Deconstructing the World and Our Emotions

The ebbs and flows of pessimism and optimism that I have experienced throughout the Environmental Studies program have been educational and enlightening. The invaluable and often times troublesome content with which we engage has shed light on many of aspects of society that require environmentally just reconstruction. We have engaged this content through an array of critical lenses, methodically deconstructing the politics, powers, privileges, ethics and motivations that have shaped many of todays calamities. But aside from learning the skills and methods of engaging in deconstructing, I've learned a very powerful lesson about myself. This learning experience has shed light on my individual politics, powers, privileges, ethics, and motivations, all of which have empowered me to use my strengths to begin contributing to environmentally just reconstruction.
Looking passed the pain and hurt in the world can be a difficult to achieve. Furthermore, cultivating motivation to act and knowing appropriate ways to act add an additional and often times daunting burden, one that can drag down many students who struggle the common, yet conflicting emotional responses of passion and apathy. Where do these feelings come from? They're deep, personal, and difficult to identify. I believe for this task, we must think critically about ourselves and deconstruct our emotions to find the source of our passionate anger towards injustice. Throughout the progression of the "affective arc" of the Environmental Studies program, I identified which calamities overwhelmed me the most. Based on the critical engagement with the course content, coupled with my critical engagement with myself and an embracement of my emotional response, I have found a path through which I hope to create positive change. My path is foggy, dynamic, and full of obstacles, but it is a path none the less.

Going to nature

While this discussion is applicable to many of us, I have always had a distant relationship with nature in some ways and not others, despite my curiosity. When I was 8 I had installed an amateur composting system in my backyard (A hole I dug and dumped our food waste in that the raccoons constantly got into) and an herb garden I used to make my natural teas and at home beauty products. At the same time, my family lived close to Tahoe and I always begged my dad to go, to which he would respond in his Salvadorian accent, “Brown boys don’t go to the snow” with a laugh. On other occasions, I’d beg to go camping, and he’d reply, “Why would we choose to sleep outside?” Despite almost being unsuccessful in my attempts to go to places of nature, it then occurred to me that, “we were always going to nature” (Coming of Age, 66). It became apparent that nature was something to visit. Something separate and in being separate was something unlike us. That separation created a divide from my father and nature and in turn divided me by default. Although I have always been white passing, I knew it applied to my family and me. Because of this construct of nature, particularly of people of color as it being separate, it affected my initial relationship with nature.

Anything from my starting point would feel like an improvement. With that being said, as I grow into what nature means to me and how I can be of help, I realize that we, ourselves, are nature. I was fortunate enough to attend the Ron Finley talk where he described this seemingly obvious correlation. He said, “we are the nature. We decompose. Look in the mirror. WE are the nature.” I had one of those moments where everything in my life seemed to overlap together in relevance. My current feelings of defining nature, my capstone, and this lecture all came together in that moment, making everything clear. No matter what we accomplish, whether it is bettering ourselves, an aspect of the environment, or one another, we are all nature and benefiting from that actions being taken to make it better.

Filling in the questions regarding ENST

~ I seek to make this blog post as a self-reflection of myself as an Environmental Studies student and how that relates to the relationship with our professors/mentors/faculty ~

Among my senior year of high school, I took an Environmental Science class that enlightened my ignorant mind on statistical data and thick eco-jargon regarding the downfalls of our environmental state and what we should do to move past this. Through an institutionalized pedagogical approach, I realized that I wanted to continue my education in something regarding the environment and the path to help heal it. ...something regarding the environment... I knew that was a vague approach to finding a school and major to enter, but I thought it was better than knowing nothing about what I wanted to do. I stumbled upon Humboldt State University's website and was intrigued by this program they offered, Environmental Studies. Fast forward to present day self, I am about to graduate in a short few months with a B.A. in Environmental Studies (ES). The explanations/"fast pitch" of what ES is to family and friends has always been really difficult because there is so much more to this major than just a few sentences of condensed coursework and aspirations we strive to accomplish. While I have been in the major for roughly four years, after reading, "The Affective Arc of Undergraduate Environmental Studies Curricula," By Sarah Jaquette Ray, I learned a plethora of new information that circulates students standpoints and professors/faculty perspective. Through this major, I can deconstruct the same "statistical data and thick eco-jargon" that I learned in my high school ES class, which shows I am a growing human bean, and I'm proud! :)

