispose of trash in order to promote sustainability as a whole.
For my outreach project, I worked on the tailgating project to help clean up the campus after home football games. Our group examined areas of the campus before and after home football games to see what trash was left behind. It was important to examine the before and after to ensure that the tailgating was responsible for the trash we found and is important to examine in similar research. We discovered through our cleanup on Sunday that, although tailgating did result in a lot of trash, UGA does a great job of making sure it is cleaned up early the next day.
Many people don’t usually think about the impacts of the trash left behind from tailgating and only that it is a fun pre-game activity. This project was intellectually stimulating because although the clean up crew does a good job, there is still evidence of trash left behind if you look hard enough. It’s relevant to UGA students because we all go to school here and many of us live here so we should want to take care of our campus. Our group had to get creative when searching for trash such as heading down into the creek to grab a can.
I assumed campus would be a mess the Sunday after tailgating but in reality, searching for trash was more difficult than I would’ve thought. I discovered areas where trash was most likely to be such as around stairs or near the creek. We knew that our audience were UGA students, many of whom were likely to attend home football games. We want students to know that although it may appear spotless on campus on Sundays, if you look more closely there is trash that can still harm the environment.
I would probably have chosen an earlier game and had the cleanup afterword if I did it differently. Also I may have chosen to search around Tate for trash. It related to the environmental aspects of our class, such as water quality. Pollution negatively impacts this water quality. I learned that although an environment may appear to be spotless, pollution can be found where humans have been. This assignment was effective in helping to show me that UGA does have an issue with pollution in our creeks and other areas.
There was not much trash left out after the game. The cleaners athletics hired did a wonderful job making the campus look almost as if nothing ever happened—keyword being “almost”. With so many people around, there certainly was much more trash to clean that street sweepers and large-scale cleaners never would have spotted, such as the solo cup pictured above. We found a lot of solo cups, water bottles, beer cans, etc., which likely never would have been spotted had we not been there. The garbage was hidden in bushes, and under cars, and because of that it is important that small groups of people work to clean it up. Men in trucks were likely never to see the several dozen beer cans we found in the trees, but they are still damaging to the environment. We even found an old tire and ironing board, and who knows how long those were in there. There is almost always waster in our environment, and that is why taking at least a hour every once in a while to clean is so important. My impact may not have been large, but it is a step in the right direction, and it shows that something should be done to help clean campus in addition to what the University already pays for.
(As a note, I am SO sorry for not having posted this earlier! I could have sworn I posted it, but I guess it was just sitting in my drafts for a long time.)
Hi, my name is Paul Paterson and I’m a freshman honors student majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a double minor in Physics & Astronomy as well as Computer Science. The following picture is one of my friends and I at the Bubble Cafe downtown. I am the front left person.
1. As an engineering student, science is one of the most important fields in my studies, along with math and pure engineering. In addition, the depth to which science can explain the world around us has always fascinated me. Science also shows us how little we know about many things, while providing the tools to learn everything about them. I took 4 AP science classes in high school (Chemistry, Computer Science A, Physics C – Mechanics, and Physics C – Electricity and Magnetism) and numerous honors classes in scientific disciplines. My personal favorites were my two AP Physics and my Honors Robotics courses, as they solidified my desire to work in engineering, specifically aerospace engineering (which is simply a sub-type of mechanical engineering). This is my only pure science course this semester, but I will likely be taking several more in the future.
2. Through this course, I hope to advance my knowledge of biology and be able to apply that knowledge to projects not directed related to biology at all. Recent developments in robotics, computing, structural and mechanical engineering, and more have been increasingly based upon principles found in nature. We have so much to learn from the world around us here on Earth that can help us get to places beyond our home, such as our moon and Mars, and I hope to learn how to utilize that untapped potential.
3. The projects that interest me most are probably the watershed visit (because I can learn about the engineering behind it) and the visit to Clarke Central (because I grew up in this area and would be interested to see how it is affected by the things we will learn about in this class). In addition, these activities would give us the experience and knowledge to further teach our communities about biology.
