The Ecology of College

This semester is about to end, but I’ve really loved taking my classes. It is still hard to believe that I’m in college, not to mention the fact that I have just finished a college semester. Ecological Imaginings has certainly gotten me up to speed on ecology, and importantly, the ecology of college. While not everything in the class has dramatically changed my life, my perceptions of college and of ecology have changed, and I have been pleasantly surprised by a lot of the course material.

            The two units of the class that have really changed my outlook are the ecofeminism and the ecocritique units. Both of them have made me a lot more critical of how I view the environment and how I think about how humans interact with the environment and what we could be doing better. The ecofeminism unit has also been making me think even more about how women are treated in our society, and the connections between women and the environment, especially the similarities between how women and the environment are treated. In between all of our very clearly environmentally-related work, I really enjoyed reading Fun Home, and because it wasn’t like anything else that we read in class, the discoveries I made about it and how ecological the book is impacted me even more.

            The ecocritique unit was especially challenging and changing for me because it got me out of my misguided viewpoint that nature is perfect. Combined with some of the critique generated in class when we were talking to each other at the beginning of the year, I have really started to notice how much I glorify nature, and I have been trying to change the way I approach the environment. This class has also really made me think about solutions and whether they are viable or not, and whether someone, when they talk about ecology, really has to offer any solutions at all.

            The ecofeminism unit also made me think about solutions to how humans view and treat the environment. The need for an actual change in view point is something that this unit really stressed in complex ways, not just by spelling out the fact that there needs to be a change. The many ways that the authors achieved that were really impactful. The variety of Rachel Carson, Terry Tempest Williams, Jamaica Kincaid, and other authors within this unit and those who touched on ecofeminism in other units was really helpful to understanding the diversity in the relationships that women have with nature and in understanding ecofeminism. The parallels between the repression of women and minorities and the repression of the environment and the viable solutions to the problems with human-to-ecology interactions, and they have existed, like the reciprocal way the Ojibwe have historically interacted with the environment were especially interesting for me. This unit has also reminded me that some people feel really close to certain kinds of nature, and that helps them love other ecosystems, but other people aren’t comfortable in it, and a lot of that discomfort is socially constructed (as is my Romanticized outlook on nature).

            The inclusion of Fun Home, which, at first did not seem ecological at all, turned out to be one of the most ecological readings that I had. One of the really fun things about it was the fact that it is a graphic novel, so there was a really great narrative in the author’s actual written story, and there were also images that played off of the words, but that also added a whole different element to the book. Being able to look at the pictures in the book and the words to see how Alison Bechdel’s environment shaped her, and what she was trying to say about her environment was a completely different way of ecological interpretation for me, and that comparison was even more relevant to my own life and more meaningful than a lot of the academic articles that we read. Because there was the graphic part to the book, we got to see small, repeating images throughout the book that would have made the book boring if there weren’t pictures and the author kept on repeating the same things over and over again, sentence after sentence. The strengths of a graphic novel are so different than that of an article, and the juxtaposition of the two within the class was beneficial, because the diversity in material gave rise to diverse opinions.

            The class hasn’t just impacted me through reading, though. The conversations I’ve had in class have been really great. I actually have to think about the environment of the class during discussion, which just highlights what we’re reading even more. I’ve also improved my conversation skills—in and out of the class room, I’ve become more perceptive about what I say, when I say it, and how I do. I need to participate, and I also can’t sit there and feel bad about myself for getting something wrong, like forgetting a blog post, actually participating will do a lot more good for me and for the class. Selecting my comments and how I present them is also important, because how and if I say something can elicit a different reaction from someone, just because of a different phrasing, also sometimes I should jump into a conversation, and sometimes, I need to hold back, because I can stop a conversation and turn it in a different direction, which stops other people who were going to contribute to the conversation from participating, because I’ve eliminated the relevance of their ideas and comments.

            Taking Ecological Imaginings was a really enjoyable experience. I learned a lot about the ecology of nature, and the goings on in college. My discussion and writing skills have improved with all of the experience I have gotten in this class. From talking to freshmen in other ESEMs, it sounds like this one has been more intensive than others, but that intensity has resulted in a lot of improvement and has made me more aware of what I am expected to do in college.