I find it fascinating when different parts of my life intersect. I see my life as having compartments: there’s my family, who is very close but who I only ever see in a familial context. My grade school, full of people from my hometown, yet separated from my immediate family because of the age gap between my siblings and me. College, 1,500 miles away from home, where I was the only person from my hometown until this year. Even within each of these compartments, there are smaller niches: the speech team and the orchestra in high school (and further: the speech students who competed in interpretive events, and the violin players in the orchestra), and ENVS and Hispanic studies majors and SAAB representatives (and double majors within those programs, and foreign language reps on the board).
Sometimes these compartments within my life combine, and it is a strange feeling. I’ve had friends from home visit me in Portland, and friends from Portland visit me at home, and every time it feels like I’m living in another reality because my home friends are interacting with my Portland friends, and I can’t wrap my mind around them being in the same place. And that’s just the beginning– when I studied abroad in Chile, a girl from my program (who goes to another college) was freshman roommates with my childhood best friend. My cousin on the east coast just started dating this girl who went to grade school with one of my Portland friends. It’s hard to imagine people outside of the facets of my life through which I know them.
Of course, it’s a two-way street. Part of what makes me feel so weird when people from one part of my life meet people from another is my increased self-awareness and sense of how I’m acting. Do I act the same regardless of who I’m with? Probably not. Is it different enough that I would appear to be a different person to my peers if they saw me in another situation? Maybe.
As unsettling as it can feel on a personal level, I think there is a lot to gain from experiencing these intersections within your life. It challenges you to find connections that you weren’t aware existed, and to learn about yourself and what has made you become the person you are. And though it isn’t the same type of intersection, I think that the ENVS program (and the general liberal arts system) does a really great job of challenging you to find similar intersections in your academics. I’ve spent a lot of time in the program reflecting on my experiences, and finding ways to study things that have impacted me (see: my thesis), and searching for connections between all of my seemingly unrelated classes (last semester I wrote my final Spanish paper on 20th century Spanish poets’ descriptions of environment, and ended up citing my global environmental history professor’s paper on Japan in the essay). From day one in ENVS, you learn about intersections and learn to appreciate the number of factors that influence every issue and circumstance that we see (see Marlene’s post about these connections). You take classes in the sciences and arts and history and ten other departments, and if you’re a double major, you tie your experiences in that major in with your capstone. These intersections aren’t just acknowledged; but rather, they’re encouraged. It’s a way of viewing the world that I hope to take with me after I graduate.