On September 27, I went to Clarke Central High School to show AP environmental science students how to determine the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in soil samples. This was different than when we were doing this in our class, because I had to take a lead role and teach them myself. I found that I understood the process better when I had to be able to explain it and answer questions.
I liked doing this with the high school students because I could see them start to understand just how important of an issue antibiotic resistance is. They were disgusted by the bacteria and did not like that they were present on even the plates with antibiotics. When I told them that these were dilutions and there were actually thousands more bacteria in the original 1g of the sample, I could see that they understood the problem.
Most of the students I was working with were very engaged in the project, which was what I expected since they are taking an elective about environmental science. I worked with two groups of three, and one group was doing a very good job of carefully counting and documenting everything. The other group had one member who was working hard and two freshman who spent the majority of the time flirting, which was frustrating for me because I couldn’t get them to focus for very long. However, both groups did finish counting in time for me to explain the calculations and for the two groups to compare their data.
This picture shows the set up of the group that was documenting all of their data on their own without me having to come over and tell them to do it.
I would definitely do another outreach to a high school. I think it is very important to educate children about environmental issues so that they can help fix them. Additionally, these students learned skills for doing research. At first, they didn’t understand why there were two different sets of plates that both had to be counted, but at the end, when we were comparing data, they saw that the two sets yielded similar but different numbers and that we had to average them for the most accurate results.
Hey guys! This is my post about our Tailgating Service Project. Our table bro gang, Stephen, Nate, David, Will, and I did our project on the Saturday of the Missouri game. We had zero idea what we were doing at all, but we really took matters into our own hands and had a blast. When it comes to waste management information, tailgating gave us the perfect excuse to help educate others about their trash. We were given a ton of cool resources to give out: recycling and trash bags, cards with recycling information, and pins with cute graphics on them! We weren’t given any specific directions, so we just went around to various tents informing people.
Being intellectually stimulating, relevant to the audience, and creative were all things that were sort of in the back of our heads as we presented to people. We didn’t want to come off as just plain and boring activists. While talking to others, we made sure to be welcoming and engaging in order to make sure that people were at least interested by what we had to say. I think the stuff that we were able to give out gave us a creative edge as well.
Especially when getting started, it was a little nerve-racking to actually go out and talk to people. It’s not like we thought the people were going to kill us for going to talk to them, but we had a false feeling that we weren’t going to be received well. Recycling isn’t exactly the most exciting thing to get people riled up about on a game day, unfortunately. After mustering up the courage to talk to one group though, it was much easier to continue talking to others! We eventually learned that a little confidence goes a long way and confidence builds as the ball starts rolling. Our audience actually wanted to listen to us; it was just getting over a mental barrier that kept us from getting going. Analyzing that tailgaters weren’t going to come to us, we had to become more proactive and outgoing.
If there was anything that we could do better, it would be that we become more prepared prior. On the front end, we were too preoccupied with how cool all the stuff looked instead of actually preparing what we were going to say. If we did, we probably would’ve had more confidence going into the project.
Doing this project helped me see the actual real-life applications of what I had been learning in class. You always hear all the time about how we should be recycling and various methods to conserve, but when it comes to telling others about that in a nonacademic setting is sometimes awkward but so necessary. If we really want to change the culture surrounding trash and waste, we must become comfortable enough to talk about these issues. Serving in this way aided me in seeing the relevance and importance of the material in our Biology class. I get to see firsthand how the way I dispose of my trash affects my environment and the attitudes of others.
That being said, I really do feel like projects such as these are very effective. The effects of serving and presenting in real life are more far-reaching than one could expect. Not only do we get to live out what we are taught about waste management, but we also pick up valuable communication experience and confidence builders. Despite being mainly environment wired, I can see how this experience can influence my future endeavors in my studies as a Marketing major.