Ray's essay shed's to light the dichotomy of the student and the professor. This dichotomy consists of identify crises, mental breakdowns, worries that this planet is going to blow up, and overall self/academic growth. One aspect of this essay I really appreciate is Ray's complete honesty regarding where professors in the ES realm stand and what they ultimately can and cannot do. Ray brings up through the the stance of Bell Hooks, that teachers cannot be students' therapists (1). As I look back to when I entered this major and remembering all of my self-realizations and pondering whether or not I want to continue my education in this major, I completely agree. It was hard to realize that amidst the chaos in my mind, but I do think that us students need to realize the full spectrum of this major. While we may go through mental stress that tears apart our hope for a better future, our professors most certainly feel the same, as if even more so because of the experience they have had in the field of ES or EJ. This realization is key for the sanity of the relationship between the student and professor. 

Another aspect of Ray's essay that I really resonate to is the realization of one's power and privilege in not only the environment but your academic career/community/overall life journey. That is something I feel everyone needs to know about this major. Ray brings up that many of the privileged students of this major feel this is all new to them and their positionality, yet students who are not white, first generation, or come from working class feel this emphasis on recognizing power and privilege "centers their marginal experiences" (6). Classes where we had debates, passionate discussions, and learning groups of ways in which we can recognize our power and privilege and become mindful to everyone's experience and stance, will be moments I will remember for a very long time. 

All in all, it was really interesting to read my professor/advisor's thoughts on the students of the ES major here at Humboldt State. I am extremely proud to represent Environmental Studies discourses, deconstruction tools, and hopes for EJ and environmental health of the future. Not many students can say that their professor has created a tool book for understanding and growing from the speed bumps within a major, where it is geared toward not only the students and professors, but those who seek to learn more about the major in the first place. If I were to read Ray's essay back when I was in Environmental Science in high school, I would be afraid to enter a major where I may feel mentally drained or lost, but ultimately intrigued by the passion and learning experiences ES holds. 

Questions I have as an ES Learner:

-How can I use my experiences within Environmental Studies to make the organization or corporation or non-profit I work for grow in a positive way? 

-Will I ever stop deconstructing? (just kidding)

-How can we allow our communities to take hold of ES discourses even if they don't agree? 

-Is it appropriate to let go of things you cannot change or do we reframe the way we view efforts in change? 

Source Cited: 

Ray, Sarah J. The Affective Arc of Undergraduate Environmental Studies Curricula." Affective Ecocriticism Manuscript (Pages 1, 6). 

The World of Environmental Studies

Dr. Sarah Ray captures, in fluently written words, what the Environmental Studies world consists of. Ray discusses the emotional struggles of students who enter into this program. Specifically those who enter into this major optimistic and ready to take on the world, but then later find, to their dismay, the complex and great magnitude of these struggles. Ray discusses how students often time enter into a roller coaster of emotions, referenced as “the arc,” and hint points of optimism, pessimism, highs, lows, feelings of being overwhelmed, hopeless, powerless, powerful, happy, encouraged, lost, and the list of emotions goes on and on.  However, essentially, Sarah Ray aims to send her students out in the “real world,” aware and prepared to make effective change in areas within our control.

For me, my journey in this program has been full of self-battles with anger, hope, times where I am motivated to enact change, and times of helplessness. But I am not alone in my feelings. This is a common trend throughout this major, not only for students, but for faculty as well. Dealing and taking into account students’ emotional state is critical in the ENST major. There is no way to effectively grow and deal with the issues at hand, if we disconnect from our emotions. These are real world issues, that trigger real world emotions. If we neglect our emotions, we are lying to ourselves about the magnitude and effects on the world around us. Being able to properly cope and direct our emotions in a positive light is a critical learning tool that the ENST program allows students to handle. This cannot properly be done if professors, such as Sarah Ray, do not allow emotions to be a welcomed part of the classroom.

ENST: Embracing the Human

The work Dr. Sarah Ray has done is no stranger to those of us who have had the privilege to learn from her. Her classes are always rich, fun, interactive, and exciting places to learn and to stretch ourselves. Because of my experience with her teaching style already, her piece studying affect in the classroom not only made theoretical sense, but also practical sense in how it is applied. I was in her ENST 395 class in November 2016 when so many things changed, both for the country but also for her, her students, and her classrooms.

