Can you imagine our world without oil? For me being a teenager it’s hard to wrap my mind around that. For the past eight days we have talked about the following things: what is in oil, what it would be like to not have oil, a plan if we lost oil, and many more topics. Because of the things we talked about and discussed in class, I have a better understanding of how much oil has an impact on our Earth. The World Without Oil simulation made it clear that we would suffer if we ran out of oil, that there are ways we can conserve energy, and that our community needs to prepare in case such a tragedy might occur.

Without oil our world would not last long. In fact, it would be like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, because everything we need and use somehow ends up coming back to oil. Something that made me think about the people in our world was how much citizen’s contribute to the news; that is called citizen journalism. When normal not famous, everyday people share interesting information with everyone in the world, by passing it on to the news. The only thing that bugs me about citizen journalism is when the people who shared their story don’t get credit for their work. One thing that stuck out to me during class was when we watched a video about Cal trying to get groceries; but when he tried to go to a store they did not have everything he needed. He needed fruits and vegetables, but could not find them anywhere because they would be the first thing to be bought; however, in the end he had to go to four stores to get the fruit he needed. To buy gas for your car you might want to consider thinking about opportunity cost. I would think could I use my bike or my own two feet to get around instead of wasting money on gas and not having any food that day.

There are ways for us to conserve energy and also look for alternative energy sources. In class we did an activity where we listed everything we did during the day, and then on the other side listed what we could have done to save energy. A couple of my ways were to, air dry my hair instead of blow drying it, take shorter showers, and make sure you turn things off when you aren’t using them. A way our school could save energy would be to get solar panels to help light the school. If you think about it, the school lights are on at least five days a week around seven hours a day. Just to light the school is using so much energy. Can you imagine how many schools are in the U.S. and how much energy each one uses to light it?

Our community could do more to prepare for an energy crisis. Ways to prepare ourselves individually is to save canned goods; you cannot save real foods because they would spoil. Another way to individually prepare your self is to sit down and talk about that scenario with your family if we ran out of oil. A way our community could prepare for an oil crisis is have multiple plans to act on the situation. One thing that just happened in Connecticut was a school shooting; I think our school needs to be prepared for any sort of situation we could get stuck in. A way I have seen readiness in a lockdown is to have pretend drills to know where to go and what to do if that ever happens, we do the same with fire and tornado drills. One thing we could do better in the drills is take it more seriously, for example, like no talking during the drills.

Obviously the Earth’s reliance on oil is not a good thing. We seriously need to start looking at other solutions and ways to stop being so reliant on supplies. This competency was difficult but worth it. I think it was helpful to work in groups. One thing I didn’t like about working in groups is sometimes you get a person in your group that doesn’t do anything and makes others do their work. I think teachers should monitor that more because its not fair to others to do someone elses work. I learned a lot I didn’t know. I didn’t know we relied so much on oil to fuel our Earth. I hope the other countries start looking on how much oil every country uses. They need to start reserving some for an emergency and look at ways to help everyone slowly stop relying on oil. I really like the activities we did, especially the survival game, my group tried our best to get to the end and when we did, we had a few mistakes. We did not give up, we kept pushing until we got the exact measurements. It opened my eyes about how hard it is to get supplies when everyone needs them and the items are becoming very scarce. One thing that was scary in the game was having Profit, Toews, and Friedrich as our government. My favorite part about the whole game was when the government gave us a choice to do a deed for them, and they would give us something we needed in return. Because my group chose to take advantage of that chance, we had to do the chicken dance in front of everyone. Kaylee took one for the team, she got up and sang The National Anthem. She didn’t do the best job, but it was pretty hilarious. I am thankful for this competency, because if something happens like an oil crisis in our lifetime we will have an idea of what to do. I hope we do a competency like this next semester. Now that we have a better understanding about how competency based learning works, I think we will do better in the second semester.