Hi everyone! My name is Victoria Schmidt, a sophomore here at Penn State. My current hometown is Shepherdstown, WV. I was born in PA but have lived in WV for almost my whole life. I am currently studying Pk-4 education and hope to earn my masters degree in curriculum and instruction before getting a teaching job. I would love to eventually live in a fun city when I’m teaching such as New York City. I don’t know a lot about geography so this course interests me because I know that by taking it I’m going to learn so many new things that I don’t know at the moment. Another fact about me that you don’t know is that I am the co- secretary for an organization here on campus called The National Society of Leadership and Success. This society focuses on making any kind of person a better leader. I look forward to getting to know more of you through this blog!

The most pressing/ relevant issue that we must address at this time is climate change. A major part of why climate change is a concern is because of us humans! I think the more we push this issue and get people to think about how they can change the environment, then hopefully in the future we can make climate change evaporate. With climate change we might think that we are the ONLY ones that are going to be producing damage, but we need to remember what the environment is going to do to us after we hurt it. Just as humans can have an impact on the environment, the environment has impacts on humanity. So, if we, for example, produce fossil fuels this will lead to one out of many environmental impacts on humanity. Fossil fuels will raise temperatures of the Earth. With raised temperatures glaciers will melt, then sea levels will rise, areas will start to get flooded, etc. The list of negative, chain reactions only grows larger from climate change. All of our actions are only going to come back and haunt us, we need to make a change.