The Environmental Studies program is a program that changes lives. I truly believe that. Because it is a program that changes lives, it's not surprising in the slightest that it is also an emotional rollercoaster. Who would've thought that discovering not only one's purpose in life, but also a direction in which to guide it involves emotion. I mean we are human right? The ENST curriculum has an emotional impact on the lives of those that enter it, because it changes them in more aspects than one. I have seen so many people who have come into this major as sort of a last try, a last ditch effort to find something they are truly passionate about and gain something of value from their college experience. Whether they started out at HSU, or came as a transfer student, I don't think I know a single person who started out their freshman year as an ENST major. Most of us started out as Environmental Science, or Botany, or some other similar "environmental" field, that more often than not left us feeling depleted, uninspired, and unfulfilled. However, as each of us discovers the ENST program and Sarah's amazing leadership in our own time, each of us falls in love. I have seen more people than I can count who I have shared a classroom with and gotten to know throughout my years at HSU that have truly blossomed and become intelligent, motivated, passionate, and straight up inspirational people because of and through the Environmental Studies curriculum at HSU. Whether she knows it or not, the program Sarah has created here is truly changing lives, both the lives of her students but also the uncountable number of lives that her students will impact.


I believe a critical piece of this life-changing curriculum is it's brutal honesty. As she mentions in her piece, when discussing the types of things that we do in Environmental Studies, there is no hiding from the truth. If you are going to make teaching the subject matter worthwhile you have to attend to it honestly and forthrightly, only then can students truly gleam the lessons that are meant to be taught and learned from the intensely challenging material we discuss. Part of this honesty is dealing with emotions. Being a human being involves emotion, a lot of it. Sometimes more than we would like, for emotions can often make things seems unbearable or overwhelming. No matter how hard Immanuel Kant try's, we are not strictly rational beings and more times than we would like to admit we are governed by emotions. Often times these emotions come up in difficult, tumultuous, or important moments in our lives. As I alluded too earlier, the Environmental Studies curriculum is one of those times. Students enter the program lost and uninspired, and they leave the program as passionate and motivated people who not only have an eye out for changing the world but a realistic sense of where they can start.

The journey that is the Environmental Studies curriculum at HSU is a tough emotional rollercoaster. It pits you against extremely difficult subjects and faces you too confront some of the most uncomfortable matters in our own lives. By confronting these matters head on and allowing the emotions they bring with them to become central Sarah has identified a way of teaching that embraces the human condition. Because of this her program fulfills a role that many other major programs don't, and that is too become even more than a crucial part of the evolution of the student, but rather a crucial part of the life of every student who passes through the doors of ENST 120.

Planting the Seed

To be honest when I made the switch to environmental studies I didn't quite fully understand what exactly it was that I'd be getting myself into. The article, Affective Arc of Environmental Studies Curriculum, written by Dr. Sarah Ray sheds some insightful light on the environmental studies program here at Humboldt State. Had I read this piece before joining the major I would of been able to wrap my head around the curriculum more. That being I didn't realize how emotionally strenuous these ENST courses were going to be until I was already stuck in the mist of it. The stand out course for me was ENST 295 Power, Privilege, and the Environment where I made my first connection to how my privilege "intersects with social justice and the environment"(Ray 4). When I switched my major I did it with this foolish notion in mind that I was going to gain the knowledge I needed to make a lasting impact that would better our planet and society. That knowledge is already possessed inside myself, for me what I've actually gained from this program is how to unlock that knowledge through confronting my own privilege. ENST 295 broke me in a way where I had to embrace ideologies about myself that made me uncomfortable and as stated in Dr. Ray's article, "Addressing environmental problems will require uncomfortable self-reflection"(Ray 4). My self reflection is being put to the test right now in ENST 490 capstone and program leader Dr. Ray addresses this by designing, "A capstone experience that achieves hope through agency and through a sense of collectivity"(Ray 9.) My capstone service learning project provides just that in where I am fortunate enough to have the experience of working with the Humboldt county office of education. Through this agency I find hope in working to further programs that help youth engage with their environment in a way that is both inside and outside the classroom setting. These programs include working to design an EdVenture quest that will lead the participant on a self guided tour through the Mad River hatchery allowing them to engage with their local environment. In conjunction with the EdVenture program I am also involved in furthering the classroom aquarium education program. A program that brings hatchery fish to local elementary classrooms where students will then have the opportunity to raise their own fish. Both of these two programs are deeply intertwined with the environmental studies lens in ways that the kids might not necessarily unpack it as yet, but the seeds are there. Before they even know it they'll begin to deconstruct these ecological, ethical, and sociological narratives that surround their local environment and begin to question why things operate the way they do.

