I came into Freshman year knowing what I was supposed to be doing, without any idea of how to do it. I was coming from an extremely known and comfortable life. My previous eighteen years with a nuclear family, a friend group that remained unchanged since middle school, and a seemingly endless buffet of options and resources had led to a pretty sheltered worldview. My first year chipped away at this naivety, though in no way did it feel immensely impactful, and that’s mostly due to me not striving too far outside of what felt comfortable. I was warming up to the feeling of being away from the only home I’d known and getting used to a new place and social circle.

I declared my environmental studies major prior to arriving. This was the cause I had dedicated so much time to in high school, and it just made sense to continue that progression throughout college. The key difference between my environmental focus in high school and college, was that finally my education was supplementing the advocacy work I was participating in outside of school. This was a year of getting brushed up on the context of this discipline; understanding the driving forces behind climate change, the history of environmentalism, the biological response to physical forces, and the basic physical processes that impact the marine environment, among other concepts. The content of my classes had changed, though the format of the class wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Most of these classes were lecture-based, involved predominantly one-way teacher-to-student communication, and allowed for passive learning. I coasted, following the lead of my peers, and enjoying the change in content.

While deepening my understanding of environmental issues, I was introduced to a preliminary form of systems thinking through my first exposure to interdisciplinary learning. For me, this mostly represented a new way of making connections and problem solving. I had never imagined a relationship existing between the structure of a building and the dialogue, expression, and function of the space that structure forms. I had never considered the potential of applying indigenous storytelling forms to social movements, nor did I understand the importance of preserving these forms of knowledge. Freshman year, despite its lack of a full perspective-change, laid the foundation for the exploration of self that would lie ahead.

An early introduction to interdisciplinary thinking, “HONORS 212 C: Spatial Stories: Architecture as Form and Fiction” allowed me to explore the connections between psychology and architecture within Pixar’s film Inside Out. Inside Out Final Paper.docx

I became involved with Rainy Dawg Radio, a UW internet radio station, during my Winter quarter of Freshman year. It ended up having a consistent presence throughout the four years I spent here. Pictured is the logo for my first show, Beat Salad. Rainy Dawg

Less than three months into Sophomore year I experienced a partial loss of naivety and a growing sense of urgency. Most of this came in response to the election of Donald Trump. Until this, I had been somewhat politically inactive for the majority of my life, privileged enough to avoid being marginalized through ineffective governance. Wednesday morning arrived with the startling realization that the highest levels of government would be working against my goals for the next four years. I knew I could no longer be passive if I wanted my work to mean anything. It wasn’t enough to merely attend lecture and pass all of my assignments in on time. If I wanted to mitigate the impact of climate change and assist communities adversely impacted by our new administration, I had to dedicate time outside of school to these causes. I no longer felt that voting and being vegetarian was equivalent to “doing my part”. I wanted to organize and pursue change that would benefit my new community.

I decided it would be best for me to volunteer for a campus organization dedicated to acting on the issues I felt passionate about. After some wandering, I decided to join WashPIRG’s 100% Renewable Energy Campaign, a student-led initiative to have UW transition their energy portfolio to solely relying on renewable energy sources. For the greater part of four months, I tabled, helped organize events, and pleaded with students to sign a petition we had created and intended to present to the UW board of regents. I became involved due to fear of inaction, but I remained involved because of the dedication shown by the students I was working alongside. It was so inspiring to join a group of people so passionate about bettering their community, and pursuing large-scale change. This is what made it so frustrating to see so little come of our collective hard work. Upon passing in our petition of thousands of signatures to the group with the power to change our school, we were left with little more than a “thanks, we’ll be in touch…”. I realized that organizing and hard work didn’t necessarily lead to change. While I recognize the impact of our work shouldn’t be restricted to the minimal success of our petition, I contemplated the effectiveness of our campaign strategy. Understanding that there wasn’t any sure-fire way of an individual enacting change, I started to look for more effective means of supporting the causes I felt were important.

My pursuit of an environmental studies degree had meant that I was focusing on the communication and policy aspects of environmental issues. While I was better-suited to approach these issues from this angle, I did find myself looking for a greater understanding of the science-side of these issues. Growing up on the North Shore of Massachusetts, I’ve always had a fascination with the ocean that I hadn’t invested much energy in exploring. I learned of an intensive marine biology quarter that takes place in Friday Harbor, WA, a few hours north of the city I had just moved to. After enjoying a few introductory oceanography and marine biology classes, and in the spirit of exiting my comfort zone, I decided I wanted to go for it.

