Dear Environmental Studies Program,
I came to you in 2008 looking for guidance and support after a disturbing summer abroad. I left the US as a pre-med neuroscience major, in love with my high school sweetheart and confident about my life’s trajectory. Landing over Santiago, Chile, the plane passed through a layer of smog so thick we could see it in the air. Throughout the summer, as I shadowed health professionals and learned about the public healthcare system in Chile, I saw hundreds of children hooked up to machines and gasping for air in a hospital far from their families. The friendly children, desperate for affection, were suffering from a variety of ailments that are all caused or exacerbated by air pollution. I was enraged. I found myself more and more enraged as I learned about the causes of the Chilean air pollution crisis—how Milton Friedman and his “Chicago Boys” had turned Chile under Pinochet into a living laboratory for his harebrained free market economic theories. Halfway through this summer, I also learned that my high school sweetheart had cheated on me and, in what turned out to be a solid decision, I ended things immediately. I needed a change, any change, so I signed up for three environmental studies classes and prepared to change my major.
I came to you feeling angry and hopeless. I felt angry about the break up I’d just been through. I felt hopeless about the possibilities of finding another human interested in taking a ride on my emotional rollercoaster, which had taken a turn for the particularly nauseating that year. When I took the time to look beyond my personal woes, I felt angry about the things I was starting to learn about this country, about our historical and present acts of aggression and imperialism. I felt hopeless about the prospects of reversing the horrific imbalance in the world. When I inevitably returned to thinking about myself, I felt guilty about my own place near the top of the asymmetric scale.
Environmental Studies Program, you affirmed and respected my anger. You directed it toward bizarrely specific and obscure topics alike, distracting me from hopelessness. Through a semester-long project on the environmental side agreement of NAFTA, an independent study exploring tensions between mainstream and radical environmentalists, a research paper on famine as a weapon in Ethiopia, I began to see the powerful and disturbing connections between the damage that humans do to this perceived “environment” thing that is somehow separate from “us,” and the damage that we do, more directly, to each other and to ourselves. Understanding these problematic connections is one of many necessary first steps towards dismantling the destructive systems that breed them.
That semester, the beginning of my junior year, as I began exploring these connections, I also began exploring hidden corners of my own inner world—dark, scary, lonely corners. Beth and Jay, ES professors whose love and support keeps me going to this day, noticed how not okay I was. They didn’t know me that well at the time, but they knew that this person showing up late, reeking of cigarettes, fighting to stay awake in class was not the real, full me. They asked what was wrong, asked how they could help. They reached out with genuine concern, and although they couldn’t change the traumas in my past or the struggles in my present, their support changed everything about my future.
A couple of weeks ago, I opened the weekly ES update e-mail that I still skim for fun. The featured jobs and graduate school programs are still relevant to my life, and I get a warm, nostalgic feeling reading about ES-related happenings and events on campus. I was surprised that week to see my own face staring back at me as the “Alum of the Week,” – telling all who cared to read that I was an “activist who has supported disadvantaged groups around the world.” I really had no idea this was coming, or that there was such a thing as ES alum of the week. I opened the email in a middle of a particularly confusing epidemiological modeling lecture. Once I was over the surprise, I smiled like crazy and felt so, so grateful and loved. I hope it’s similar to the way you feel right now, ES Program, as you read this Open Letter. In affectionate retaliation, I haven’t prepared you for my public outburst of appreciation.
Environmental Studies program, thank you. I think you’re great, too. Thanks for recognizing that I turned out okay after all, and thanks for giving me the tools and perspective with which to understand our beautiful, fucked up little planet and the beautiful, fucked up little lives that make life here worthwhile, worth fighting for.
With so much love,
Lauren