Grounded in Identity

If professors taught like therapists, I wouldn’t think twice to attend a University.  I’m here to  pursue knowledge and wisdom that blows my mind.  Personally, I don’t care if a professor gives two hoots about my emotions within the classroom.  My concerns surround these thoughts; does that professor care if I am learning or not, will that professor push me to my limits and further, and will I leave this university with the tools I need.  If a professor decides to engage to know who the students really are beyond that, because they truly care, then that is icing on the cake.  These professors don’t need to cater to the students, the students need to remember that their in college, not high school.  Universities are a business.  Students pay money to learn and to understand how to apply this knowledge to our system of labor.  There isn’t one job I had, from which a boss has let me bitch and complain to alter the comfort level for me, in order to make my job easier.  It doesn’t always work like that and I wouldn’t be adapting or learning.

Professor Sarah Ray’s curriculum goes further than a normal classroom and education.  What the hell is a normal classroom now and days?  She implements emotion into the education process, because emotion is in everything.  Like I said before, I don’t give two hoots, it does not bother me; but to learn how to control emotions and apply them to the life scenarios, is a different story.  This is relevant in the the world of business.  I am not implying on dividing emotions from business, I am just saying that we have to learn how to control them in our future fields.  This then becomes purposeful towards knowing how to apply our ENST lens in a manner that becomes impactful.  Professor Ray provides scholarly readings, frameworks, critical and interdisciplinary thinking, communication, and exposes our minds towards negative issues.  This method of teaching allows students to break out of their traditional normative lens and detach the blinders.  The brilliance about this is it unifies a diverse group of student’s at the same time, takes past perspectives and moves them forward as a whole.  This creative teaching will indubitably prepare students for their future.

I did not pay for rehabilitation, but if somewhere along the line I deconstruct myself for the betterment towards social and environmental justice, then that is purposeful.  That is an education in the form of grounded in identity.

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. 

Impotence into Agency

Each of my blog posts, published or not, has started with a coffee in hand and my peers’ completed posts open in front of me. Despite the debilitating feeling of writing honestly for an audience, I gain some courage and perspective from the thoughts and ideas of all the Environmental Studies authors who have shared to this blog before me. For some the prescription of hope may seem too confining to share to this space and that this platform perhaps doesn’t lend itself to pessimism or confusion. With critical hope negativity in a way is essential for understanding intersectional issues. I personally derive just as much hope, if not more, from this vulnerability. There is something reassuring and almost validating knowing that we are all going through this life altering process in one stage or another. Sarah Ray identifies this process in her Affective Ecocriticism Manuscript as the affective arc of Environmental Studies curricula. My own experience can be compared to Ray’s claim that the “ENST degree is some kind of 12-step program, with its own arc of affects, moving in stages from idealism, lost innocence, shame, denial, grief, apathy, optimism, and then, I can only hope, agency to work against diminution” (1). Though described here as an almost linear process, I understand these stages to be part of a cycle that ebbs and flows with new knowledge and growth. Every day with this material I feel like I teeter between inching closer to clarity and falling farther from tangible solutions. Accepting and incorporating emotion as part of my response to this curriculum is what has allowed me to adequately deconstruct my former understanding of the world to try moving forward in a way that feels meaningful. 

I started the semester vocalizing my intentions for being vulnerable and as the work load increases and I want to isolate myself in my shell I am reminded of the value of the network I am a part of and the collective effort in which I play only my own role. 

Prior to graduating and synthesizing my hopes and goals with my work, I am thankful for my simple role within this growing program (giving feedback, etc.). Having models like Sarah Ray and Loren Collins actively working to fill their roles while being critical of their own work helps me to set my own mental path.  

 “To the extent that we can help them understand their anguish in the context of broader structures, be self-reflexive about their emotional responses to narratives of urgency, recognize the simultaneous humility and power that comes with being part of a network of obligation, we will turn their impotence into agency” (Ray, 13).