Overall, this project was something that was super cool to serve in and experience. I’ve never been in a class that has emphasized real-world involvement as much as this biology class has, and to be able to do it with some cool friends who share the same initiative as me is so rewarding (have you seen any kids happier about putting up a trash bag than us?). Not only did we get to take the dopest team selfies ever, but we got to do a project that benefits the UGA community as a whole. As a group, we just had a ton of fun serving a greater cause.
For my outreach project, I went with David, Richard, Will, and Stephen to tell tailgaters about recycling and encourage them to do so. We walked around Myers Quad and handed out trash bags and recycling bags to tailgaters and talked to them about the benefits of recycling. We also offered pins and fliers that help identify what is and what isn’t recyclable. Ahead of time we scoped out the tailgating locations that we felt we could help inform the greatest amount of people. We decided that Myers quad, since there is a large population of tailgaters there every week, would be the best place to conduct this project. We took turns walking up to tailgates and handing out recycling bags and talking to them about how recycling can benefit the sustainability here at UGA. By recycling and making sure trash is placed in trash bags we can make sure the tailgating tradition continues and the campus will remain as beautiful as ever. We addressed the three characteristics of information delivery. We always made sure to lead with an introduction followed by an interesting fact to make it intellectually stimulating. If we noticed the tailgate was missing anything in particular we made sure to offer it to them to keep it relevant to the audience. We were all competing to come up with more creative ways to introduce ourselves to engage the audience to what we had to say. One of the discoveries I made was that most tailgaters were very eager to do their part to help keep the campus beautiful, something that going into the day I was not confident of. I also learned that a lot of people already come prepared with trash bags, but they often forget about recycling. We had much more difficulty handing out trash bags because more people already had them. We looked for tailgates without trash bags and recycling bags in order to decide which tailgates we should approach. We also made sure not to approach if we felt we would be interrupting a conversation that may be important or personal. Personally, if I were to do something differently it would be prepare more factual evidence ahead of time in case people asked more follow up questions. Through this experience, I was able to see the causes of pollution through tailgating and how it can affect the watershed, but I also learned that people are willing to do their best to help out where they can. I learned valuable communication skills and more confidence when it comes to approaching groups and lobbying ideas. This exercise was definitely successful for me. I learned about presenting an issue to other people and helping them be the solution rather than the problem.
For my service outreach project, I, along with David, Nate, Richard, and Stephen, walked around our campus and talked to tailgaters about why they should recycle. We provided them with trash bags as well as recycling bags and pins if they wanted them. Along with these items, we talked to them about which items could be recycled vs which items needed to be thrown away in the trash. We executed our plan around the Myers Quad area and alternated between each other for who would talk at each tailgate. We incorporated “intellectually stimulating” into our presentations by telling them that we were doing a project to help protect our campus. We incorporated “relevant to the audience” into our project due to the fact that the tailgaters being the ones we were trying to get to recycle and throw away trash. We incorporated “creative” into our project by coming up with our own plan to target the different tailgating groups in different ways. One thing that we discovered as we went around to different tailgates is that many tailgaters already came prepared with trash bags and recycling bags. Another thing that we discovered was that the tailgaters who did not already have trash bags and recycling bags were very accepting when it came to our trash and recycling bags. When we came up to each group, we looked to see whether they already had trash and recycling bags and we targeted each audience different. The ones that did not have bags were the ones that we had longer conversations with and gave them trash bags. With the ones that were prepared, we educated them on what was recyclable and what wasn’t. If I were to do this again, I would not change much. I would maybe come with a larger group to get to more people and more items to give out but everything else I would keep the same.This helped me better understand that other people outside of the class also want to keep our campus clean and want to help in that. Also, many people are already educated on what is recyclable and what isn’t. In the future, I know now what is recyclable and what isn’t, and also that people are typically very accepting if you approach them. I think our group did a great job of coming across how we wanted to since people accepted what we had to say. This assignment was effective because we were able to reach a large audience through our campus to help keep the campus clean through recycling and throwing away trash. The feedback we received from the community was very helpful because we found out that many people were already educated on what we were trying to deliver.
