Environment & Resource

In my live I have dreamed of becoming a very great person in Nation. From what I read I understand. One of my mentors told me that with passion you always do perfect things. My interest in environment and resources is realistic. With all the skills and knowledge I have, it's my duty to apply on the field and also help other nations in managing the environment. The paper basically talks about my interests in my field of study.

Why this program?

When I joined my high school, I took part in the program called ""the million trees project''. Under this program, I went with my classmates to Inner Mongolia where we planted 200 trees. I never thought sandstorms could be so scary until we met one on my trip. The sandstorm ""trapped"" our bus for some hours on the road, we could see nothing around and we could not get out of the bus. I imagined how people feel about it when they live in such a place with sandstorms everywhere. After participation in this program, I realized that we can change our environment for a better living if we make an effort in the transformation and I developed a deep interest in the field of environment because I needed a change. Planting trees and saving water during shower are simple methods that show an effort in changing our environment.  I realized that people can change the environment to a better situation if everyone can make an effort to do that.  Therefore, I decided to make the environment better through my own way, to be a person who can stimulate the interest or action of people's pro-environmental attitude and make our earth better.

I am really interested to get deeper in this field to learn more and apply the knowledge that I have acquired from different subjects in solving environmental problems. When first I saw the requirements for my major in college, I was confused why this major need to know so many different things, including physics, chemistry, policy, biology, etc. Nevertheless, I enjoyed learning these varieties of subjects and really felt proud that I could know so much in one major. It feels great to combine different things I learned to solve a single complicated issue. This shows the many ways of killing a rat.

RESEARCH INTEREST

I have designed a research project with one of my professor, Susan Handy, on one of the most popular issues in China: the serious haze problem. The proposed research is aimed at finding out how air quality issues can affect people's pro-environmental actions, which can help the policymakers to design better policy to solve the haze problem in China. I proposed the design with a proportionate stratified random sampling, which makes the survey much more convincing. (I was interested in investigating the relationship between the society and the natural environment, and how can people's action effect future environmental management and policy. If most people believe that their action can help to solve some environmental issues, I believe current policies can work better).

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

I have worked with a team to help our college's energy conservation office to save energy by designing a proposal to reduce the energy usage of the buildings on campus. I was elected as the team leader. As a team, we had different thoughts and ideas, which made the cooperation uneasy. It was not my expectation that it could be this hard to be a leader. Two of our group members did not agree with my ideas on how to start this project. However, it was my duty to persuade my teammates and make our cooperation better as a team leader. Personally, I decided to communicate with my teammates after the class and see how they could think about this project. They shared their ideas with me although the ideas were completely different from mine; I decided to take part of their ideas and synthesis with my own ideas. I tried to communicate with them and pointed out the advantages and flaws of both thoughts, and then I called all group members together for generation of a better idea. Finally, all the group members made an agreement which I took as the final proposal for our research. We then split the duties, and everyone in the group could work in his/her favorite area of the research. Personally, I was interested in investigating the renewable energy and how it could be spread out all over the world. This experience was valuable because I learned that it is important to accept every member's idea and communicate with them for better results. Without a leader, or lack for cooperation in a team, teamwork cannot be consummated; also, through this research, I learned how energy supported the corporation of a building and saving energy through a simple action could have a bigger impact than I imaged.

Another useful example: I designed and conducted a GIS research project with my partner this year, which aimed to discover the relationship between the land cover types and biodiversity of the watersheds in California. I struggled when I found that the data available online was much more complicated than I imagined. Since finding the resource should be part of my work, I did not ask my peer for help. However, the process involved some coding, which I didn't learn before. I finally asked my peer to help me, and we came up with different solutions. I learned some basic for coding from my partner, and she really did an awesome job of taking me through the coding calmly. I knew that it was not possible for me to solve this problem alone, and I'm glad that my partner turned up for this research. Definitely, when there are Cooperation and coordination our work becomes more efficient and it provides a shorter path to success.

GAP

I found an internship in WWF in Shanghai, China. I am really interested in the programs conducted by WWF, including its cooperation with the government, the bank, and other non-profit organization. I think that could be a great and vulnerable experience for me before I go into a graduate school because it is an opportunity for me to practice the skills and knowledge that have acquired in college in perspective of my career. Personally, I need the experience in how the non-profit organizations work to solve environmental issues, venture into their work policies, program conduct and implementation. These are useful experiences for me to work on my future career path and have a clear plan of what I need to accomplish in the graduate school, and a chance to get to know more about different problems in my home county.

This may be another research interest: As an international student from China, I am concerned about the environmental problems happened in my home countries, such as air pollution, deforestation, and recycling. I came to America to learn different cultures and to see how different countries deal with their environmental issues in order to find some edification. Therefore, my first proposed research was designed for helping China's haze problem, and for my future research path, I still .."

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