Q2 Environmental Science Reflection & PSA By Eliza Meketon

Reflection

Our video was about bringing awareness of the rampant air pollution in one of Philadelphia’s poorest districts, the River Wards. We discovered that the River Wards has a shocking amount of people who have had to go to the hospital due to asthma related symptoms. We believe that the problem really stems from the fact that the River Wards was a very industrialized district back in the day and that the pollution caused from large factories has lingered and has caused many of its' residents ongoing health issues. The video really calls people to action, especially since it features a preview into the River Wards future, which is ultimately not a pretty sight. The fact of the matter is, air pollution has been a pepple in America’s shoe for quite sometime, not only that, but countries all over the world are starting to see the effects of reckless industrialization and air pollution.

I chose this particular topic because while we may not see the signs of the ways in which we currently pollute the earth, air pollution is relatively easy to see the effects of. As I said before, people are having to be hospitalized just for stepping outside. That is just not right in my opinion. If things don’t start to change, than the dystopian future we demonstrated in our PSA will become our very grim reality. The thing about air pollution is that due to the fact that much industrialism in America happened before I or any of my classmates were born. A whole generation would never have experienced a world without air pollution. Imagine how much longer our life spans might be if we severely regulated factories, automobiles, or anything else that produced larges amounts air pollution. I just wanted to show the world that we as a society need to step up and start thinking of solutions and do our part for our neighbors and the world as a whole.

I think I contributed to this project by helping create the script, helping edit the video once we shot it, as well as having a speaking role within the video. I think I did my fair share of work and I feel as though my team members would support that statement. I think that we as group in general worked really hard to create a top quality PSA and I am very proud of the work and effort that and  my team members put in it. I believe that I tend to try to be more of a leader, however I feel like I had a really amazing team and I always had someone to help me so I didn’t have the take all the responsibility of getting everything together which was really nice and I really appreciated my team members.

I think that I really used the class time efficiently and I got something done on the project each class. I think that I also made sure that we were getting things done in a timely manner and keeping everyone aware of the deadline. I think maybe I could have started working on the project a little earlier than we did, I think that maybe I should have worked on the script sooner. I also feel like I could have maybe worked a little harder to make sure everyone felt like they we being allowed to contribute. Sometimes i'm so focused on what I am doing I forgot to include other people.

I think the most meaningful part of the PSA was watching it slowly all come together. There was this great moment when we were editing and I saw all the content that we had and I just remembered how in the previous week we barely had anything. It is a pretty great feeling to see all your hard work on a platform. Sometimes with projects, it is just one and done, however this project might actually be shown to a larger audience if it gets picked for the film festival which is pretty amazing. When you're doing these types of projects, a lot of the time it just feels like it is just work for work's-sake, however air pollution is something that affects all of us and it is a very serious ongoing problem that most people just shrug off as another issue with no solution. However we wanted to open minds and allow people to come to the conclusion that silence in this case is deadly. It is time to speak up and take action