Looking Back and Ahead

At the beginning of the semester, I knew that I was deeply interested in environmentalism, even though it didn’t seem to fit well with my other interests. I felt anxious about the general lack of interest the people around me seemed to have for environmental issues and I felt like environmentalism didn’t fit into my life as much more than a tangential interest. Before this semester, it sometimes seemed like there was nothing I could do to help the environment and I knew that there was no way to entirely avoid doing damage myself. My interest in environmentalism would be overshadowed by these feelings of helplessness and guilt and I would go through periods where I would try to ignore environmental issues altogether.

The things that I have read and discussed with my peers this semester have taught me that this emotional response (as well as a myriad of others) is perfectly normal. While this doesn’t make the emotions disappear, it reminds me that the people who make great contributions to environmentalism have likely overcome similar emotions. The next time that I feel overwhelmed by helplessness or guilt, I now have good reasons to muddle through the emotions, and not dismiss environmentalism to escape them. In fact, we read about specific examples of people that worked through debilitating emotions to bring groups of people to action. These experiences have also convinced me of the importance of collective action for affecting change.

Another, possibly more important, result of my studies this semester is a better understanding of how environmentalism coexists with the other interests in my life, mainly gained through the autonomy I have had writing this blog. Before, I could imagine the ways environmentalism related to things like computer science and feminism, but I never really studied the connections in any detail, so they still felt somewhat disjoint. Exploring environmentalism as an active part of my life instead of merely one of my many interests will also help me through the difficult emotions that caring about the environment can create. It has shaped the way that I looked at school this semester (like my feminist science studies class) as well as my future research goals as I go on to graduate school.