The quarter was structured around three courses: a marine botany class (read: algae), a marine invertebrate zoology (read: crabs and such), and a research course dedicated to assisting an on-site researcher with their scholarly work. Each class would be taught two days a week for nearly the entire day, through a hybrid of lectures and fieldwork; Fridays were for working solely on your research project. I learned early on that the majority of my classmates were biology and fisheries majors, which I likely should have taken as a warning. I quickly found myself in the most academically rigorous situation I’ve ever been a part of.

My project was focused on researching the temperature thresholds of bull kelp, a keystone species for many of the ecologically vital kelp forests that blanket the coasts of the Pacific Northwest. For the better part of six weeks, I grew microscopic kelp spores at various temperatures, and counted the number of viable spores in each grouping to get a sense of the temperature tolerance of this species. The work involved with this research was not always the most exciting (I pulled regular all-nighters counting kelp spores under a microscope), though I still feel that this work was valuable. It offered me an introduction to conducting research and communicating my findings in a colloquial fashion.

Sophomore year perhaps offered just as much of a transition as freshman year. With the security of a close-knit friend group, and inspiration from an ideologically disparate executive branch, I sought out experiences that laid far outside my comfort zone. Through these challenging yet rewarding experiences emerged an improved sense of self, and a greater sense of agency in positively contributing to movements I’m passionate about.

I captured this photo during WashPIRG's "Rally for 100% Renewable Energy", one of many club events I participated in during my Sophomore and Junior years.

While participating in a research quarter at Friday Harbor Labs, I researched the temperature thresholds of microscopic Nereocystis luetkeana, also known as bull kelp.  FHL_Research_Final_Presentation.pptx

Pictured is part of the Friday Harbor Labs Zoo-Bot Class of 2017.

Building off of the growth I had experienced the previous year, I entered this Summer determined to find opportunities for development outside of school. Though I had many work experiences over the past few years, I hadn’t yet found myself working in a role that I could see working in for more than a few months. Until the Summer before Junior Year, I had no real reason to believe that I could support myself doing the work I felt passionate about. Sure, I had heard about jobs within the environmental sector, but I didn’t know if this work was right for me or if I was right for the work. Sitting on the beach while at home for the Summer, I got a call letting me know I had been selected for a position with a company called Scope 5, and that I would be needed back in Seattle in a few weeks.

I was hired for the position of sustainability intern, a somewhat vague title that fit exactly what I was looking for. Scope 5 is a company that allows organizations the ability to track their environmental impact in an organized, interactive fashion and translate this knowledge into appropriate reduction efforts. My position involved working on a project with one of Scope 5’s clients, the King County-Cities Climate Collaboration (K4C), a partnership that allowed me to work for the governing body of my new home. The internship was centered around the creation of public-facing sustainability dashboards that would inform residents of the impact their cities were having and connect them with ways to reduce their own environmental impact. Over the course of three months, I traveled to the city halls of four King County cities to work with the sustainability directors of each municipality. Needless to say, having the opportunity to work alongside these dedicated government employees in crafting their dashboards was an incredibly valuable experience. Watching these professionals work was informative enough, but having the opportunity to express my opinions and collaborate with these people was perhaps most beneficial for developing my skills as an environmental leader.

The end of this internship lined up with the beginning of fall quarter. Due to a combination of scheduling ease and credit requirements, I had enrolled in an honors class called “Human Beingness in the Anthropocene”, essentially focusing on what it means to be a person in modern times. In this case, I wasn’t targeting this vagueness and abstraction, but it ended up serving me just as well. The class was led by Professor Karen Litfin, an instructor in the Political Science department, who’s specialty was in Global Environmental Politics. She’s also one of the founders of an educational movement to incorporate contemplative practices into formal learning institutions. The class I took forced us to ask enormous questions about ourselves, including what our role was within changing oppressive, destructive systems, and what was at stake if we passively processed information about where our Earth was headed. As an environmental studies major, I was used to heavy content but I had never quite experienced a class like this. In the majority of the courses I had taken, we would spend eight weeks learning the ins and outs of some global problem. Then, in the last two weeks of the quarter, we would discuss the solutions; these solutions often taking the form of a call to action, a gesture towards individual responsibility, and a news snippet about some innovative approach that was being taken to address an issue. Those two weeks were meant to cut the edge off of the preceding eight weeks, and to inspire some comfort, and hopefully agency, in the idea that some issue could be “solved”. “Human Beingness in the Anthropocene” made few attempts to soften the blow. There was no two weeks dedicated to talking about the solutions to humanity’s biggest problems because we’re largely uncertain of what strategies we should be using to address the systems that are degrading our planet. The solutions we did discuss weren't focused on specific strategies, but rather drew on larger concepts these solutions would need to be grounded in - like empathy and interdependence. There was no “individualizing of responsibility”. This class was a process of wading in the ambiguity and finding comfort in collectively not knowing. Sometimes, becoming comfortable was only possible through partially disengaging. Professor Litfin led us in contemplative practices each class period, guiding us through the acceptance and internalization of the heavy class content we were confronted with. The value of these practices was not lost on me, so much so that I was inspired to engage in consistent reflection since. I credit this class with introducing me to all sorts of mantras and epistemologies I still hold central to my core; the concept of systems thinking and leverage points, the power of the collective, and the impact of asking ourselves “to what am I giving myself to today?” each and every morning.

