PHOTO MAJORS
SHAE GIST
PHOTOJOURNALISM
MERRILLVILLE, IND.
Water is by far my favorite drink. Its simplicity is what attracts me to it. Nothing else is better suited on a hot summer day than water. One of my favorite places to go in the summer is Deep River Waterpark in Crown Point, Ind. I’ll admit, I might not know how to swim, but going to a waterpark still allows me to have fun in the water. Deep River is always filled with people having fun and cooling down, no matter how young or old they are. This makes me enjoy Deep River even more.
Within this water sustainability immersive learning project, I’m acknowledging how water constantly impacts our lives without many of us realizing it. Water is part of everything we eat, wear and use to produce the technology we use. Water even gives us life.
“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” –Jacques Cousteau
However, that cycle is broken when more than 3.4 million people die yearly from a water-related disease, according to water.org.
Working with Sustainable Water and my peers in journalism and public relations, I am collaborating with them to bring awareness to the issue. As a photojournalism major, I will make sure that our Instagram account is being updated with photographs of water and show how water impacts our lives.
KARLA WILSON
PHOTOJOURNALISM/TCOM
FORT WAYNE, IND.
As a child, I never really thought much about water. The thought of running out of water never crossed my mind. With seven kids in the house and two parents, we used a lot of water. My parents were always telling us to use less water, but that was because of the price of the water bill.
In high school, I started to learn more about the world water wars. I have several friends who travel abroad frequently and tell me things about their trips. My friend, Kortney, started traveling to India our junior year of high school, and she would tell me how they get water once a day, and even then, the water is not very clean. This led me to start to think about the water I was using.
I took this class because I wanted to learn more about water sustainability. The idea of a BlueHouse is really interesting to me. These BlueHouses take sewage water and clean it, so the water is usable for toilets, fish, or other uses. I think that any little thing we can do will really help. The most interesting statistic I have read, during this class, that more people in the world have cellphones than toilets. These are things that we as Americans take for granted. We have never had to worry about where we are getting our water. It just comes out of the faucet.
This class has really made me think about my water consumption. I have been trying to master the four-minute shower, but it is pretty difficult. As a photojournalism major graduating in the spring, I hope that I can continue to help inform people about the water problems occurring around the world.
SADIE REECER
PHOTOJOURNALISM
SHARPSVILLE, IND.
I have always tried to be conscious of my material usage. I try not to buy more than I need to, and I do whatever I can to salvage something out of an object whose original purpose is no longer useful to me. I always thought I was doing a “good enough” job until the first day of this class. I felt like a completely irresponsible consumer after hearing my instructor ramble off shocking statistics about the use of the world’s freshwater. However, with what I am learning in the course via research and course work, I trust that I have the skills to make a real difference.
After lots of research on the topic, I think my focused area of interest would have to be education. Teaching my peers and colleagues about the things I did not know just a few weeks ago is something that is really important to me. By telling as much as I can to most of the people who I know, I have heard some very positive feedback. My parents have stopped buying bottled water. My best friend took the pledge to take four-minute showers, and I have been trying to conserve as much as possible during teeth brushing, hand washing, laundry, and all of the other everyday things that require me to use treated drinking water.
If individuals know what they can do to help the problem of water shortage problem, or fix it, I think we’ll do what is necessary."