Parting Words That Could Have Been More Eloquent

This is the last piece of writing I need to complete my academic career. 16 consecutive years of going to school every day has culminated in this blog post…. Life’s crazy y’all.

Switching my major to ENST was definitely the best decision I made my entire time here at HSU. When I came to college as a freshman I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with my life. I knew I loved the environment and was interested in philosophy, sociology, and psychology but I’d heard the classic trope that a philosophy degree is a waste of money too many times. Plus I knew HSU had a reputation for being a sterling environmental school, so I decided to take advantage of that. However, it wasn’t long into my freshman year as an Environmental Science major that I figured out I wasn’t cut out to be a scientist. I could never picture myself out in the field for extended periods of time collecting data and building charts and graphs documenting obscure scientific phenomenon. Luckily however, I stumbled upon the ENST curriculum in a course catalog and switched my major that same week. The next year when I took the intro seminar with Sarah I knew I made the right decision, we were talking about things that I was interested in and wanted to learn about, I felt like we were really uncovering the things at the root of the environmental crisis.

To this day I still feel as if this is the biggest strength and draw of environmental studies. Instead of using a single methodology to study a problem as vast as global climate change, ENST utilizes and incorporates multiple disciplines and perspectives to cut through to the heart of the issue. The scientific method is great at breaking down and understanding symptoms of the crisis, such as why migratory bird routes are changing or why the sea levels are rising, however it is limited in that it can only study one of these issues at a time. ENST is able to ask the deeper questions, the question of why the actions that are causing those symptoms are happening, what forces are acting at the very beginning of a long chain reaction that ends in sea level rise and catastrophic climactic events?

My journey through the ENST curriculum eventually brought me to discovering what I wanted to do with my life/career. It took me a while to figure it out, but eventually I figured out I could really make a mark on this world by becoming involved in the Industrial Hemp Industry. This plant has incredible characteristics that really offer unlimited possibilities in transforming so many different industries that are negatively affecting the earth. Also, there is not nearly enough being done to push this industry into the main stream. There has been progress made recently which is exciting, but I feel as if this is an industry that is ready to explode in the next decade or so and I am excited to (hopefully) play a key role in that expansion.

Coming into senior year I knew I had the Capstone course coming up, and I wanted to take advantage of the service learning opportunity. My idea was to utilize the opportunity to not only gain knowledge and graduate from school, but also I could hopefully double up and get ahead on my career by gaining valuable work and industry experience. Unfortunately this was not in the cards, as there were no local organizations working with hemp I would be able to partner with. However Loren worked really hard to find some alternatives, and eventually we settles on partnering with H.I.I.M.R. the Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research.

I worked with H.I.I.M.R. as a research assistant, and even though the research I conducted was not exciting or flashy I believe it’ll provide an important base for future data to be gathered. Because this is the first year of marijuana legalization and regulation, no one knew what to expect from the weed that was going to be tested. Because of this we hoped to gain an understanding of what the labs were finding. Therefore, my work was to contact each of the 23 Certified Cannabis Testing labs in CA, and get them to answer a short 11 question survey I developed summarizing there major findings. It was interesting to find that the majority of the labs are not yet fully set up yet and have not begun to take samples, therefore the data I collected was limited.

I would not consider my service learning experience a failure by any stretch of the imagination. Was it as wildly fun and successful as I had originally hoped? No, but at the same time I was able to work with a very reputable organization that is doing important work in trying to improve a fast growing industry. Also, it got me to here so that was really the most important thingJ

I’ve learned so much, and met so many incredible people through ENST that I will forever be grateful for. I feel like I can enter the world capable and informed, inspired and ready to take on an exciting and challenging new journey outside of the academic realm for the first time, and for that I really cannot wait.

Cheers to everyone who is graduating with me, Saturday shall be a party and a proper celebration we all deserve!