Documenting something means creating a record of it, in print or film or audio or other media forms, that tells its story in what is hopefully a truthful way. While I have little to no legitimate film experience, I did recently document my time studying geology in Iceland this summer. I brought my go pro camera along with me, and took videos of glaciers studied, trails hiked, volcanoes summited, and friends made along the way. I subsequently created a video compilation of the trip. I also documented our spring season on the crew team last year with a similar compilation, videos taken from the stand on the shells from spring training until our championship regatta. I enjoy filming and compiling such videos, and look forward to the one I plan to create this spring on my semester of sailing and studying marine science. Through these videos, I find I am able to express the emotions felt during the events, and the overall feel of the experience, in order to share it with others.
I also enjoy researching topics of local importance with global importance, and I wish to pursue more stories in this area. Thus far I have only done so for course assignments. Last semester, I wrote my final essay for my course Culture & the Environment on the Easton dam near the convergence of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers. I did field research that included photography, video and audio. The culmination of this was a paper on the underrated danger of small-scale dams. I highly enjoyed this project, and wanted to pursue parts of it further; to what specific extent has this affected the shad in the rivers? That was but one of many questions I had at the end of my research.
In addition, I am an avid writer. While this method of documentation does not include any media other than print, I have kept journals and written of important thoughts and decisions my entire life. I solved many challenges in my life by organizing my thoughts by means of the written word; I had a speech impediment when I was younger, and so writing was the easiest and most direct form of self-expression.