Berlin Classroom- December 12

I holed up in Berlin for two weeks after my school in order to finish writing an article. However, the longer I spent in Berlin the wider I felt a juxtaposition rise within me. I became fascinated by the contrast within the non-locals in other words, the difference between those who had come to Berlin by choice and those who came not by choice: expats and refugees. As an American who only speaks English, I began to overhear stories in English about traveling around to various European cities for the sake of weather and observe the roaming workforce of laptops in coffee shops. At the same time, I volunteered with a group and met some refugees from Syria who spoke of missing their country and longing for place. My Airbnb host was in a similar situation with minimal economic opportunities where he lived, yet felt a deep yearning for where he came from.

Meanwhile, I was basically living the life of an expat because I was hearing about the ramifications of Trump and the terrorist attacks occurring near my house, yet I was so far away. This distance isolated me as I had no source to vent my frustrations and concern for my own country, America. I had trouble, which is not uncommon with a sense of patriotism for my country. America was not great, we had history and numerous presidents to prove it. However, meeting Germans, I felt a sense of kinship with the tainted patriotism.  

This strange patriotism was simply a sense that I could speak about America from one American’s perspective perhaps was more a sense of confidence with knowledge than anything else. Though even this sense of knowledge I realized was slipping away, America is insular and my knowledge of America is insular. I felt like I was struggling to come up to the surface after living underwater for so long. In other words, I was hearing about the world and about America from the non-American world community. “America is the criminal and the judge.” Though it was no shock to hear these comments about America, as many of my friends in college were American Studies majors, it was refreshing to be surrounded by this perspective without the burden of the identity. Being American while critiquing America.

Identity pivots as you change your scenery often because you are who you are in reference to others. While I was traveling I was American until I met another American then I became a New Yorker and so on and so forth. American problems do not look inward when you are abroad they look outward. When abroad, our history gets compared with the history of others and our action is compared to the actions of others. “America in many parts is like a third world country, right?” “America never went through the three phases of human rights that other European countries went through. You skipped one.” Though listening to the critiques of people from other cultures with a different center culture to orbit their identity around, I could catch glimpses of America through an alternative lens

Through being in Berlin the city and the people within it became their own educational experience. Overall, I am still trying to process what it means when the world increases in being a collection of global wanderers without a root to a place, but also how America fits with all the interconnections of the global world.

School of System Change - November 1

I knew going into this school that I was going to be the youngest one there, but for some reason I was far from nervous. I remembered to give myself a small pep talk about being extroverted and make the most of my time there, so I launched a confident me into the classroom on day one. Each day was long and the students and teachers were more than kind. The majority of the class were from corporate sustainability backgrounds and everyone was a woman except for one. We had a few ice breakers to describe how we felt being in the school. I picked an image of a grasshopper on a wooden table as I felt both like the grasshopper as well as the piece of wood represented me: grounded and about to take a leap. The school days were a cycling of different teachers coming to us.

Though I was smug from my little research in systems from college, I felt I was also intuitively soaking it all up because of my biology background. I held a minor reservation because the material itself was discussing change, yet not discussing the change of different oppressed groups of people. It seemed to be the reoccurring theme as I learn about this field, but this time I followed what I learned from the Oslo conference and spoke up to the group during one of the activities. I felt nervous as I spoke “I want to acknowledge the people who are not in this room…” but I was surprised at how others responded in agreement. During another early activity we were tasked with explaining our story of how we came here, but not the one that we normally tell.

I dove headfirst into this activity and picked up the pink rather than green crayon and began telling my story. There was no sloth and five year old realization about the environment, instead it became was a story about gender. I felt vulnerable talking about my relationship with gender with complete strangers, but it was also an exercise in how different stories of our past shape our present view of ourselves. I realized I never touch upon gender in reflections of myself and childhood.

Throughout the school I got to work with each of my peers as we practiced applying the theories into practice. I felt right at home among everyone despite the fact that I still did not have job experience. In these moments, I sought advice for what I needed, as I felt I was in a rut in that department, which warped my perception of myself and who I was.

During the last day, we did an exercise called powerful questions, which I have since done with friends over long-distance phone calls with beautiful results. In this exercise, one person would pose their burning question (the question that keeps you up at night), and the other people would offer questions back to them to help them hone their question into their burning question. It was in this activity and those similar to this that I felt the “professionalism” melt away into humanity and vulnerability. Coming out of college having spent time with friends practicing vulnerability this was nothing new, but it was wonderful to hear my peers in this school talk about how wonderful it was to be vulnerable in a professional setting. I was new to the whole concept of professionalism, so my idealism of what should be done would often butt heads with my peers who had lived experience of the economic obstacles. Why would big business change? You need an economic argument. Although I recognize this “weakness” that I needed to learn how to speak the economic argument for corporation change, I also see the economic argument as using the same thinking that created the problems in the first place.

