Hello everyone! My name is Jazanae Reid, and I am a junior majoring in History. I selected this course as it seemed the most interesting since I was not too familiar with the concept of service learning. Also, since most of my academic career featured in person classes, I thought that this particular class would provide me another profound perspective of the world through helping and learning from outside sources that are not involved with standard academia. One of the matters that I have learned about concerned the different narratives of what constitutes Nature and whether it involves humans, as just a symbol of intervention as well as being a part of it, or not. We also touched on how crucial examples and, especially, connections are concerning an author’s argument about nature. For example, while some of the works that we have read had amazing insights that linked the natural world to the human world, other works had left much to be desired since it did not engage with the audience that could be understandable, such as focusing on personal narratives rather than generalities within a broad concept.

My community partner is the Atlanta Creek League. The organization is involved with the protection of creeks in various areas around Atlanta and would like to push for people within those communities to be involved in this protection as well. My organization is also involved in competitions that encourage actions of conservation for these waterways. I am mostly interested in the Atlanta Creek League since I have previous experience of helping numerous community leaders in protecting bodies of water while I lived in Virginia, such as at the Chesapeake Bay and several beaches. Furthermore, I was fascinated in this organization because I wanted to learn more about the precautions a large city must take to ensure water safety since my community in Virginia, while small, is also facing some issues concerning water pollution. One of the goals that I am excited about is to see some change being developed due to my work within the organization. Even though it is a big task to accomplish, I am hoping to see some improvement on metro Atlanta’s waterways. Similar to what my community partner mentioned, I hope to learn more about the watershed issues that are prominent in metro Atlanta since I am not too familiar with this city. I also hope to learn more about which actions I can do as an individual would work best to protect the city’s waterways since I am a firm believer that even small things can make a big difference.