Appendix C — Philosophy

The Value Proposition (in 2025)

College has to do more than pass information you could Google. It must train you to connect field observations, data, and theory—to build models of the world and act on them. In soil and environmental science, the competitive edge is the ability to integrate: design a sampling plan, collect data, analyze it, interpret uncertainty, and communicate implications. Additionally, your experience in courses should force you to work collaboratively with others, to learn new skills and gain confidence in your ability to think through and solve problems, and expose you to new ways of approaching problems. With that in mind, this course is designed differently than most other courses - it will challenge you in positive ways and ask you to learn new things.

What I Expect From You

  • No opting out of computers. You will write code, use GIS, and interact with AI tools. We will normalize being a beginner and doing the work anyway. Genuine effort and putting your best foot forward is the most important thing.
  • Adaptive & can-do attitude. When stuck, you try something, read the docs, ask better questions, and iterate.
  • Constant self-improvement. Keep a growth mindset. You may succeed or not when you try new things. The most important thing is that you learn either way.
  • Energy. Get serious, get interested, get excited! This course is an invitation to raise your ceiling. Curiosity is a muscle: the more you train it—by asking better questions, running cleaner analyses, and communicating clearly—the more valuable you become.

We’re on a learning journey together. I will model my own process (including mistakes). Your job is to engage, not to perform perfection.

Habits that win (in class and in the workforce)

  1. Read deeply (see Reading appendix). Slow down; annotate; prove you put in the effort via an audit trail.
  2. Write to think (see Writing & AI). Draft, revise, cite; show your prompts & model versions when AI assisted.
  3. Reproduce results. Put your data and code in GitHub. Make everything open, transparent, reproducible.
  4. Instrument your learning. Build spaced-repetition prompts from key ideas; schedule review.
  5. Integrate field, data, theory. Our assignments and course structure should push you to connect all three.

Futureproof habits (adapted from Kevin Roose)

Kevin Roose’s Futureproof lays out nine rules for thriving in knowledge work alongside AI automation. Below I’ve reframed them for this class—tying each to how we’ll learn and work in SOIL/ESPM 5555.

  1. Be surprising, social, and scarce. Double down on the parts machines don’t do well—explaining decisions, collaborating, teaching, designing visuals, telling the story behind the data.

  2. Resist machine drift. Feeds and defaults nudge you to the median. We push back with slow, deliberate reading and independent checks.

  3. Demote your devices. Use tech intentionally, not reflexively.

  4. Leave handprints. Don’t just work hard—work in a recognizably human way. Leave your handprints and personality all over.

  5. Don’t be an endpoint. If your role is only relaying between tools, you’re easy to automate.

  6. Treat AI like a “chimp army.” Powerful but messy—useful with clear instructions and supervision.

  7. Build big nets and small webs. Systems and communities matter.

  8. Learn the machine-age humanities. Attention, judgment, ethics, “room reading,” and healthy skepticism are technical skills now.

  9. Support the rebels. Back people improving tech’s ethics and transparency.

How this fits our philosophy: In an era where you “can’t afford to not do computers,” these habits turn AI into leverage rather than a crutch. They raise expectations for college-level work, prepare you for a workforce where tools change weekly, and align with our growth mindset: curious, adaptive, and continually leveling up. Bring the tools on day one; bring the mindset every day.

References

  • Roose, K. (2021/2022). Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation. Random House.
  • Huth, A. (2021, Nov 15). “Future proof: 9 rules for humans in the age of automation.” (Concise summary of Roose’s rules.)