Expectation is a dangerous game. It paves the way for the hollowness of unfulfilled desires and the general letdown of reality when juxtaposed with the imagination of what could be. To expect is to imagine a future and trick yourself into believing it already exists. Unfortunately for the imaginative, this FUTURE is still up in the air. Be it Disney’s Tomorrowland or Star Trek: Enterprise or this chilling apocalyptic version of The Polar Express called Snowpiercer, the “future” is a ripe location for imagination, narrative, and creation. Environmental Studies is perhaps one of the most futuristic of all the disciplines at Lewis & Clark College. One of the biggest words in environmental discourse is sustainability, a word that roughly translates to the ability of a system or behavior to continue operating into the future without destroying itself. Perhaps the stereotypical environmental studies student is a student who is enthusiastically concerned with creating better energy systems, engineering better technology, exploring better education, etc. so that future generations can enjoy the same amenities and lifestyles that their predecessors (us!) do.
In this way, environmental studies seems to hinge on expectation. We expect that there will be a “future.” We expect that water will become scarcer in the state of California and we expect that a economic/policy/technological/etc. idea will make water less scarce in the future. We expect to have some degree of agency to solve problems like these. And yet, as many of us know, the future is far less predictable that models can, well, predict. Expectations are just a gamble. There are no guarantees. This often leads to the hopeless paralysis of an an apocalyptic mindset: the future is unknowable; there is nothing we can do; my expectations will be overruled by unintended consequences. With expectation so tightly linked with hope, is there a way to negotiate an unknowable future and maintain a hopeful outlook?
What if you have NO expectations? While this is probably impossible in practice, I can’t remember having any significant expectations that I held onto tightly when I first arrived in ENVS 160. Ready for a fresh start in a fresh place, I did not arrive at college with a plan. One whole transformative semester later, I still had no plan on the first day of my ENVS journey. Looking back, I’m actually not sure how I came make the decision to to major in either ENVS or English. From what I remember, it all just happened naturally.
But it must be impossible to have zero expectations, right? ENVS is school. I knew that. I also knew that ENVS was going to be not 100% science but I didn’t really know what the field of environmental studies was. I grew up in a family with a very strong ethic and history of environmental advocacy and activism but I knew ENVS wasn’t going to be that either. I was ready to learn, absorb, and flow with the novelty of a new way of thinking promised to me by my liberal arts institution. Otherwise, I had no agenda.
The result? I pursued, and continue to pursue, the things I like. My openness to the world of #LCENVS and the interdisciplinary openness of #LCENVS allowed me to weave my academic and personal interests into a rigorous curriculum. From what I have heard from my peers, both those who stuck with ENVS and those who didn’t, my experience is on the positive end of the spectrum. Maybe this is because I had no expectations, but more likely this is because my initial expectations to simply learn and be open lined up with the character of ENVS 160 and the ENVS major at large. Maybe I just did my research and looked up the structure of the curriculum and asked older students about their experience.
The advice: For those who are considering ENVS or those who are in the throes of ENVS 160 and don’t know what to expect, good. Stay there. Gather as much information as you can from older ENVS students, professors, people who ditched before 220, students who are writing their thesis. Read all of the concentrations and look at all of the ENVS student sites. Think about what you find endlessly interesting. For me, these things are British Romantic poetry, salmon, nuclear energy, wilderness philosophy, the state of Idaho, and tourism. I expect that you too just might be able to pursue what you find fascinating under the breadth of ENVS.