In the Style of Bill Bryson

A time when I discovered that I knew absolutely nothing on a subject.

Throughout my college career, it seems that I am constantly made known of the fact that I actually know very little about most facts. One instance stands out in particular, my freshman year in Biology class. As a group assignment, we had to work together as a team to answer the question, "How can I minimize my ecological footprint?" Well for starters, what the heck is an ecological footprint? And how can I work on minimizing it if I'm not even sure that I have one? The problem ate away at me, not so much because I cared intrinsically what my ecological footprint was, but because I cared that my teacher thought I knew what it was so that he would give me an A in the class.

This purely selfish drive motivated me to do my research and I soon discovered that my ecological footprint was simply the imprint, or effect, that I had on the environment. Well, of course I had one of those. Anyone who took a look at the heap of trash-yes, a heap. The trash in my room had far exceeded the capacity of my trash can- in my dorm room knew that empty pizza boxes and old soda cans must be having some impact on the environment.

But from a more scientific standpoint, I started to track how my daily actions were impacting the environment. How much trash I consumend (or how much material I consumed that generated trash), how I helped or destroyed the natural life around me. I began to see how I interacted with my environment, and how my environment interacted with me (or how it would have liked to interact with me). No doubt, there are a few trees that would have liked to smack me in the head when I pulled off their leaves.

By the time the project was over I became a pseudo-expert on the topic of environmental protection. And because I was totally uneducated at first, I took a layman's approach and simplified the knowledge down to something even I could understand.