Catch Up

As an environmental studies professor dealing with affect in the classroom, Sarah Ray writes that "making affect a focus of our work together helps students connect their inner lives to the broader context of politics and its possibilities." For me, this idea of making the personal political is the essence of what is both emotionally painful and spiritually liberating about the educational storyboard of Environmental Studies. The frame-by-frame breakdown of the ENST model has been a bit like this for me:

1. Co-create 'safe' spaces where we can navigate difficult dialogue together
2. Deconstruct assumptions we may have about the world and our positioning within it
3. Analyze power dynamics and how they inform dominant social and environmental narratives within society
4. Build a sense of personal and collective agency and use a critical environmental justice framework to reach toward alternative, inclusive solutions to contemporary problems

I'd say the majority of discomfort for students arises within the 'deconstruction' part of this model. In the 'Power, Privilege and the Environment' class, we read articles where some students may have thought "this case study shatters my assumptions of ___," while others were thinking "this case study describes my childhood." There is a BIG difference between these experiences in the classroom, but as someone who's found myself on both ends of these revelations, I would argue that the two pack both an emotional punch and the potential for transformative liberation. The time scale and vividness of these feelings, of course, are different from person to person and with circumstance.

 This 'deconstruction' of ourselves and our assumptions is essential in an Environmental Studies education because it's a critical prerequisite for doing any kind of work around environmental justice.* Like bell hooks, I believe there is massive potential for liberation in reading and discussing theory because it allows us to identify with strangers and discontinue seeing our experiences as isolated. It's also true that actively deconstructing our assumptions can be excruciating, especially when those assumptions prove to be harmful in a number of ways. Who can we turn to in these moments? Sarah Ray and bell hooks note that "teachers are not therapists" and I agree that expecting professors to fill that role for students is unfair and inappropriate. For this reason, I feel that strengthening the relationships and accountability between environmental studies students is essential for navigating the affect produced in the classroom. To do this, I think classrooms conducting difficult dialogue should strive for brave spaces, opposed to safe spaces.*

I think a primary tension of the initial 'deconstructing' phase of environmental studies is the different affective arcs of students across lines of race, gender, sexuality, class, etc which have separated our notions of reality prior to discussing them over the course of ENST. Because of the politically sheltered experiences of many white students to the nuances of structural racism, we (white folx) often have more assumptions to 'deconstruct.' I've noticed that white folx, in general, aren't expected to have multi-cultural literacy in the same way that many people of color are expected to. This is one reason why white folx have difficulty identifying what exactly 'whiteness' is because they've internalized it as the 'default' American, the norm, or merely the absence of other racial characteristics.

In an interview with Krista Tippett, Ta-Nehisi Coates explains, “If you’re black in this world...nobody slows down for you. Nobody’s gonna hold your hand and explain The Brady Bunch to you. Catch up." Coates points to the rigid double-standard between what we expect one another to understand. It's important to refrain from repeating a tendency of centering whiteness and white experiences in the classroom if we hope to eliminate racial hegemonic structures in a real way. Deconstructing harmful ideologies and particularly white-male privilege is an absolute requirement for white people in environmental studies looking to enact change in the world, but what about those of us coming into the program already having done much of that work and/or are not white bodied? How can we utilize everyone's ideas and positionalities effectively so that we can all experience growth?

Since there are infinite resources for students to continue this journey of deconstructing their own privilege, I feel it's inappropriate for them to expect their professor to be the primary crutch for their emotional experiences. I also feel that increasing emphasis on creating productive, brave spaces, in the classroom will help more students become comfortable with feeling uncomfortable - for we must learn how to hold ourselves and each other accountable as our emotional journey oscillates between anger, joy, humility, hopelessness and agency.

Why we can all benefit from dismantling our privileges:

“For men to 'enjoy' the benefits of patriarchal masculinity, their capacities for vulnerability and care must be eviscerated, replaced by a violent and disconnected way of being built upon shame and woundedness. For white people to become white, they have to internalize entitlement and a hostility to difference, hiding from the ways their lives depend on institutionalized violence and exploitation.

Excerpt from Joyful Militancy (51)

*I am beginning to see environmental justice and social justice as non-separate forms of justice

*Brave spaces, as Adrienne Maree Brown puts it, are a more realistic alternative to safe spaces. "There is no such thing as a safe space," Brown says, pointing out that all of us carry our scars of trauma everywhere we go. I would also add that safe spaces imply that no one will ever feel hurt or uncomfortable there, which not only seems an unrealistic expectation but also fruitless, if we acknowledge Sarah Ray's assertion that "tension is productive." On the contrary, Brave spaces are about co-creating spaces of care and accountability.