Day 4+5

Day Four: Food
Truthfully, I found it extremely difficult to eat food that is locally grown. Being limited to cafeteria without a means of transportation adds on to the obstacles of eating organic or unprocessed food. However, I have been starting to watch what I eat in the cafeteria for the past couple of weeks due to my sudden realization of how the delicious food can affect one’s body. The pizza, grilled cheeses, soda, and desserts that are so readily available to us really take a toll on one’s weight and overall health. For the past two weeks (three including this week), I haven’t been drinking soda, I’ve avoided junk food, and I’ve either made my own sandwiches or eaten a vegan meal. I will admit to cheating and eating a piece of pizza today at lunch, but I have greatly reduced my intake of junk food, and it’s made a significant different from when I first started off at Chapman. I didn’t find this day of the experiment to be too difficult, since I realized the need to make this change before we started it a couple weeks ago.

Day Five: Energy
I am very conscientious of my energy use due to my mother drilling the notion of being energy-efficient ever since I was a toddler. For example, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people leave their cell phone chargers plugged when their actual cell phone isn’t charging. Ever since a few years ago, I have always taken the extra time to unplug my charger when I leave my room, since it conserves a huge amount of energy. If you leave the cell phone charger plugged in, even if it’s not attached to your cell phone, it’s still burning fossil fuels. One of the things I did notice, however, is how my roommates and I don’t notice that we leave the light in our closet on even when we’re not in the room. Most of the time, it’s also on when we’re in the room and not using it. Today, I turned off the closet light four times when I noticed it was on unnecessarily turned on. Today’s experiment made me realize the inefficient use of energy that goes on in my own dorm room, like leaving my laptop on all day when I’m out taking class, and leaving the air conditioning when nobody is in the room. Thus, I actually shut off my computer when I left for class, turned off the AC, and only kept the fan on.