Though it didn’t feel very intentional at the time, I was able to carry the momentum I had built over the previous few months into the new year. Wrapping up my position with Scope 5 over the fall, I was in need of a source of income and began mass-applying for upcoming work opportunities. In the midst of an episode with the flu, I heard back from an opportunity I had frankly forgotten I had applied to. It was called the University Community-Based Internship (UCBI) program and was hosted by the Carlson Center at UW. This program paired undergraduates with non-profit organizations throughout the Greater Seattle community and carried a single requirement: to benefit your host organization and the community they serve. Despite interviewing from my bed, I was accepted for this program and was paired with an education and youth empowerment organization called the Bureau of Fearless Ideas (BFI). This group provides free writing development and storytelling programs for students aged 5-18. The organization had recently opened a second location in the heart of Yesler Terrace, a community just east of Pioneer Square, in the bottom floor of a recently developed low-income housing building. Over the course of my 3-month internship I was one of three employees at this location, responsible for running an after-school program and managing an ever-fluctuating volunteer base. Aside from these day-to-day responsibilities, my role also involved designing a “club” in which students could freely write and create, without experiencing the mundanity they often associated with writing. Inspired by the recent success of Black Panther, and the representation this predominantly East African population of super hero lovers were finally seeing, I decided to organize the production of two superhero short films. The students wrote, designed and created costumes, and performed in the films that they created. Early on, my supervisor LaKesha mentioned that our work would only be effective if it was grounded in the needs of the students, parents, and larger community. It was really important to me that the program I designed for these students embodied that idea, and I feel that this project ended up successful in this regard. The students gained storytelling and communication skills that are central to their development as people. While these films ended up extremely silly, I’m hopeful that it inspired a more meaningful thought for these students — that with a little movie magic they could be the superheroes they so idolized. If not, giving these students the space to express their silly selves is enough of a positive outcome itself. Plus, this project gave the world cinematic classics like “Heroes of the Dark Forest” and “The Twerkening”, something we can all be grateful for.

Personally, this was one of the most challenging, rewarding, beautiful experiences I’ve ever been a part of. I grew immensely as a leader, learning to adapt to this rapidly changing environment; to let go of the small stuff while consistently prioritizing the end goal. Watching as this community came together to support these children, from the community sewing collective producing costumes from goodwill donations to the well-attended “red carpet” (red construction paper) premiere - all of it was completely awe-inspiring. It is because of this experience that I plan to prioritize community-oriented work post-graduation.

Junior year was a year of change, growth, and love of the process. I credit these experiences throughout this year with taking a passionate yet amorphous 20-year-old and carving out a centered person. During this segment of the race, if you ignore the trail you have left to cover, the rumbling of discomfort in your ankle, and the temptation of distracting yourself with humming the same refrain of a song that played at the start line, you realize that you’re actually having a lot of fun. That’s when you realize that all of this was worth it, not because of the climb you had just accomplished, but because it was fun.

I worked with Scope 5 off-and-on during my Junior and Senior years. It was here that I got my start within the environmental sector.  K4C Sustainability Dashboard

"Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity - our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality." - Donella Meadows  Honors 392A Final Paper  Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows

Filming the cinematic classic known as “The Twerkening” with BFI. Watch here.

Naka, star of the award-winning film “Heroes of the Dark Forest”, produced by BFI.  Watch here.

BFI's mission is to motivate young people to share their stories. Attached is a poster that describes my work with them.  UCBI Spring Celebration Poster.pdf