Unit 8 Reflection

          This unit covered many major topics. We first learned about the gene pool and allele frequency and how when a population evolves, the gene frequency changes. We also learned about the Earth's history, or it's geological timeline and how much it has changed to get to where it is now. But most importantly, we learned about evolution and its effects of it on planet Earth. I think that one of the biggest themes/essential understandings out of this whole unit is the process of natural selection and how it works in the favor of an organism who has a better phenotype than others. When we did the Hunger Games Lab, we saw that when organisms had the most favorable phenotype, they were able to reproduce and have more offspring. Their offspring then had a higher chance of having the same favorable phenotype which caused them to survive better than others. In this way, the population of organisms with that specific phenotype grows until it dominates most of the population. However, the organisms that don't have the specific trait slowly die off because they can't compete with the organisms that do have the better trait. In the end, the population of the organisms with the desirable trait start to look more like "winners" while the other organisms who weren't as lucky look more like the "losers". Another major theme of this unit was how vast the history of Earth was. Before this unit, I thought that a couple hundred years back was so long ago. I couldn't imagine what life was like without the technology and advancements that we have today. But now, I realize that we are only a speck on Earth's timeline. Us humans have only been around for a few hundred years. There have been so many major events before we were introduced to planet Earth. For example, if there had been no increase of oxygen in the atmosphere during the Ordivician period then there might only be a few or maybe even no organisms on Earth right now!
          I still want to learn more about Earth's history and go more in depth into specific eras. I think that Earth's timeline is so immense and I think it's really interesting how much humans have done in such a short amount of time. An unanswered question I have is what caused all of the mass extinctions and explosions on Earth. I also wonder about how such seemingly bad events helped so much to evolve our planet for the better.
          Since writing my Unit 7 Reflection, I have definitely tried to be more assertive. I started giving more ideas when doing projects and being much more involved. I think that before I was more on the quiet side and didn't really contribute as much as I could have, but now, I feel that I am really participating a lot more and even sometimes stepping up to be the leader. However, I still think that I have a long way to go. One thing that I can do to further improve is to try and be more of a leader during group projects but also make sure not to overpower other people and their ideas.