Expectation.
The word itself grasps a hold of you.
The need for something,
The want for something to come to life,
A vision of something that you want to achieve.
For me, these goals and overall expectations
Were supposed to be resolved once I got to college.
Little did I know
I would just come up with new ones.
When I decided to go to Lewis and Clark college I already had a solid realization that, well, I don’t know exactly what I want to do with my life. However, I did know that college was going to be my place to grow, learn, and realize the hidden expectations I have of myself. I already had a list of some of my interests that I could bring to campus and branch new hobbies from. Some of those are including but not limited to; tap dancing, traveling to new places, quilling, and meeting new people to hear their stories. Oh, I also had the idea that I could low key swoop in with my environmental ideas and save the world. (I guess there is still time for that though.) I wanted to bring my passion for the environment into focus as one of the things I would put the most effort into my first year here to see if I wanted to potentially major in ENVS. That is one of the reasons why I joined the Environmental Action LLC.
When I came to the EA LLC I expected to find people who were in the same boat. I thought I would find people who were trying to find out who they are and what exactly they want to study, as well as make a change when it comes to the environment. (Yes, I definitely did find those unique, inspirational, and wonderful people.) Although, it wasn’t until this semester when I began taking the ENVS 160 introductory course that I began to realize that the “environment” means so many different things to people who may list that their ‘passion for the environment’ as a common interest. I remember our teacher Liz Safran asking us; “What does the environment mean to you?” When everyone raised their hands and had a different answer she joked around noting that we all said that we had a passion for the environment and that we want to study it, and change it for the better, but that we can’t agree on one way to define it.
This was very eye-opening to me because I realized that everyone has their own solutions to saving their ideal environment. This also revealed to me how interconnected everything related to the “environment” is. With this in mind, I began to think about how many different perspectives and solutions are out there, and for whom they would be solving the so called “problem” for. It made me curious about what others expected when they joined the LLC.
I had the expectation coming to the LLC that I would find myself in a community that was already taking action from projects from earlier years and that there would be one path for me to take to find a solution to an environmental problem. I thought with the rush of a new school, city, and array of students I would also be swept up in volunteer projects, campus activities and a real visual change for bettering the environment. Now that I am here and have become a part of this fairly new community I know that we have to embrace the unexpected and find a niche in the chaos. I know now that there are many paths to take and that they may overlap or steer far away from one another. My mother always told me that I could always find solutions by talking to others and building off of their perspectives and ideas. That is what I expect from the LLC now as well as the larger L&C community. If, like me, people had a different expectation related to ENVS coming to school here, and have a vision for change and new ideas that the LLC can try to implement; then all we have to do is work together to make our expectations a reality.
.