My Worldview

I believe in the power of experience to inspire passion, deepen understanding, and influence how you see the world. My four years at Dickinson have allowed innumerable experiences through courses, extra curriculars, and studying abroad which no doubt changed my worldview. This has encouraged me to question and challenge a lot more than I would have pre-college. My worldview has changed tremendously in four years and is continuously evolving but I can also understand how this evolution has its foundation in two life-long passions: horses and music.

Looking out over Pole Steeple in Pine Grove Furnace State Park

I believe my interest in the environmental systems and love of nature evolved from my passion for horses from a very young age. From about age 5 and beyond I read, watched, and learned all I could about horses. I began learning about their anatomy and physiology around 4th grade through my 4-H club where a local veterinarian taught a course once a week where I got a wide ranging education on their inner and outer workings. I loved learning the intricate details but also developed the critical thinking and problem solving skills needed to diagnose a horse who is sick or how to check that they are healthy. Along with this academic knowledge, I gained a strong sense of compassion towards animals and by proxy, nature, which developed a desire to help reduce their suffering or pain if I could. I believe this is where I found a passion for nature, systems thinking, and practical applications.

Me with lesson horse named Saltie, whom I worked with for 8 years.

Thinking further, I realized how while I had developed a very scientific and analytical mindset from my love of horses, much of my character had also been shaped by my 15 + years studying and playing the violin. My appreciation of music was applied to the environment which I think of as not just as a physical thing, but also as a spiritual, inspiring, and awe inspiring entity. Music taught me the value of intangible things. I believe this mindset is what attracted me to study the environment and support its conservation, preservation, and restoration.

In addition, I always enjoyed the collaborative nature of music, whether it be the joy of playing in harmony with other instruments or the connection a musician creates between themselves and the audience, able to provoke a spectrum of emotions or memories. I love playing music because it can bring people joy, but also appreciate its power to help people process difficult feelings like grief or loss. These experiences fostered a sense of empathy and desire to help others. I believe this worldview has drawn me towards courses, research, or work that has a direct impact on people and is why I was immediately drawn to community-based environmental work.

Fast forward to college, and I believe the curiosity and passion that was ignited by experience with horses and music carried over to environmental science. I appreciated how environmental science, like with horses, you can study one topic or ecosystem very intensely, but you can also zoom out your perspective and think holistically, how one place interacts with another or with the global system. I like how you can try each day to pick apart and understand, even on a surface level, the jumble of interconnected cycles or relationships of the earth and its organisms. To complete the tangled web, you can add the complex human-earth relationship and be thoroughly disoriented. However, in college I found this confusion and frustration to be good because it meant I was not looking at the world as black and white. I was acknowledging the necessity to see interconnections, interactions, and how one action can affect many. In my first year as an environmental science student, this looming confusion was scary but my passion for the major was anchored by some formative experiences with Eco-Reps, ALLARM, and an aquatic ecology course.

Boating out to collect some sediment cores

ALLARM staff macroinvertebrate refresher workshop

I joined the Dickinson Eco-Rep program my first semester of college. I met many like minded people and learned strategies for engaging or teaching communities about sustainability. As an Eco-Rep we had to maintain the dormitory compost bin and create events which would teach students about an aspect of sustainability. I collaborated with Eco-Reps to host events like seed plantings, clothing swaps, or vegan baking. For these events we hand made signs advertising the event in the dorm or academic buildings. However, I learned that commitment and time are a difficult thing to obtain from a college student. While most of the events I helped out with did not have big turnouts, it taught me the reality of environmental campaigning. The most attended event was seed planting. It seemed that people’s interest could be piqued if they were given something to walk away with. This was one lesson in what could realistically be done to promote sustainability. This experience can also be connected to communities outside the college and taught me that you have to find creative ways to get a message across or get people to engage.

I began working for ALLARM my junior year and quickly fell in love with its community building focus. While thinking about the entire earth and its systems can be daunting, focusing my efforts on a certain geographic area helped me feel less overwhelmed and more like I could help create meaningful change. I also really enjoyed the variety of jobs I had at ALLARM. From research, creating outreach materials, making GIS maps, organizing data, processing water quality samples in the lab, to working directly with people in workshops, it was never a dull day. My experiences at ALLARM have guided me to look for a career in a non-profit, community focused organization where I can continue to use the diverse skill set I cultivated.

Finally, environmental science is a broad field of study so I was elated when I took an aquatic ecology course and found a real passion for water. I loved learning about the physical, chemical, and biological properties of water. Taking this course in tandem with working for ALLARM also helped seal the deal for my love of water because I was able to connect what I learned in class to the practical application.

My worldview has changed so immensely in just four years but my curiosity of the environment and passion to help nature from personal action to community-level only continues to grow. In future careers I hope to be able to help empower communities make positive environmental change through science, policy, and education.

Wearing waders during an ecology lab where we caught, marked, and released water striders to learn about population dynamics