A Quick Introduction

Hi everyone! My name is Ananya Hariharan and I am a first year and a prospective Political Science Major. This past summer, my parents and I took a trip around the world so that I could see what my generation will inherit as we get older. Over those sixty days, I went through a lifetime's worth of experiences. I felt the fragility of humanity's infrastructure at the hands of nature when a volcano halted all of the flights entering and leaving Indonesia, effectively bringing its tourism industry to a standstill. I felt the the incredible ability of euphoria to unite masses as the prince of Sweden married his fiancée and brought throngs of people rejoicing into the streets of Stockholm. I felt the frightening immediacy of climate change in Beijing, where the sky was so eerily white that it was as if someone had carefully constructed a city perfectly and just placed a blank piece of paper above the buildings, hoping that it would suffice. This class interests me because it directly interacts with the world that I explored - it takes a practical approach to not only maintaining, but improving the earth so that future generations can enjoy it just as we are right now. I find tracking the progression of pregnant mothers in India via improvements in portable ultrasound machines to be particularly interesting. I have never taken a class in which most of the work comprised of hands-on learning, so I am very excited to get started!