Glass Case of Emotion

This week in Environmental studies we delved into a piece written by our fearless leader Dr. Sarah Ray. Her essay eloquently captured the collective ENST experience in a way I, being a current ENST student, could not. Her research itemizes the struggles of past students and from this, I obtained clarity of my own experience. 

I struggle to find the right words to describe my time at HSU, but one word that always comes to mind is "transformative". The environmental studies program is designed to challenge what is normal and presses its students to deconstruct what they thought they knew, then rebuild it. “reframing our world, our problems, and ourselves is part of the ecological project”(Ray, 10). I can contest this to be true as my entire perspective of the world underwent a metamorphosis. The process of which was emotionally immersive, at some points feeling excruciating and at other times conjuring great joy. The course content evokes powerful emotions, which are discussed at length in class, an educational practice I had never been familiar with. The article references the scholars Sara Ahmed and Teresa Brenan who argue students feelings not only belong in the classroom but are an indication of deep engagement with the material and therefore are measures of success. Deconstructing emotional responses to material has become an inextricable part of my educational process and I now find it almost impossible to envision an education exclusive from emotion. For this reason, Ray describes the ENST experience as, “some kind of 12-step program, with its own arc of affects, moving in stages from idealism, lost innocence, shame, denial, grief, apathy, optimism...” 

Ray goes on to express great concern for students ability to rise above the emotional hardships, or Solastalgia, that come in tandem with the course curriculum. In her concern, she asserts a need for balance between emotional support in an educational context while avoiding the slippery slope of becoming a students' therapist. As students encounter emotional struggles it is common for them to grasp for something structured/concrete to stabilize their world. What I have realized before, and again in this reading, is how crucial reaching out to the ENST cohort has been on my journey.

In reading Sarah’s article It became apparent to me that what I have felt and continue to feel is far from ambiguous, but contrarily quite unanimous. Moreover, It is a strange paradox to feel foreign in yourself as new traits emerge just to find those same traits again, familiarly, in those you have just met. It is, for this reason, I believe that the environmental studies cohort has been an immensely important factor in my success as a student.  The community that has been forged within the cohort is rare and precious because of their ability to relate to one another in ways that others (outside the major) can not. I've learned enough in the last two years to demolish my world a rebuild it again (several times), but the lesson that has turned my impotence into agency is knowing that community like this exists and can (should) be mimicked wherever we set up shop.