from mope to hope

• This is my last assignment to do before I get my undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies. Where the heck does time go? This semester was so busy for me that I often wondered how the days went by so fast, a week often felt like an hour. It was a difficult semester for both my mental health and personal relationships were not doing so well. There were days I moped around my house, not being able to get out of bed on sunny Saturdays in Humboldt. Mope is a weird word not only to say but to spell as well. Moping around also feels weird because I such an energetic human. I needed change so I began to ask those around me to help me get out of my funk and that is probably the number one thing I am most proud of this semester. Not the play I was in, not the grades I received, not the countless hours of working to improve my personal relationships, or even pushing myself to go to therapy. I am proud of myself for asking for help from those around me. Because of this, I feel myself ready to be a social change agent, for when we begin to allow those around us to help, we can start working on creating social change in our communities. I began to feel hope in my body, hope that one day I will be the woman I always wanted to become. Looking back on lazy days, overthinking, and a depressive state of mind, I wouldn't change those moments or eliminate them. In those moments, hope emerged through the people I trust and look to. People who are social change agents for they seek to empower those around them. One of these people is my best friend Kayla. She was a reason hope began to emerge in my life. She got me back on my feet as an empowered, social advocate for change in not only our communities but my personal being. She has a bright light to her, one that can really spark change among this planet. She's also a beautiful poet.
  One way I seek to intervene in this world is to make peoples feel welcome and brilliant through modes of art. I felt I accomplished a little bit of that this semester through my service learning capstone. Through working with the North Coast Arts Integration Project, I was able to assist at teaching first and second graders musical theatre. Rather than sitting for hours and reading about tide pools, we were able to integrate environmental discourses on the importance in tide pools as an ecosystem into movement based activities. I saw brilliance through this project because kids who cannot conform to institutionalized education can now feel empowered and able to learn. This was some students time to finally shine in the school system. When I was a kid, I was seen as having difficulties in learning math. But what if I learned math through the arts? For, the arts have always made sense to me. Creativity and expression fuel arts integration for those who may seem bad at math can allow themselves to shine through learning something like geometry through dance methods. I think as we realize the power in arts integration for the inclusion of all skills and knowledges present in institutionalized education, kids can feel empowered to grow and become social change agents.
  
  I'm so grateful for Environmental Studies at HSU. I'm so happy that I was able to immerse myself into a service learning project within my senior capstone. Everyone in the class, Loren, and Sarah all rooted each other on. If that doesn't show merits for people who can reshape the world we live in, I don't know what does. I love you all, thank you for showing me a new light of environmental discourses in my life.
  
  Next, I'm moving back home. I seek to bring about the knowledge I learned within capstone and integrate it into the community I was raised in. Thank you. I am so empowered, so ready to take on new projects, realize more about myself, fall in love with what makes me happy in life, and use it as a spark to be an ever-growing social change agent. Still I rise among my obstacles that make me feel small. I rise to become an energy that cannot be pushed down, I rise above the moping, to meet hope as face to face, hand in hand.
  
  Thank you everyone for being you. ENST family, you are so lovely.