The chance to intern with ENVS and THTR has led to the best experiences - exploring potential leaning opportunities, and investing in not only my future but others as well. In short, life is about expanding your comfort zone and searching what brings you happiness.

I interned with the amazing Professor, Beth Osnes, whom I had for my Creative Climate Communication course. We focused on interpretation of values related to the climate, analyzed previous expressions and the variety of lenses through which we could extract useful methods to communicate.

In class we created group compositions through various mediums and presented them to the class as our interpretation of the chosen theme or requirement of the assignment. I was very interested in film and had previous experience but it had never occurred to me to make videos that would speak to different interest-groups about what environmental stewardship could look like.

I told Beth that I would like to join her on the Tuba City Spring Break and help her with what she was doing. What would we be doing, you ask? Beth along with other climate and theater experts wrote a musical that would be performed by local kids to help them unwind discrepancies that have arisen due to our political system and inequalities in access to energy (let alone clean or safe energy).

We rehearsed the show multiple times along with activities that would allow further exploration of issues like energy access, resulting externalities, even the significance of cultural practices and beliefs.

After a very successful rehearsal with the students in Tuba City we broke the roles and played games that involved movement, and a less serious tone. Student-led groups worked to express their opinions on energy use and their ideas for the future and incorporated them into more activities for the days to come.

At this point word had spread around the school and everyone wanted to have their class join in our rehearsals. We had upwards of 7 classes involved in authoring the show or related activities. During the last rehearsal we asked the teachers to get involved, and once that happened their students saw expected roles being broken and were much more likely to give it their all.

It was important to have teachers involved so that students could expand past a typical student-teacher relation, and follow their lead to shed differences in cultural beliefs, status, or group membership and express through a very effective method of communication. The oldest licensed Zumba teacher in Arizona (who also was a teacher) joined in our dance choreography and student's jaws dropped (mine too). My role was to help with the production but also film and photograph media that was created by the youth in Tuba City. This would be used to support Beth's work to provide evidence showing how effective our method of communication was. I edited videos

We performed SolHer EnergHe our Youth led Musical in front of the school, many family members and local community advocates. The show resulted in solutions authored for the community. We said our goodbyes to the students and teachers that made our show possible and headed out to the Grand Canyon. We woke up not 100 feet from the rim. After seeing the sunrise over the canyon we took a hike and hit the road for Boulder. The trip of a lifetime.

Back in Boulder we performed SolHer EnergHe again at NCAR with local students from middle and high schools, a few months after returning. Scientists joined in our activities and production rehearsals, to advise on the importance of precise information so that the show was catchy as well as informative. The NCAR performance was a matinee and would be followed by a night time show in the Glenn Miller Ballroom at CU, Boulder. This would be our largest audience to date upwards of 500 people, who were climate communicators, family members, community advocates, and others who were invited to the climate communication event.

The show evolved each rendition and most recently it was performed at the unveiling of the Sustainability Energy and the Environment Complex. Our goal for the performance was to help bring to light some of the misinformation, and inequality related to energy and differences in communities access even here in the United States.

Experiencing differences to our status quo is the only way to expand horizons. There are stark contrasts between the world that I am familiar and the one that I experienced for one week. Huge inequalities that I was unaware of until being there, and seeing how communities on the Navajo and Hopi reservations survived. I took many lessons away from the trip; the absolute need for more individuals to get out and see the world, use those experiences to help in your local community, and connect with others that share a similar mindset to propagate success.

Invest time with those who make classes possible (students and teachers alike), to learn from actions in their past and present. It can only help you better accomplish where you want to be in 5, or 10 years.

I learned the very important skill of looking to the future, an indispensable lesson, after playing a road-trip game with the students. We explored the idea of what we would be doing 10 years in the future to the minute. I had never thought so In-depth about what I wanted it all to look like but that jumpstarted my desire to actively make decisions to be happy and help others to the best of my ability.

Get out and see the world!