My goal for this course, once understanding what compassionate curiosity is and why we started practicing, was to start using it in my daily life. After learning about compassionate curiosity and its benefits, I wanted to start incorporating it into my daily life to see benefits. I deal with anxiety and stress daily, as anyone probably does, but in the past year I have found helpful ways to help me calm down and slow down. Coming into this class I was not expecting to meditate at the beginning of each class. I found it so calming and stress relieving, I wish every class started with that because it helped me clear my mind and focus on what we were learning that day. Earlier in the semester I thought that I wouldn’t continue this mindfulness practice after the course ended, but now I think that I will most likely will continue this practice. I think it will help me a lot throughout college to sit down for at least five minutes and just focus on my breathing and calming down. I think that with me using mindfulness practice it will end up benefitting my daily environment too, because the way I treat my environment effects it majorly.

I have been able to focus more on my emotions and to focus on what I am feeling and how to deal with it. I didn’t realize that my emotions effect my environment, which also effects other people’s environments and the wicked problems in the world. I am now aware of wicked problems and how they affect me too and the people around me. I wasn’t aware of this before this course. I knew that there was a lot of waste in the world I just was not fully aware of how much damage it has done to our environment and how serious it is that we start working on fixing these problems now. Being able to have a class that helps me focus on what I’m feeling and about how the topic that we are discussing affects me too is nice because it has helped me be more in tune with my emotions and how I react to things. Before this class I had no idea what a wicked problem was but know that I know I understand how important it is to take them seriously and help find ways to decrease the damage they have on our environment. People don’t understand how wicked problems are not only affecting their environment but also their emotional state too. Until they understand the harm of these wicked problems, they will never fully understand how it affects them, their daily lives and the people around them.

I would say that this course has made me very aware of the wicked problems in my daily life. I have started implementing practices for me to start in my daily life. For example, recycling daily, conserving energy in my dorm and in my room at home. I also have started doing research on clothing brands to make sure I am shopping from somewhere that I agree with how they handle the waste produced. This class made me start thinking about my daily decisions and how they effect the environment. I have also been holding myself accountable which has impacted my life majorly too. I joined the sustainability club in my sorority at the beginning of the semester. We have been trying to cut down on the waste throughout the Theta house. We have committees that oversee different things. For example, we have a recycling committee that oversees taking out the multiple recycling bins we have in the house. We have a light committee that oversees turning off all the lights at night in the bathrooms and hallways. We also have a towel committee which oversees washing the hand towels in the bathrooms and replacing the paper towels in the bathroom with the cloth towels. Having these committees and the Theta goes green club we are trying to make Theta more sustainable because we have noticed how much waste has been produced just inside the house. Seeing how many girls want to participate in making Theta more sustainable encourages me even more to want to work hard and recognize how much waste is being produced and what I can do to help eliminate the amount of waste we have produced. With Theta putting in the effort to cut down on waste and make Theta more sustainable, maybe other houses will see this and start making their houses more sustainable too. This would really help the Oklahoma State campus cut down on a lot of the waste that the campus produces. Walking around campus I have noticed all the posters and people talking about the importance of making Oklahoma State more sustainable. Having the constant reminders has helped me with remembering to recycle and remembering to conserve energy and just to take care of our environment. I have learned that if we don’t act now on taking care of our environment things could end up badly. Our environment will not be ideal for us to live in, and we will be struggling to maintain the environment. Working towards making my environment is important because I don’t want our future to be about fighting for the wellbeing of our environment, even though we most likely will be. Making the problem known to everyone needs to be a top priority. Making these problems known to a larger quantity of people will help with starting to end these wicked problems. Being a part of a club that emphasizes the harm that we cause our environment has helped me focus on what I do in my daily life and how I can find ways to fix certain things to make my environment healthier and safer.

This course has helped me focus on what I do daily and how it affects everything and everyone around me. Although we talked about horrible topics in this course that were very devastating, the meditation at the beginning of class helped me open my mind to learning about these problem’s. It helped clam me down from my day which effected how I would react to these wicked problems. If we had not done the meditation at the beginning of class, I probably would have been even more stressed than before the class. It helped me clam down and take in everything we were learning. This course has also helped me focus on looking at the positive in any bad situation or problem. I was already good at doing that before this course, but it has helped me work on it more. I also look at every possible angle to a problem or situation so that I can get a good grasp on how to deal with it in the best way and solution possible. The meditation has had a positive influence on my life in the past 8 weeks, so I most likely will continue it throughout this year and so forth. I think that everyone should be required to take this course because you learn so much about all the terrible and difficult problems in the world in a short amount of time. I learned about wicked problems that I had no idea existed before.  This course really taught me how to fully take in and understand a problem that is happening.