I have been repeatedly required to read Donella Meadows “Envisioning
a Sustainable World” throughout various courses in SNRE. As an information processor, I now know repeated
exposure to this material is laying the foundation for new cognitive
mapping. Besides, I always find it
fascinating when “the right and perfect information shows up in my life at the
right and perfect time”.
I knew since the age of five I was going to be a
veterinarian. No doubt about it. All through my adolescent school years I was
only interested in working with and healing animals. I participated in 4-H Clubs and job-shadowed
local veterinarians whenever I could. My
horse, my dog, rabbits, and even guinea pigs were all I cared about. My formative years were comfortable, secure, extremely
familiar, I was encouraged to explore life and supported in many endeavors.It wasn’t until I began taking steps towards achieving my academic goal I learned there was a world juxtaposed to what I’d been living in. It was near impossible for me, a high school honor student, to attend college because of financial circumstances. I remember being told, “You can’t use your ACT Scholarship because it’s based on financial need and your parents’ annual income of $35,000 does not reflect financial hardship”. However, if I were a single mother, had successfully completed a drug rehabilitation program or if both of my parents were deceased, I would easily qualify for financial aid. Being a reasonable, rational person, I couldn’t bring myself to manifest any of those criteria. And I certainly couldn’t understand it – the criteria were a mystery I couldn’t solve. I was an independent adult – over the age of eighteen and I didn’t live with my parents!
Regardless, I wasn’t able to attend college full time until
I was 24. I still had to work – maintaining
2 or 3 animal related jobs to finance classes here and there. But even after I achieved my Bachelor of
Science Degree from MSU, I still wasn’t entirely “happy”. Why? I was one step away from entering into
the Veterinary Medicine program….isn’t that what I wanted? I wasn’t entirely convinced;
intuitively, I wasn’t sure about this commitment, so I chose not to pursue Veterinary
Medicine. Mostly, I wanted to focus on “living”
and “exploring the meaning of happiness”.
But, in retrospect, I see the main reason for not submitting my application to Vet. School was more likely my state of mental fatigue from
struggling-juggling different jobs.
Acute stressors led to chronic stress and I perceived this as a normal
lifestyle.
When I read Meadows’ paper <yet again>, it hit me why
her writing was resonating with me. I
never envisioned a future without being a veterinarian. I didn’t know what that
looked like. I had narrowed my scope to a
single profession-any alternative was considered preposterous and completely
unfamiliar.
It took me many years to realize and accept that I enjoy,
and am too passionate about, a variety of opportunities in life to limit myself
to one profession…and be ok with it. I
never really asked myself,
As I enter the last phases of my academia in the School of
Natural Resources, I’m asking, as well as many others, what will you do with
your degree? Drawing from both my own and Meadows’ experiences, I envision “using
my acquired academic knowledge and life experiences to facilitate the shift of environmental
degradation from anthropogenic activities to pro environmental behaviors in the
wake of energy descent”.
Now...what, pray tell, does that look like?
I’m kind of excited to explore that! I envision myself as an
environmental educator familiarizing people with the environment to protect,
preserve and conserve it. And I’m really excited to engage in effective
communication beginning with “What is your environmental vision” and “what can
we do to reach that goal”?
Isn't it exciting to don't know "what you wanna be" or "what you wanna do" and still find a way be happy about it?
ReplyDeleteI relate a lot to your story, Heather. Last year while i was applying for scholarships to fund my studies here, i was holding on to my job until I was certain i had the money. I hated that job, but i kept it because it was "the right thing to do". I held on, and held on but one day I decided to quit. It was just like that, while i was leaving my office and walking to the subway i decided that it was time, that i was gonna take some time for myself and to brew my own beer.
I had built all these mental maps to justify why should i keeep the job: to save money for my future, to build my resume, to make my family and close ones feel proud of me... But one day, seemingly out of nowhere, those connections stopped making sense, or some others became more important.
I think that in my case, i couldn't envision myself being unemployed, and it took time for me to get there. Once i started envisioning myself as brewing that sweet sweet beer, staying late in bed and spending some days gardening and cooking it took little time to validate that as a desirable option and then holding on to my job stopped making sense. The day after that i spoke to my boss and gave him a 2-week notice. We settled in 3 weeks and a week after that i was brewing an oatmel stout.
And it was delicious.
First I would like to thank you for sharing your journey with us. This piece was very reflective and reminded me of my own journey of working with children in the social work field.
ReplyDeleteAs information processors, we are constantly changing and developing who we are through the creation of our cognitive maps and gathering of new information. We intrinsically molding ourselves into the person we want to be in order to become who we are meant to be, no matter the adversities put in front of us. We should always be striving to adapt and infuse infuse the information and experience we gather to become who we are.
I also appreciated and related to your story, Heather - as I'm sure many degree-holding millennials would! Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that there is a cultural hesitance to envision ourselves in a different career (/lifestyle, /place, etc) than the one we have chosen for ourselves. I imagine that part of this relates to Prospect Theory; acknowledging that we may have "wasted our time" pursuing a goal and then changing direction may be too painful of a loss to confront easily. Regardless, I think that it why it is important to shift the cultural narrative and allow people to feel more comfortable with envisioning alternate futures for themselves and changing their mind. (Or maybe even starting college when we're older and have a more developed perspective of where we want to go in life?)
Thank you for sharing, Heather! Prospecting for ourselves is harder than we think; we have dreams for ourselves that we focus on, imagining ourselves in those dream roles and consequently strengthening our cognitive maps...until we almost can't think of an alternative. I'm glad that you were able to break out of that feedback loop and consider other alternatives; it can be difficult to do so and I think that experience parallels the course theme.
ReplyDeleteThinking back to when you made the decision to explore other areas of expertise, how was your personal environment? Was it preferred? I would imagine that people would only make a career choice like that in two circumstances: the first being in a preferred environment, where they can comfortably explore alternatives, and the second maybe being triggered into a flight response.
Hey, Peter, I appreciate these questions! I’ve actually taken some time to reflect on the nature of them and agree with you; those would be the two circumstances when considering a career or any major life decision.
DeleteHowever, it seems my personal envisioning usually takes place in a preferred environment. There is a sense of calm; less distraction where I can contemplate my future and conceptually explore this future without limitation. On the other hand, in my case, prospecting a different future definitely was a “flight” response to a negative event in my life (or several).
I’m not saying prospecting is a negative action but it seems like there’s less of a “dreamy” quality. My original vision (dream) of being a Veterinarian was really based on the preferred environment built around my positive experiences in my childhood…I feel like there was a lack of the real world experience with which to compare and base that decision on. Prospecting a different future, conversely, was driven by a response to a negative event; except I could refer to cognitive maps and coping mechanisms. I was, and still do, prospect the future based on developed life values, familiarization of consequences and real world experiences.
It seems envisioning is the “overview” or total map of a person’s dream and prospecting utilizes all of the components…the paths or roads to follow, the detours, the mountains to climb, etc to get there and manifest that dream.
Thank for you post Heather it always very interesting to see one's personal life through the lenses of the principles covered in this course.
ReplyDeleteI find it considerably brave that you were able to leave your initial dream profession in order to pursue other alternatives that provided you with more happiness in the end. It appears to me referring back to course concepts that this required initially switching to a not preferred environment considering the lost of coherence and legibility when you were no longer pursuing the field that you had built your cognitive map around. Humans want to stray away from these types of environments and as PeterB mentioned fall prey to the feedback loop. I wonder if having found an interest in the subject of nature, if you provided enough direction to encourage coherence and legibility while adding mystery and complexity giving the number of new prospects for career paths. I wish you the best in parsing them.