Like so many things, starting a blog was easy, but keeping it going has proved challenging. To my two readers, I apologize.
I've recently applied to grad school, something I've been meaning to do for years, but hadn't found the right program. I think I found it... and I get to travel to foreign countries at the same time!
In the process of applying, a wrote a couple of pretty decent essays. Here, for your reading pleasure, they are.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Accept me!!
While visiting my family over Christmas, I described to my father one of my dreams of owning a restaurant on an organic farm, a place that would integrate ecology, food, and people. “Why,” he asked, “if you want to be a cook, are you applying to a Masters program in Zoology?”
Who knows if I’ll ever have that farm kitchen, but even if I do, the people I meet in Namibia, my understanding of Mongolia’s steppe ecology, and what I learn of religion and nature in Thailand can’t help but help me. You can never know the course your life will take; you can only prepare for anything.
Many things interest me—a few I’m even good at—and I tend to pursue multiple paths simultaneously. But on closer examination, a common thread emerges in my life: everything that has fascinated me, everything that I have been deeply committed to, is somehow attached to the point where nature and culture intersect. All that we do as humans is influenced by the natural world around us, and we continually impact and change that world. The role nature plays for us as individuals and communities differs from place to place, but invariably, that relationship reflects how we identify ourselves and construct our values.
At the Aldo Leopold Foundation, I help people make those connections. Whether it is assembling the content of our member magazine, writing interpretive panels for exhibits, leading tours, or crafting interactive tools for our website, I tell people about Leopold and his ideas; ultimately, it is a story of ourselves and our society’s relationship to the natural world. Learning more about conservation and environmental education around the globe will help me to communicate those complex ideas more effectively to diverse audiences.
I love my job. If I stay in the same field of work, the benefits of participating in the GFP Masters program are clear. As I talk with people about their relationships to nature, I will have a well of knowledge from around the world to draw on. That mosaic of perspectives will make my explanations and stories stronger, more richly tailored to both the situation and the listener. I know already, for example, that I weave a more textured narrative about the life of a Monarch butterfly for having visited their mountain wintering grounds in Mexico, where they cling to the misty trees like heavy clumps of orange leaves.
But even if I change paths, my life and my frame of reference will have been expanded by my experiences. No matter where I am or what my job title is, I will, by virtue of my own love of learning, be a teacher. The landscapes and people I will see and meet as part of this program will become a part of me, and they will alter, in ways large and small, the course of my life and the content of what I have to give to others.
Who knows if I’ll ever have that farm kitchen, but even if I do, the people I meet in Namibia, my understanding of Mongolia’s steppe ecology, and what I learn of religion and nature in Thailand can’t help but help me. You can never know the course your life will take; you can only prepare for anything.
Many things interest me—a few I’m even good at—and I tend to pursue multiple paths simultaneously. But on closer examination, a common thread emerges in my life: everything that has fascinated me, everything that I have been deeply committed to, is somehow attached to the point where nature and culture intersect. All that we do as humans is influenced by the natural world around us, and we continually impact and change that world. The role nature plays for us as individuals and communities differs from place to place, but invariably, that relationship reflects how we identify ourselves and construct our values.
At the Aldo Leopold Foundation, I help people make those connections. Whether it is assembling the content of our member magazine, writing interpretive panels for exhibits, leading tours, or crafting interactive tools for our website, I tell people about Leopold and his ideas; ultimately, it is a story of ourselves and our society’s relationship to the natural world. Learning more about conservation and environmental education around the globe will help me to communicate those complex ideas more effectively to diverse audiences.
I love my job. If I stay in the same field of work, the benefits of participating in the GFP Masters program are clear. As I talk with people about their relationships to nature, I will have a well of knowledge from around the world to draw on. That mosaic of perspectives will make my explanations and stories stronger, more richly tailored to both the situation and the listener. I know already, for example, that I weave a more textured narrative about the life of a Monarch butterfly for having visited their mountain wintering grounds in Mexico, where they cling to the misty trees like heavy clumps of orange leaves.
