Because I was born and raised in this state, the Chesapeake Bay has always played a large role in my life. From hot summer days spent boating on the bay to doing the Polar Bear Plunge in its frigid winter waters, the bay has always been there.
Growing up, I didn’t care about the bay’s health, economy or aquatic life. I just assumed that as long as I steamed crabs in July, everything was fine beneath its surface. It wasn’t until I was picking out my classes for spring 2012, when I was trying to kill as many General Education courses with one stone as I could, that I stumbled upon a course called AREC 200: The Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem: Intersection of Science, Economics, and Policy.
The class seemed easy enough — it was marketed specifically to nonscience majors and didn’t require purchasing a lab coat. I figured I would learn some interesting, simple facts about a few endangered species and some specific policies concerning the bay. And I was right. But there was much more to the course than that.
On the first day, the professor explained that this course wouldn’t be some memorization class where cramming would lead to success. He said in order to achieve in the course and potentially make the Chesapeake Bay healthier in the future, we would have to examine the bay’s history in detail.
We were able to apply the knowledge we gained from lectures to our discussion sections, where we engaged in a simulation activity. Everyone was given a specific job — fisherman, policymaker or developer — and the choices we made each week in the simulation gave us a perspective on what would happen to the bay if people in the real world made the same decisions.
AREC 200 proved to be a far more enjoyable General Education course than any other I’ve taken. I was able to learn about a large facet of my life that I had ignored until that point, and I was actually able to apply what I learned in practice. I don’t need a degree in Chesapeake Bay history to fully appreciate the course — my English degree will do just fine. But when I’m enjoying steamed crabs next summer, I can explain to everyone the background of crab harvesting. And that’s pretty cool.
Maggie Cassidy is a sophomore English major. She can be reached at maggie.a.cassidy@gmail.com.
This column is part of our Friday package about General Education courses at this university.
