walk to the beat of my own drum
I am not even ready to talk about this, but it's building up so I need some sort of release before I go about the rest of my day.
Here's the thing: I've had this fairly solid plan for my immediate future (next ten years or so) that involves only myself and not my relationships to other people, because that is never certain. I understand "the best laid plans" deal, but at the same time most of my agenda seemed pretty concrete and probable. It consisted of LSU, Hawai'i, undergraduate degree, and then off to volunteer for a summer (maybe take a year off of school), and start back with graduate school.
While I know that, for science especially, graduate school can be invaluable, I am worrying more and more that I'll be wasting half a decade in a classroom when I could be helping in other countries, and even my own. The classes this semester have allowed me to apply all this passion I've had for the environment and for the sustainable future. I'm able to debate in my Environmental Law class. Global Environmental Change is showing me things I never knew about our current world situation. Environmental Resources is teaching me ways to change things for the future. And I love all this potential. And it's breaking my heart. And it's making me aware and fierce. And I want to get out there and do shit and not sit in a classroom for five more years, even though I know it will be good for me.
I don't want to donate canned foods. I want to visit places and educate people on agriculturally sound farming techniques and build irrigation systems and introduce methods of natural fertilization (because they cannot afford anything else) and build greenhouses in arid places and set up laboratories to help pace genetic variability in plants. I want to teach women to respect themselves and their bodies. I want to talk about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. I want literacy rates to increase. And I don't want to do it on my own, but I want to be doing something.
Should I go to school or should I work and work and work to make things better and then go back to school later? I want to teach.
Here's the thing: I've had this fairly solid plan for my immediate future (next ten years or so) that involves only myself and not my relationships to other people, because that is never certain. I understand "the best laid plans" deal, but at the same time most of my agenda seemed pretty concrete and probable. It consisted of LSU, Hawai'i, undergraduate degree, and then off to volunteer for a summer (maybe take a year off of school), and start back with graduate school.
While I know that, for science especially, graduate school can be invaluable, I am worrying more and more that I'll be wasting half a decade in a classroom when I could be helping in other countries, and even my own. The classes this semester have allowed me to apply all this passion I've had for the environment and for the sustainable future. I'm able to debate in my Environmental Law class. Global Environmental Change is showing me things I never knew about our current world situation. Environmental Resources is teaching me ways to change things for the future. And I love all this potential. And it's breaking my heart. And it's making me aware and fierce. And I want to get out there and do shit and not sit in a classroom for five more years, even though I know it will be good for me.
I don't want to donate canned foods. I want to visit places and educate people on agriculturally sound farming techniques and build irrigation systems and introduce methods of natural fertilization (because they cannot afford anything else) and build greenhouses in arid places and set up laboratories to help pace genetic variability in plants. I want to teach women to respect themselves and their bodies. I want to talk about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. I want literacy rates to increase. And I don't want to do it on my own, but I want to be doing something.
Should I go to school or should I work and work and work to make things better and then go back to school later? I want to teach.