Measuring Success: a Recipe for Failure

“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations” -John Green
    I cannot deal with conflict. The objective part of me knows conflict can be and often is a healthy and productive thing, that points of contention provide perfect opportunities for new ideas and worthwhile compromises that leave all involved better off, that confrontation (in a healthy manner, of course) can give rise to greater understanding–but the rest of me, and arguably the more dominate part of me, simply cannot take all the negativity that arises when a conflict breaks the surface. I shy away from arguments, from the difficult conversations that hurt to hold, from things that isolate or single out or do anything to disrupt the comfortable feeling of community and collective understanding–and this, I suppose, is why I was caught so flat-footed in that final collective discussion when someone stated that we as a class had not made progress because we had not had those points of conflict. I know we as a class had talked about brokering difficult conversations between diverse groups and maybe we failed to accomplish that piece of our work, but I do not see how that translates into ultimate failure.
    Ecoliteracy is an extremely broad term that has so many different and possibly even conflicting definitions and we therefore needed to spend a good chunk of time just deciphering what it was, exactly, that we had undertaken to study for the semester. I feel like each class within the 360 had its own self-contained goals that went on to contribute to the larger collective understanding of ecoliteracy and what it means to be ecoliterate and understanding of “nature” and the “environment” (other terms that needed defining at the outset). We participated in a number of field trips that allowed us as a class to put what we learned into practice, understanding the world in different ways, making new connections, and sharing what we learned with the wider community. Finally, the story slam felt like an on-campus capstone where the rest of the Bryn Mawr (and Haverford, i.e. Tom) community joined us for a meaningful discussion and chance to share what we as a class had been thinking about while also listening to and sharing personal stories. All that cannot be nothing, cannot be meaningless or empty or an ultimate failure and though I myself and still puzzling out how to name what I am taking away from this experience, I know regardless that I am taking something away (and am willing to bet others are as well) so even if failure was present, it certainly could not have been absolute.
    To start with classes, I know for me the biggest struggle was and forever will be economics. As I often say, I cannot “math–” numbers hate me, formulas stop functioning the second I try to use them, number are more or less Greek to me save for the actual Greek characters in formulas which resemble something closer to Sanskrit or Cuneiform the longer I stare at them. Econ especially over the years has always flown right over my head. I suppose supply and demand are easy enough, finding the intersection of how much of a thing people will buy at what price and all that, but my understanding seems to stop there. I think it is because I cannot connect with economics. I have no personal stake in or strong tie to what investing something now will look like later or how and why taxes and ceilings/floors exist or why this one graph does this one thing and how I can change it so it does the other thing and the meaning of this one trapezoid or that triangle–and that description probably proves my lack of understanding or personal investment. However, to me it is more than just simple misunderstanding or general dislike of the subject (but not you, David, you’re great!), I also dislike capitalism as a whole and find economics impossibly arbitrary and as cold as the coins or bank vaults that it involves. I can say that something costs “x” number of dollars and point to a graph and say “this is why this is a thing” but what does this really mean and why? What is money really worth especially here in the United States where our federal reserve means our bank notes would be just as worthless as Monopoly money except that someone once decided they somehow equate to some predetermined value and we just blindly accept that a green piece of cloth with a one on it is worth one dollar. What is more that dollar somehow has a value attached to it though really we could say it is worth one apple or one lightbulb or one goat, it just all comes down to how we decide to value that one dollar. With this in mind, I really struggle to put a value on life, be it the life of a person, an animal, a tree, or an entire ecosystem at any scale (including global). I know what these things are worth to me and can assign values of a sort in my head: clean air, for example, is worth breathing freely, running and somehow being able to catch my breath even after mile after hard mile, baking something and smelling that in the air instead of smog or sewage. Individualized qualitative values make sense to me because I feel like everyone values certain things at different levels and that value can change dependent upon that person’s contemporary reality. A book might not be worth $12.99 so much as it is worth a college diploma, and I suppose this line of thinking does touch upon ideas of opportunity cost and spending money on one item versus another but I think the idea of knowing that everyone has their own set of priorities and idiosyncrasies that determine what they do in a situation that I may never be fully aware of or understand, and then being told to just assume how a person will act and that everyone will act the same frustrates me. Part of me feels like that person has handed me their credit card and I am supposed to do their shopping just somehow knowing what they want me to get. Maybe I am just over-thinking everything and I suppose this is an instance of a possibly productive conflict, I just do not know where to begin reconciling my own conflicts with economics as a whole, though improving my math skills could help, I am sure.
