Author: Marisa Greaney

Yes you read that correctly, we took a field trip. My group and I took a little trip to the Romer Arboretum the other day and it was an experiece. Some of us have only been there a handful of times, and some of us not at all. As you can imagine this short hour or so was and adventure, knowing us.

It started off relatively normal, I picked up Rachel from her dorm and we made our way to the Arboretum. When we got there, Izzy had just gotten there alongside us, Cole was waiting up for us at the enterance, and Syd and Griffin were waiting patently for us at the gazebo just inside.

Before doing anything else, we posed for a photo and enjoyed each others company before stepping out of the gazebo and taking it all in. There was a light rain, and it was a bit chilly so almost all of us were prepared for the weather. We did not stray far from the gazebo as it is very easy to get lost in the arboretum and, to be honest, all of us could not afford the time it would take to get lost on that particular day. In the surroundgin area, there was what giffin dubbed ‘the bee hotel’ which im assuming is something that the Beekeeping Club here on campus constucted, he did also try to climb a nearby tree which was interesting.

While Griffin was out on his own adventure, the rest of us, minus Cole who was still in the gazebo pacing around and even trying to climb it, were looking at the surrounding plants which we assumed to be native plants to the area. Pretty much all of them were just green plants with no special flowers or colors, but nature and plants do not need those things to continue to be beautiful. Something that I realized while reflecting on this trip, was that the grass was particularly green on that day and I am not sure of that was the weather or just my imagination, but it was beautiful and really pretty to look at and just be in the presence of.

We knew it was time for the end of our trip when we started to get a little cold, all of us walked out of the Romer Arboretum together while Izzy told us some stories of some of her time spent in there. All in all this trip served a purpose more than just for the sake of being one with nature, but as a fun bonding experience with the people i’ve grown closer to over the course of the semester. Gramacisy forever.

On coming into the course, I knew close to nothing about what we ended up covering.

I knew in theory what the command line was, having seen it before, but never got that good look that we are currently doing. Another thing that is not necessarily relevant but is something that I have noticed is that the vast majority of students and even staff are all equipped with Macbooks, which in turn makes the learning process for the class a tad bit difficult for myself as a windows user, as both of the operating systems are vastly different in their features (accessing the command line, etc.)

As for important things I have learned, its something that is not necssicarily (thats spelled wrong i know it) is the benefits of keeping a journal. Journaling is something that I have always wanted to start, and the VS Code Markdown format that is used primarily in this class was the push that I needed to finally start keeping one. The convienience of the script is arguably the biggest push for me to start this personally, it keeps formatting to a minimum which is something that was so daunting to me in the first place, even formatting on paper was intimidating.

I can definately see myself keeping a more regular journal, once I figure out where the files are saved so I do not have to create a separate folder on my desktop just to find them, even after the conclusion of this course. Honestly, the whole digital journaling thing has really helped me organizde myself and my thoughts, the voices are gone so to speak. I would love to learn how to write my own script and to be a little more in depth as to what a script entails and what kind of programming language it takes to write a script. I can defenitely see the payoff from is, as writing a script seems to be complex but makes life so much easier in the end.

This course has certanly been a huge learning exoerience so far as ive had to become ‘techy’ to a degree. Not to toot my own horn so to speak, but I have become the local troubleshooter for my own in class working group (group name still pending) its a little insane that im asked for help because I personally dont see myself as that ‘techy’ and I am certainly not the best at using markdown or even the terminal. while I have learned the basics there is still so much for me to continue learning when it comes to the terminal and VS Code/Markdown.