Firstly, what has drawn you to this academic program? Secondly, as a consumer of knowledge, who do you rely upon for information? Consider perhaps three or more "sources". How do you ensure this information is reliable? How does this relate to this program? (Blog Prompt #1 from Dr. Amanda Hooykaas)

The outdoors, especially camping, has been a part of my life since I was about 5 years old, as that was the first time I went camping with my Spark unit. The only thing I remember about that trip was exploring a frog pond and trying to catch them; I don’t remember if anyone was successful, but the leaders did serve as “frog legs” later that day as something to eat, so possibly?! From that first camping trip, I have camped and traveled with Girl Guides of Canada (GGC) at least 20 times, along with camping with my family on road trips to the east coast.

The first time I heard of Lakehead and this program was the summer of 2018, when I worked at Neys Provincial Park. Of the ~15 staff members, 8 of them currently or had attended Lakehead, and 3 of them were in this program. Meghan, Justin, and Stephane talked a lot about all the cool stuff they had done, along with their upcoming class trips later that summer. I had just finished grade 10 and had no idea of what I wanted to do for post-secondary. I still didn’t know by the end of the summer, but what they said started with me for the rest of high school; and in the end, I applied and picked to follow their (among others) advice to come here to the ORPT program at Lakehead!

Below is a picture of Neys PP's Natural Heritage Education team for the summer of 2018. The people in the photo (left to right) are: Kat, Meghan, me, Maureen, and Stephane. This picture is from @neysprovinicalpark's IG page and was posted on August 28, 2018.

As a consumer of knowledge, I gain information from a lot of places, but the main three I rely on are: (1) Books and libraries, (2) the internet, and (3) the news.

I am a very avid reader, so I have read a lot of books and visited many libraries in 4 different towns. A lot of my random facts come from books along with the internet, from all my fact-checking for the new facts from the books. Social media is not the most reliable source for information, but it’s another place I have learned something new from, after some other research to double-check its truthfulness. I watched the news more when I was younger, as my parents watched it to find out what was happening in the world.

I know all of these sources have the chance of not containing reliable, or truthful information. So, I make sure to fact-check the facts with other sources writing about the same or similar topics, along with looking at the author and companies saying this information. If the author has experience in that field and can prove that, I trust their opinions and written works more than someone who doesn’t have the experience or knowledge. The same goes for companies, like BBC and Wikipedia; if they are knowledgeable in a subject, along with other trustable sites saying similar things to them, I’m more likely to trust and rely on their information.

Spent the weekend at Port Burwell Provincial Park, a quaint park located on Lake Erie. I had never been here before and felt a free weekend in mid September was the perfect time to go explore. The park has a couple mini hiking trails under 3km in length, a recreation area, and a spectacular beach. Unfortunately the beach is quite the trek from the main campground and takes up to 20 minutes on foot. Once you get to the beach you are rewarded with 2.5km of beautiful sandy shoreline. I even went for a swim, the water wasn't that bad! Overall, a decent little park.