Distress Synonymous to Critical Hope

      Any college student goes through stages of emotional grief, stress and anguish either from the pressure to perform well and, or the material they are learning. While I can only speak for myself on this matter, I would assume many of my classmates experience these feelings as well. Although environmental studies is an emotionally grueling major, we at Humboldt State have the full support of our teachers and classmates. Together, we have made it through some of the emotionally toughest classes, environmental crises, and environmental movies. Why do I say together we make it through these tough times? Because together we become a caring collective, rather than individualized freaks who care about environmental justice. This collectiveness gives us power to continue caring about and acting upon the injustices of the world and a chance to be inspired by each other.

      When the Environmental Studies department showed the movie How to Love the World and All the Things Climate Change can’t Change, you could feel the distress that the entire room and see the tears of many of our students. It may not have been a comfortable experience, but “discomfort is not inconsistent with meaningful hope” (Ray). This movie is one of many events I can look back upon and remember the collective discomfort of our classmates from the images of environmental destruction. This discomfort is synonymous to critical hope however, because discomfort means that we care, and since we care, we can actively participate in helping save what we do not want destroyed.

      Our amazing environmental studies teachers give us so much freedom to express our feelings in class discussions when we talk about readings, and through the many writing assignments we are entitled to. In this way, our teachers are helping us deal with our anguish, distress, and discomfort. Why do environmental studies students experience such high emotional stress? The “‘urgency + inability’ equation,” of environmental problems “can overwhelm students with a sense of hopelessness and despair” which can lead students into a sense of emotional crisis (Davis).  As a student, would not expect any of our teachers to become our personal therapists in our time of crisis, that’s not their job. Instead, I am thankful for what they do for us and inspired by our teacher’s active and constant role modeling of empathy and agency, which is what we students need, in order to get through tough times.

      We look to our teachers for answers, and sometimes we may demand more than they can give us. As environmental studies students, we come to realize that “hope is not a good strategy in itself. Anguish, discomfort, shame, guilt, even apathy are all productive affects for decolonizing environmental studies” because it can lead to crafting the agency we need in order to tackle the world (Ray).

      Our teacher’s role model agency through their various projects and community interactions outside of the classroom. Some of our teachers write their own books for their classes which gives them the power to write from an environmental justice perspective rather than a common colonialist one. Steven Hackett wrote his class book on Environmental Economics which shows ways that environmental justice behavior can be economically efficient, which is a commonly overlooked theme in the economics world. Lonny Grafman wrote his book on rainwater catchment systems in other countries which role model appropriate technology and sustainability from a community partnering perspective, rather than a white jesus one. Laura Johnson wrote an article which was published in the local newspaper on local community farms she had volunteered on. Nate Swensen took us on field trips to these local farms then offered us extra credit hours for volunteering at the farms. These writings and partnerships not only demonstrate what we students can do with our writing skills outside of the classroom, but how teachers participate in environmental activism, and how we can too.

      Through our Senior Capstone Projects, we are pushed to participate in environmental justice projects in whatever way we may choose. We have the choice to write research papers or participate in service learning through community partnerships. In our service learning, we may choose to get and give whatever we want out of it, but we are encouraged to use our agency to fuel critical service learning. Critical service-learning “combines traditional service-learning with elements of critical, justice-oriented frameworks, such as feminist and race theories” it also “considers the complexity of history and misdistribution of power in social contexts” which are common themes in the environmental studies curricula. Through our teacher’s examples of environmental justice projects, and our service learning projects, we students are prepared and able to take our Environmental Justice lenses and our Environmental Studies Curricula into action in the “real world”.

      Our teachers lead us by example, guide our curricula through critical analysis, and offer us opportunities to be active in the world. Our disparities become what we call critical hope through the connections we have created between ideas, ideologies, and each other. Many of these thoughts and experiences may be uncomfortable; however they offer us inspiration, and push us to be the agents of the change wish to see in the world.

Citations:

Davis, Danielle Joy. Training Transformative Leaders Through Critical Service Learning. Association for Career and Technical Education. 2007.

Ray. Sarah Jaquette, Affective Ecocriticism Manuscript- Final Draft with Chicago Style