WRFI loves hearing about our alumni’s adventures after their course. Cory Zyla was a student on 2008′s Cycle the Rockies: Energy and Climate Change in Montana course. This excerpt from an e-mail he sent us shows all the places you can go with a WRFI education!
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WRFI is an exceptional organization. The course materials, the staff, the instructors, the students, the people you will likely meet on your trip, are all truly remarkable. In fact, by the end of my own course it was apparent that my instructors (the amazing David Morris and Nicky Phear) are actually the bleeding-edge of human evolution: higher intelligence, superior fitness, strong leaders, social butterflies, good looks, and more! You are learning from the best with WRFI. But it’s a vicious world out there, and not all of us are so evolved, so what you really need to know is how a buffoon such as I benefited from the WRFI experience.
WRFI developed many skill-sets that have proven incredibly useful to both me and the various organizations I have had the privilege of working for. Since joining the 2008 WRFI Cycle the Rockies crew, I have collected large amounts of environmental field data with a county in Washington State and later a non-governmental organization in El Salvador, wrote a book on water resources management with one university and later researched the environmental and socio-economic impacts of drought with another, and assessed the environmental impacts of small hydropower projects with a private consulting firm. I am currently working as a Technical Advisor with the Nunavut Water Board in Canada in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut (Google it and see the location! A wonderful place to live and experience the increasingly visible effects of climate change). My WRFI experience better prepared me for each and every one of these work experiences.
WRFI teaches you work as a group. WRFI teaches you to challenge yourself. WRFI teaches you innovation. WRFI teaches you outdoor skills. WRFI teaches you social skills. WRFI teaches you patience. WRFI teaches you perseverance. WRFI teaches you the benefits of delaying gratification. WRFI teaches you practical knowledge of contemporary problems and integrated solutions for addressing them. WRFI teaches you to question everything (including YOU. You are actually, in fact, wrong about many things… quite often. Who knew!?).
So, if you’ve read this far, and I still haven’t successfully convinced you of the value of WRFI courses, just know that the 30 days I spent in the Cycle the Rockies course were among my favorite. Sign up!
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Thanks Cory! For more information about Cycle the Rockies and WRFI’s other courses, check out our Academics and Courses page.