    Education made far more sense to me as I felt this class really unpacked what ecoliteracy meant and how we might move forward with this understanding. As best as I can phrase it, ecoliteracy refers to understanding, interpreting, and relating to the environment in a meaningful way that incorporates not just the “far-off” nature of mountain ranges and deserts and forests but also where an individual lives and feels at home. I personally am much more comfortable in academic environments where there are no absolutes, where boundaries do not stop at black and whit but can fade into shades of gray and we can be as raggedy as we need to in class discussions. Issues of education do not seem to have one right or wrong answer and there are so many different types of pedagogy one can employ and adapt in teaching. To me, questions of teaching ecoliteracy feel especially important given the sheer urgency of the issue itself. I spent a good six years in the Texas public schooling system where I was a minority in that I worried about the state of the planet and how we as people could do something to stop destroying the one place we call home. Sure, we had a recycling program and there were science classes that touched on the impacts of global climate change and human impact upon the environment, we had oceanography and animal science and AP environmental science–and at the same time I only found a few other people felt called to actually do something. Most people I encountered still would not even accept climate change as a reality (doubting coworkers and bosses proved interesting when trying to find a job).When I consider the problem of environmental education and lack of ecoliteracy in Texas, I cannot help but blame the educational system. So few classes do anything to incorporate the environment into their work and those that do rely more strongly upon socially constructed nature, the national parks and forests but not the grassy field behind the building. The one class that did work to bridge the gap between environmental awareness and concern for the local community, the environmental science class, did well to include activities such as water sampling at the nearby park, hiking at the nature center right by the school, and speaking with an employee who worked with the city’s municipal water system, but looking back I feel the framing for these activities was a little off the mark. Like labs in other science classes, these activities were meant to proxy for actual field research a biologist or ecologist might do in, that’s right, national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. Furthermore, there was little to no discussion about environmental issues that were actually present in the local community–the entire city was on a long-term water restriction, a new housing development sprang up every month, and awful traffic plagued the main streets every morning because with no public transit everyone had to drive. There are so many teachable moments when it comes to environmental education, but a dependence on some sort of “traditional method” that buries the conversation in endangered species and melting icecaps in lieu of issues actually salient to the community where that ecoliteracy is being taught. I think what I am taking away from this class, then, is a better understanding of how to educate for the environment: that preaching gloom and doom about the state of the polar bears to a classroom in Phoenix will not convince anyone to suddenly care about their own consumption or work for the betterment of their community’s environment with the understanding that their work locally can have an impact globally, that environment can include more than just trees and cities need just as much attention as any other place, that environmental problems stem not just from pollution but also from larger social institutions that make business as usual an acceptable practice and see sacrificing certain people or places as reasonable because such actions are for the greater good, and that a person regardless of age or race or class or gender can have an impact and enact real change on any scale and that education can facilitate making that change a reality.
    English is another place where I felt much more comfortable, maybe even at home. I understand the process of reading and interpreting a text, discussing what I gleaned from my reading and hearing what other folks could take away from that work, and going on to put those interpretations and connections into words. I think what resonated with me most in this class, however, was how we started with a discussion of home. I think the reason people ignore or almost resist environmental issues and ecoliteracy is a lack of connection, them feeling about the environment similar to how I feel about econ. I cannot really blame people for that, though, given how much messaging and framing highlights and privileges certain nature while steadfastly ignoring others. Starting from home grounded discussions in the deeply personal and individual and fostered immediate connecting between the course material and myself as a person. Writing about home in that way was also a very new and slightly uncomfortable experience for me as a more reserved and closed-off person. I tend to dislike discussing myself at all, and talking about something as personal as where I feel at home toes the line of my own comfort zone. I think I felt most conflicted not in sharing myself, though, so much as I did trying to understand an interpret others. From reading over other people’s essays to trying to draw an avatar for bell hooks, I continually found myself balking at the idea of speaking for another person. I personally have ingrained into myself a refusal to presume I understand what anyone else is thinking or feeling at any time because I am not them and it is not my place to behave as such. It is not fair of me to project my own ideas and understandings and world views upon someone else, especially when that person could just as easily speak for themself. Here again is another place of conflict and contention (at least for me) that upon reflection could have sparked some interesting and meaningful discussions, and I know I did what I could to sidestep the conflict by simply refusing to speak for another person and part of me wonders what would have happened if I had chosen to unpack that source of personal discomfort. The idea of translation as discussed in class both intrigues and terrifies me in that respect. Translating and in a sense reframing something goes back to addressing the problem of ecoliteracy, that so many ideas ands discussions and issues surrounding the environment are framed in less than accessible ways, and a deeper and more widespread understanding could most easily come from a reframing or translating of those concepts so as to make them meaningful to a person or group of people. I think back to Dorceta Taylor and her reframing of so many moments in history–Sacagawea and York in the Lewis and Clark expedition, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, and Gary, Indiana–as simultaneously environmental issues and social issues relevant to more than one group at a time. Yet I also worry about playing into the “White Savior Industrial Complex” as named by Teju Cole, this idea that my understanding of an issue somehow entitles me to presume I understand what a frontline community wants or needs when I clearly cannot and definitely should not try and speak for them. I know I am still trying to reconcile these two pieces of translating and reframing for myself to see if I can find a balance between them. As far as ecoliteracy, I personally think I gained a greater understanding of how to write so as to explain an understanding of the environment to other people and how to find the environmental messages in works that might not necessarily frame their topics as overly eco-conscious. Everything we read connected back in some way to home: what home meant, protecting one’s home from environmental disaster, connecting with the environment of one’s home, understanding how other people and communities live and work in and relate to their homes, and what environmental justice means for protecting the integrity of those homes. Even when discussing alienation and isolation, everything seemed to come back to the meaning of home which, considering the origins of the word “ecology” (from the Greek oikos, meaning “home”) is nothing if not highly appropriate.
