Arcadia Davies [junior major in Individualized Studies, Class of 2019]: Actually our trip was in the Florida Keys and Everglades first, and then we went to the Bahamas after that.

The professor for that trip is in the Western Program, so I was just in Peabody and saw a flyer for it, and I knew I still had some science requirements to fulfill, and I really — I've always been interested in environmental science, and I really prefer studying when I am in the field, as opposed to in a classroom, for those sorts of things.

Day-to-day, we did everything from studying the mangroves to snorkeling — we snorkeled a lot. Everyone had to do a research project while they were there, so we had time during the day where we'd go out and collect data, then we'd come back and work on our research projects, and we'd have to present those at the end of the two-week program.

I was looking at the casuarina trees, which had been affected by the hurricane. And so we were kind of researching how the hurricane affected trees, were trees inland more affected? So that was my research project, and just kind of looking at the effects of the hurricane.

And then we also had classes at night, where we'd all get together. We'd talk about, you know, what we noticed during the day, questions that we had. We'd go over different scientific terms, just kind of talk about ecology in general, whatever kind of came up that night, so how humans were impacting the areas that we were at.

My freshman year I joined the Western Program, but my sophomore year I decided to change my focuses because of that trip, so I decided that I was really interested in doing environmental work, so I added the global perspectives on sustainability minor. I've definitely taken more classes in that field since then.

I hadn't thought about doing environmental journalism before that, but I think after that I was like that's the career I really want to take, because I knew I loved writing. So I joined Greenhawks Media as a way to increase like my writing abilities and stay more in touch with what's going on at Miami and globally.

[March 2018]