Agency as Therapy?

Like most people I talk to in the Environmental Studies program say, when I came to college I had to relearn almost everything that I valued as truth. Left and right I am constantly checking old habits and archaic ways of seeing the world which has now situated me in my last semester of the Environmental Studies program. When I learned about climate change in high school I didn’t have the “affective” response that Sarah Ray describes in her chapter “The Affective Arc of Undergraduate Environmental Studies Curricula” mostly because I never felt like it was my problem, surely because of my privilege. However, learning about the intensity of ecological disaster alongside social justice issues that interconnect has taken my through an “affective rollercoaster” as Ray would say. I did see a decline in my mental health while my perception of reality shattered all around me, but slowly I began to find empowerment through articles I read and lectures that I heard revolving around community action. So when Ray states “Students’ deep engagement with the material is a sign of success, and our task is to politicize and direct those emotions in ways that give them a sense that they are improving the world” (Ray 2), she is explaining that the very ES curriculum forces the students to be engaged with the world around them for the sake of not only their community, but for their own mental health. This program has pushed me to be someone I never thought I could be, and on a good day, empowered in my own agency.