    I think the field trips offered a truly singular experience and our 360 would have been quite different without them. I certainly regret the field trips and experiences I missed thanks to my concussion and other health issues that plagued me throughout the semester. I still do not understand where all of these illnesses came from and how they managed to infect literally everyone (although Kelsey outlasted us all)! However, I was lucky enough to avoid missing any of the trips to Camden which I think had the strongest impact put of all the different destinations. In Camden, working with the Center for Environmental Transformation (CfET) and the students from Sacred Heart, I felt like I actually did apply everything I learned in the three different classes. From econ I indirectly considered opportunity cost in considering the city. At the water treatment facility, for example, the executives could have continued business as usual at a lower cost and ignored complaints about the sewage smell but instead chose to value the community more and install a system to manage the odor problem. From education I brought new ideas about how a person can think about and relate to the environment, that urban gardens and parks are just as important as mountains and forests and that an urban area, paved as it might be, still counts as an environment and contains just as much “nature” as anywhere else. I also brought new ideas of how to explain these ideas in a way that resonates with an audience as difficult to capture as a fifth grade class. From English I brought expanded ideas of how to interpret and understand a place and to look beyond both the limits of what I could physically see and preconceived notions of how broken a place is (looking at you, Matt Taibbi) to find the significance and honestly the beauty of a place like Camden. I cannot even begin to count how many times I have heard people talk in hushed or derisive tones about the horrors of Camden or how when I shared the destination of our field trip people responded with “I’m sorry.” To me Camden is like a bone that is mildly fractured but not yet broken, a stress fracture that can just as soon heal. Places like CfET and people like Michael, Ari, Andy, and Christina have already laid the groundwork for that healing process and the students of Sacred Heart and all those who work with such places like CfET are already pushing that process forward. If anything, I our work in Camden feels the most unfinished to me as we could only visit three times and I feel like we have only just scratched the surface of what is happening in this community and what we can do to help the efforts of those trying to make the city a better place to live.
    Regarding the creative portion, I have mixed feelings about my participation. I think it was an interesting piece to include in the class cluster and I learned some about different eco-artists or what could and should be considered “eco-art” as well as what lighting gels are and how hard it is to find pieces of car tire in the street. However, I am still unsure what I personally got out of the experience and how the art portion really fit into the rest of the 360. Working with Ava was interesting but I struggle to see the connection between her specific work and understanding the environment. I suppose that was something we explored, different representations and framing of environmental ideas and I regret that maybe I did not make enough of a concerted effort to explore the environmental themes present in her work, especially since environmental, as we frequently discussed, does not stop at the edges of the socially constructed definition. I think a part of me is just also not really resentful, per say, but a little dissatisfied with the sheer amount of time and money this project required and how the expectation to create and display something following each field trip created a fourth class but without the class credit. I found the time commitment exceedingly challenging especially since I, as an athlete, often lost my weekends to meets and could not offer the time commitment I would have liked for the different projects. I do not want to say that the creative projects were useless or that we would have been better off without them, I think I just struggle with how to fit them into the larger themes of the course cluster in a meaningful way. I did, however, very much enjoy the story slam and feel that it added a lot to the value of this cluster. The story slam was our first activity that included the rest of the campus community and that I felt connected our work to the lives and experiences of those who did not participate in our class discussions. A large part of me wishes I had mustered up the courage to speak and share my story, though what that story might be I have no idea, and I know there are so many things we could have done differently to improve the experience overall (time limits, more targeted or story-relevant silent discussions), and for all that I cannot imagine a better experience. This is also why I hope to continue forward with a story slam club of sorts on campus (we have chosen to call ourselves “Ellipsis"), so we can have more conversations and moments like that, more discussions and ideas that prove so relevant to so many people and bring together so many diverse individuals to talk about their own divergent experiences yet still find commonality within each other. And maybe within continued story slams we can foster some difficult conversations and address some of that conflict that people would have very much liked to see.
    To me, our work as a 360 is not over and so many things are left unresolved, so many stones left unturned and loose end left hanging–and I am okay with this. I never expected to leave with any sort or finality or something truly definitive regarding ecoliteracy because to me such a conclusion was and is not possible. I do not see failure in a lack of conclusions, rather I think we would have failed if we had decided in the end that we could make finite conclusions and draw lines and borders to enclose what we had learned. I think failure lies more in assuming we know all there is to know rather than acknowledging that we have so much more to learn, and frankly such assumptions are anything but ecoliterate. The course itself may be over  but our work has just begun and now it is up to us as students, as professors, as post-graduates, as people, to keep pushing at the boundaries of our learning and look beyond what we know and what we think we know to see the larger picture, to keep finding threads of connection and pulling at the threads that might just unravel, to keep sharing what we know with others and to keep listening to what others have to say, and to keep working to become ecoliterate individuals.