Water Challenge

           When we first learned what the Water Challenge was, I was a little bit confused by what lesson could be learned from obtaining water from outside of the dorm. My first thought was that this would not help conserve our water consumption; however, upon beginning the challenge, and after personally experiencing the labor in class of carrying water via different methods of transport, it became clear to me that this was a very meaningful assignment. I am not sure why I did not originally realize the intent of the assignment, but now I completely see why we were challenged with this task. It seems ridiculous to me that this challenged me so much because I think about how much more difficult it is for the children and women who have to walk on average 5.6 km a day to get clean drinking water. The nearest bathroom from my dorm is approximately 0.1 km away, yet on some nights I could not get myself to go that far when I really had to go to the bathroom, or if I was too busy or too tired to walk all the way over to the bathroom,

really only adding on five minutes to my daily schedule. As we discussed in class, when we grow up so accustomed to having water right at our fingertips, it becomes incredibly easy to be spoiled and lazy without even thinking about it. Looking back at the nights where I would opt out of walking to Caz to take a shower, I am a little bit ashamed of feeling like I didn't have enough time to go out of my way to do that. Even though I came back from cross country practice feeling exhausted and overwhelmed with my homework load, it does not come close to the hours that children and women in third world countries exhaust from their days from collecting water. If anything, this assignment has brought more prospective on how fortunate I am to have the time to go to school and be lucky enough to obtain water so quickly and easily, by simply twisting a faucet.

          In addition to realizing how lucky I am to have the time to go to school, this challenge made me realize how lucky I am that I don't have the physical burden of carrying water for a long distance. As I mentioned before, I come back some days from cross country completely worn out, and the last thing that I want to do is walk down three flights of stairs, walk across the Quad, and walk back,

only to come back up the same three flights of stairs. Also, coming back from the shower shivering with wet hair in the cold weather. Like I said before, looking back to my complaints or burdens seems completely insignificant compared to the problems that women and children face every day in third world countries. A 5.6 km walk is exhausting enough, especially without proper footwear and clothing to stay warm or cool enough depending on the surrounding environment, but then you can consider the weight of 3-5 gallons of water. After carrying the weight of the water in class on Tuesday, I personally experienced the struggle for hardly a full three minute walk. These women and children are malnourished, yet they do this every day without a complaint. I lift weights twice a week and compete in cross country on the college level, and I get more than enough to eat, and there I was on Tuesday, struggling and complaining about the weight of the water. Also, the only water that I carted around with me was a water bottle that I could fill up at any dining hall (aside from Pom) or any drinking fountain. This bulk of water really was not noticeable, and didn't put really any burden on me unless it was first thing in the morning, and I had run out of water and needed to take my morning vitamins, or if it was really late at night, and I had run out of water and needed to brush my teeth. During the challenge, I would put off taking my vitamins, but on the occasion that it was late, and I was out of water, I would use the faucet to brush my teeth. This also leads into the next major thing that I became more aware of and feel fortunate for.
     I am an extremely hygienic person, and for me, I really need to wash my hands regularly, brush my teeth twice a day, wash my face twice a day, wash my running clothes, and shower once a day because I'm always sweaty from XC practice. Washing my hands wasn't a big issue for the challenge since I could wash them in the bathroom of the dining hall before meals, and I opted not to use the bucket to flush the toilet, so I would just wash my hands in whatever bathroom I visited outside of my dorm. However, as I mentioned before, I cheated a few times brushing my teeth because I feel a strong need to brush my teeth before bed, and sometimes my water bottle would run out, and it was too late for me to mentally allow myself to walk the entire 0.1 km including the three flights of stairs to go to Caz to brush my teeth. Luckily, I had makeup

remover wipes that I could use to wash my face; however, the residue left on my face still felt sticky, and my face didn't feel fully clean... like I said, I'm weirdly hygienic. Washing my running clothes luckily is taken care of outside of my hands. One of the perks of running cross country is that the KSC does our laundry during the week. However, showering was a difficult thing for me to get used to. Lugging around all of my slippery shower supplies was more difficult than I imagined, while also trying to carry my dirty clothes (which I dropped on the ground a few times) became really annoying, especially when my wet hair made me extra cold and the three flights of stairs back at my dorm. I realize that I sound extremely spoiled, but it was a hard thing for me to do, and it led me to shower in my dorm a few times more than I am proud of. This really made me realize how my hygienic preferences have caused me to live an incredibly clean water- dependent and wasteful lifestyle. I definitely don't think I could cut out the showers, but I did begins to make my showers shorter out of guilt for using water from my dorm. I became curious and did some research to see how much water can be used per minute in the shower. I'm guessing that Beebe Hall's showers aren't incredibly efficient since the building is very old. Older shower heads use up to 5 gallons of water per minute! This made me feel really motivated to change my lifestyle a little bit, and take quick showers. Cutting down the shower time by 3-5 mins could save 15-25 gallons of water! This assignment made me think a lot about my usage and made me really realize just how lucky I am to have water so easily accessible.