Beyond Class Engagement #1: Extracurricular

I play on the varsity field hockey team here at UNE. We are a top team in our conference, which is the Commonwealth Coast Conference.

Being on a team, I feel like I am part of a community that I love. During this time, I am learning so much about leadership and how to work together as a group to get things done. A goal I have is to be a captain by my senior year, so I’m taking in a lot of key leadership skills from my current senior captains. As a team, we participate in community service events around the Maine community and in the school as well. This goes along with what is said in the Core Handbook about reinforcing Core themes and acting as an engaged citizen.

Juggling daily practices and up to two games a week, I have learned how to multitask and balance everything accordingly. Making sure that I utilize any free-time I have to get ahead on homework has been key for me, as well as using my agenda book. Writing down my assignments and aligning them with my field hockey schedule, I can see what I have gotten done and what I still need to do. This has been important when I have a weeknight game where I wouldn’t be home until late hours of the night. I feel that I will take these multitasking and balancing skills with me through the rest of my life and in my professional career. 

Beyond Class Engagement #2: Extracurricular

I am a part of the club FAA, which stands for Female Athlete Alliance. This club stands for promoting gender equality in sports, which is done through community outreach, activites, and education. It is a very supportive environment where anyone can express their concerns, thoughts, or any issues they are having. We meet bi-weekly on Thursday nights at 8:00 at the Harold Alfond Forum. 

This past Thursday we had a guest speaker, who spoke about her experience with beating breast cancer, and she is also the Women’s Lacrosse Coach here at UNE. The most important thing I learned from this experience was about bringing awareness to your body, and how you can make sure that you are keeping yourself safe. I think that gender equality in sports is a huge deal and I love everything that this club stands for. I have learned that as a group, we can change the stigma facing women in sports by outreach in our community. The more people that we can get to join, the more we can promote what we stand for and make a difference. 

Beyond Class Engagement #3: Academic

On Monday, October 5th, I went to a viewing of a movie called “2040” by the environmental classes. The movie was about climate change and other issues in today’s society, and it brought up multiple solutions on how we can fix up our world. After the film, there was a discussion panel section, where we were able to talk through some of the solutions and/or what we found interesting during the movie. I learned a lot about how I can even be a huge part in reducing climate change and restoring the world. 

The main solution they brought up was about educating women in girls in society because providing them with job opportunities and a good education. This will give them a better quality of life and have such a huge impact on our environment, society, and economy. It’s also a win/win because as we are fighting climate change, we are also educating women and girls. 

I’ll mention a few other solutions they provided. First ride sharing and electric cars. Rideshare would take a ton of cars off the roads and therefore reduce emissions. There will be more parking spots available. With electric cars, obviously, they don’t have emissions so this is a key shift we are moving towards. Second there is regenerative farming, which is what we need to shift back to. This is when the plants absorb the CO2 from the atmosphere and they use it to make simple sugars which is their food. The rest they store in the soil, which enriches it first of all, and second of all it takes CO2 from the atmosphere. The third solution I want to talk about is the use of seaweed and how key it is. Seaweed absorbs a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere which is great for restoring the alkaline imbalance which has been destroying marine ecosystems. 

*no picture taken*