I like to think that I’m a passionate person. I don’t approach my interests lightly: I proudly wear my “I’m kind of a big deal in Minnesota” trucker hat, tote my ukulele around campus with me every Wednesday, and will talk to anyone who will listen about the Hamilton musical soundtrack. I can look at maps for hours and I still low-key dream of being a cartographer. I love puns and making people laugh. I probably talk about canoeing at least once a day. And the one missed connection I received my sophomore year (“to the flannel-clad, ukulele-playing señorita from Minnesota”) makes it clear to me that I wear these passions on my sleeve, to the point that they have begun to define who I am and how others see me. When I do something, I do it because I’m sincerely interested in it.
8-year-old Rebecca demonstrating her passion for Minnesota, alongside her passion for maps
This acceptance of students’ passions is one of the reasons I chose to come to Lewis & Clark, and something that I especially love about the environmental studies program. The eighteen students in my senior seminar are working on eighteen extremely unique projects right now, and each project developed from an individual student’s passion. And boy, are these students passionate about their projects. I have multiple classmates who traveled or are going to travel to another hemisphere to conduct research for their capstones.
Yesterday, I turned in the first complete draft of my thesis to three professors who are going to look at it and give me feedback. And even though it was extremely stressful to write it, it was also kind of fun. I know that’s because I’m passionate about my research, which looks at how new students adjust to college and the role that their surrounding physical environment may play in their transitions. I think it’s super interesting research. I know that if I were writing on something that I wasn’t passionate about (as has happened in other classes from time to time), it would have been much harder for me to get the draft done on time and to put as much work and love (and blood, sweat, and tears) into it as I did.
Clearly, students across all departments at Lewis & Clark are passionate about various things. I think that’s the beauty of having 29 majors and 27 minors to choose from– you can study something that you are passionate about. The liberal arts just serves to enhance that– when you’re passionate about multiple things, it’s wonderful to be able to take classes in other departments and find connections between them and create a course of study that serves your individual passions. But I think that there’s something special about environmental studies students. Maybe it’s because it’s an inherently interdisciplinary program, so you aren’t forced to commit to as narrow a window of topics as you are in other departments. Whatever it is, it’s something that I really appreciate about the program and the people in it.