So I've been thinking a lot about college lately, because I'm a junior, and who hasn't been? It's on all of our minds, whether we're dying to leave or terrified at the prospect of independence or just kind of wanting to get through it all and stop taking standardized tests. For me, college is going to be my first chance to study the things I want to do with my life. Economics, international relations, developmental and environmental issues, Latin American literature and history--they never seem to make it into a high school classroom. I'm excited about it. I've found my saving-the-world niche, and I could do this stuff for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy.
Except. There's always that except. It's a realization I keep having and then forgetting, because it makes my life harder to figure out. I always forget when I'm planning out my perfect life--I need to be outside. And not just outside--I need to be deep in the wilderness, in a temperate forest, with the rain and the mountains and the plants I know so well. I always forget how important that is to me until I'm there--looking at the yellow pine tree in Leavenworth, watching the sun rise over a meadow in Idaho while ice drops melt off my sleeping bag, or watching the sun rise over a lake in Guatemala sitting next to the most amazing people in the world. I can't even begin to describe how much experiences like this have changed me and been a part of my life.
If you were to ask me what I really wanted to do with my life--no worries about money or having to save the world or anything--I would get some friends, and we would travel. Travel the world, going everywhere, experiencing every type of environment and culture out there. We'd climb the Himalayas, go backpacking across Europe, go on an expedition in the Amazon. And then we'd come home and do it again--kayak, rock climb, hike, maybe live in a cabin the wilderness for a year or two. And then we'd lead trips.
So I'm looking at colleges and trying to find one where you can be outside but where I can learn all that stuff I need to know to go into my particular branch of saving the world. And I'm so torn. Environmental science? Economics? Politics? What's the best way? What can I live with?
In Post (Outdoor Education) class, this guy came from a college in Vermont that's entirely focused on alternative, outdoor education. It's called Sterling College. Available majors include Wildlife Ecology and Management, Sustainable Development, Agroecology, Environmental Justice and Conservation Education. You learn by traveling, by being outdoors. It seems like the college equivalent of Waldorf School or Wilderness Awareness Community School. And I've always, always wanted to do something like that. I would love to major in half the things on the list, and I know I would use them. But my upbringing and cultural conditioning won't even let me consider this. So many things going through my head. Grad schools won't like it. Too liberal, too hippie. Not practical. It's new, strange. You don't know that it will work. So I'm left with only one choice--play it safe, apply to my pseudo-Ivies and hope to God/ess that they have some type of outdoor education.
But part of me really wants to try this. I know I can't, but...travel. Outdoors. Very specialized studies in areas that I care about so much and always have. How cool would that be?
I wish our culture wasn't structured in such a way where experiences and programs like this were viewed as less real, less valid, inherently inferior. I wish it was acknowledged more the real power non-concrete, holistic things can have. It's so ingrained in our culture in every aspect, especially academics. Letter grades, standardized tests...and I'm so scared to breaking outside that model, because I want skills that work in the "real world", not some degree where the only thing I've learned is why we should all hate The Man. I wish you could have it both ways. A school where you learn the theory and the formulas, but you go out and live it too. A school where you walk both walks--the spiritual, intuitive and the logical, practical. Until someone founds one, though, I'll just have to live by Mark Twain's words--"I never let my schooling interfere with my education."
5 comments:
Well, I can only comment about Penn, but it seems that if you really wanted to go out over the summers and live these things you can, but hell you can anywhere thats halfway decent. Same with studying abroad and all that stuff.
But, I have feeling that only that one place out in the woods you mentioned really integrates those things into the curriculum the way you'd like. Its a sad realization.
If a grad school is halfway decent and you can do well on their standardized test, etc it shouldn't really matter what college you went to as long as you did extremely well there and all the usual bs.
If it feels right, why the fuck not go for it. At this point we are more than able to make our own fucking decisions. Go for it.
I don't see why society's opinion should stop you from going where you want. Society doesn't have to put up with it for four years, you do.
So your problem is that what you could be giving up by going to a hippie college is the ability to change the world through economics or politics. The ability to be taken seriously.
Maybe you don't have to either be heterogenous and powerless, or homogenous and powerful. Maybe, what politics, or econmics need is someone Heterogenous. Someone to mix it up. Hey, if it worked for Mr. Smith.
It's not like you can't have both. Take a gap year to learn why to live before you learn how to live. Do a double major in enviromental studies and political science, and get into an enviromental organization. Every enviromental organization needs people who can deal with the logistics of what they do. Get a job like that, and you'll still have an opportunity to hit the ground, and hike the Himalayas. You could change the world either way, what matters is that you do what you can.
I know I can have a bit of both, and I'm going to try to do that. Not through a gap year, because me + a gap year is a really, really bad idea. What I want to try to do is work on environmentally sustianable development in Latin America, which would incorporate both economics and environmental sciences/studies. I just feel like "normal" college has a lot of intellectual development and not as much soul-searching as I'd like. Especially soul-searching that involves getting wet and freezing half to death on top of a mountian. But I'll deal.
Thats understandable. You'd make a good ecochica. There have to be some programs that get you out into the mountains though. Join work projects. I want to try and intern on an archealogical dig, I'm sure you can intern on a reasearch expedition or something.
Why did you expect that college would include soul searching? Can you really have a ciricullum based around that? Even at an enviromental college, you wouldn't get the same experience as if you went out on your own.
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