Not Your Average CBLR-Earth Week CBLR

 About a month ago, there was a class day that all of the sites who provide CBLR Programs for student came and presented what they had to offer, Cassie was there too. To be honest, I was slacking off for the most part during that presentation, because I always felt left out due to the fact I might be the only Business student when everyone around me was either STEM or Environmental Studies. And then Cassie came on. The first word that caught my attention was “marketing” then “event” then “Earth Week”. And just like that, I was hooked. I decided to sign up since this program sounded the most familiar to what I had in mind. But the vision was still pretty vague. I just know this was what I wanted to do; a program that had a quick pace, a firm deadline, and a rewarding endpoint, not the basic other “every week 2 hours” internship everyone was signing up for.

I went in the first day and basically was bombarded with information and materials that needed to be done prior to Earth Week. I was not overwhelmed by the pressure, I was overwhelmed by how specific and important this event was going to be. Over the span of 2 weeks, this CBLR program has been providing me opportunities to do essentially everything, from giving inputs for our pledge board to cutting papers for about an hour every day, or participating in a garbage sorting day, or awkwardly and respectfully greeting the partners at Earth Week. The more I get involved in this program, the more I realize the importance of Earth Week to this campus specifically. Through the garbage sorting activity, we came up with calculations and numbers of how much waste was not sorted properly. That makes us realize that we need to raise more awareness of using the right bin at the three-bin stations because students are not really mindful when it comes to throwing garbage away.

Through the Earth Week main event on Thursday, we received a fair amount of creative pledges of how to make the earth a more sustainable place from using reusable water bottles to eating less meat. Honestly, I would have never thought of eating less meat would make this planet more sustainable. Through signing up for CBLR, I received more than Community Based Learning and Researching opportunities, I myself have raised my own awareness of the importance of Earth Week as an information source for the campus to improve itself and a knowledge source for students to educate themselves. And as important as it is, I hope Earth Week will be expanded and be a tradition of UW Bothell.