But even if I change paths, my life and my frame of reference will have been expanded by my experiences. No matter where I am or what my job title is, I will, by virtue of my own love of learning, be a teacher. The landscapes and people I will see and meet as part of this program will become a part of me, and they will alter, in ways large and small, the course of my life and the content of what I have to give to others.
What is Education For?
When I was twenty years old, I went to Ecuador for five months. Never having traveled farther than Canada, arriving in South America was a bit of a shock. I will never forget my first impression of the walled courtyards topped with razor wire and broken glass stuck into cement, the guards at the grocery store carrying automatic weapons, the beggars who looked poorer than anyone I’d ever seen. And I will never forget the kindness and patience of my host family as they enfolded me into their daily activities, explained to me things they took for granted when I didn’t understand, and struggled to comprehend my halting Spanish. I remember the mountains that scraped the sky and the smell of the Amazon at night. And I remember the walls inside of me that came crashing down in the face of all that brand-newness.
To me, education is a process without end, because there are limitless experiences for a lifetime. Gradually, as doors are opened and new ideas unfold, you learn to see the world through your own eyes, as no one else has quite seen it before. True education does not prepare you for a career; it prepares you to live your life more fully.
Whether it is learning to read and write or submerging yourself in an entirely foreign culture, an encounter with something new is both exhilarating and terrifying. It can bring people to a place within themselves where the world shifts and it will not be the same again. The job of teachers and educational institutions, formal and non-formal, is to temper these experiences, provide a safety net for the scary parts, and help navigate through each occurrence and extract the meaning.
Teachers ask us to put ourselves in others’ shoes. When we read a novel and “become” the hero or heroine, when we shudder at acts our ancestors committed, take part in a cultural ritual, or even read the newspaper, we hold what we know to be true up to the light and examine it against the thing we’ve just seen. Then we make changes that reconcile the two.
Over time, education builds a mind and a heart that are expanded to take in the full richness of the human experience. It inspires valor, humility, empathy, and restraint. Each of us holds inside ourselves a spectrum of human feeling ranging through joy, sorrow, anger, courage, hope, and things less easily defined. As we learn more, these categories become more nuanced, and the depth of emotion that each contains expands. We think of ourselves and others in new terms; we move outside of our personal concerns to feel compassion and responsibility for places we have never seen and people we will never meet. We feel more joy, but also more pain. As we tap into the depth of what is possible, our imaginations are unbounded.
To me, education is a process without end, because there are limitless experiences for a lifetime. Gradually, as doors are opened and new ideas unfold, you learn to see the world through your own eyes, as no one else has quite seen it before. True education does not prepare you for a career; it prepares you to live your life more fully.
Whether it is learning to read and write or submerging yourself in an entirely foreign culture, an encounter with something new is both exhilarating and terrifying. It can bring people to a place within themselves where the world shifts and it will not be the same again. The job of teachers and educational institutions, formal and non-formal, is to temper these experiences, provide a safety net for the scary parts, and help navigate through each occurrence and extract the meaning.
Teachers ask us to put ourselves in others’ shoes. When we read a novel and “become” the hero or heroine, when we shudder at acts our ancestors committed, take part in a cultural ritual, or even read the newspaper, we hold what we know to be true up to the light and examine it against the thing we’ve just seen. Then we make changes that reconcile the two.
Over time, education builds a mind and a heart that are expanded to take in the full richness of the human experience. It inspires valor, humility, empathy, and restraint. Each of us holds inside ourselves a spectrum of human feeling ranging through joy, sorrow, anger, courage, hope, and things less easily defined. As we learn more, these categories become more nuanced, and the depth of emotion that each contains expands. We think of ourselves and others in new terms; we move outside of our personal concerns to feel compassion and responsibility for places we have never seen and people we will never meet. We feel more joy, but also more pain. As we tap into the depth of what is possible, our imaginations are unbounded.
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