However, am I just using this Einstein quote about how you can’t solve problems using the same thinking that created them to walk around putting in the work to learn those economic arguments? The strange thing is that economics is not my gut. In other words, my intuition (the accumulation of environmental, biology and life classes and experience) does not run on economic benefits, yet I have to somehow explain this “intuition” into economic profits. How can that be communicated, and how can that type of translation help a world that has enough profit though not enough valuation of intuition. Often I find intuition can serve as the compass needle of humanity, as we search for our morality and ethics again. At least ethics and morality is where the Systems Design conference has pointed me.

Regardless, as the class came to an end I felt like I was a part of a beautiful collection of people, and I am excited to see where this ongoing school journey leads us.

Cologne Workshop - October 30

Prior to the conference I had gathered a list of the conference contacts who were willing to be interviewed. I was drawn to this conference because it was not only talking about the global food system, but it was placing the global south at the center. The global south is a term used to describe countries in the southern hemisphere, although I have heard it most often used to discuss third world countries feeling the impact of climate change. The global south is a unifying term to encompass groups of people who are disproportionately impacted by the carbon emitted by the first world countries. Therefore, I selected this conference on food because based on its terminology it was placing at the center the groups of people most impacted by climate change.

This conference was held in a classroom, and full of geographers. Though I knew little of the field of geography, it was a field that had intrigued me because it seemed to have strayed from my third grade memorization of longitude and latitude to a realm closer to my interests: the way human interact with land. What environmental studies major would not get excited at this field?

The opening speaker like all opening speakers should got me anticipating the potential of the conference. He spoke of the four horsemen of the global nutrition apocalypse within the food system: under nourishment, overweight & obesity, hidden hunger (not a complete nutritional profile but enough calories), and a degraded and stressed natural resource base. Additionally, he spoke about the ethical ramifications when the UN makes goals about hunger. For example, a low goal may be more practical, but it is immoral to set a goal where there are still hungry people. Though now the UN has set a high goal, as an international community we are facing both over and undernutrition, which are both problematic. After this speaker the conference progressed and I began to see that this conference community was placing the global south into the center because it was the location of research, but the speakers did not always discuss their perspectives or opinions.

Though the conference let me down, I was glad I went because I met three incredible academics. The first was a PhD fellow who taught me that technology is not simply iPhones and AI, but also knowledge itself. He told me how he sees academia as a place to empower the voices of small farmers, which he intends to do in Mexico. His commitment to place inspired me to envision a new type of academia, which has its feet more firmly on the ground creating local change. The second was a professor who aroused a collection of questions from the audience because he was focused on GMOs. Though that subject in and of itself deters me, he spoke about how he tends to pick subjects of research that are taboo. Hearing him mention how he uses academia to discuss both societal and even academic taboo, became another source of inspiration into the value of academia. The last person was a lauded professor who spoke about his experience in India and the farming system there. He grounded me into the importance of context and place. As I tend to generalize in seeing patterns and the big picture, I can lose the details. He spoke about how the size of Indian farms is drastically different than the average farm size of America. This simple detail of size, can alter how we understand people’s everyday life and their food system.

While these three individuals caught my ear, the conference had a few other fabulous quirks. The catering service only served food that had been otherwise discarded. The snacks were a motely crew of expired dried fruit pouches and crackers and lunch was a soup of misshapen vegetables. It was strange that in the act of eating this food I felt both that I was doing good as well as being a part of a larger community.

Towards the end of the conference a woman presented on Chicago. Though Chicago is far from being the global south and in hindsight I do not know why this presentation was included, the talk itself was fascinating to hear because it was given by a German. In other words, this was an “outsider” researching a place in America where many of my friends are from and live. While I was curious to hear her perspective, it was also strange. She had a distance to what she discussed such as her explanation of what a convenience store was. I was surprised at how seemingly accurate her description of the South Side of Chicago was to what my friends and college taught me, but the foreigner describing her experience and research made me feel like the picture was not whole. Perhaps this is something internal, and I should check my biases. Why is a person from a place more likely to communicate a situation better than someone not from the place? Why was I comfortable listening to people discuss places that I do not call home, but when the discussion was turned towards my country suddenly I sensed cracks missing and an incomplete picture.

Though I was less vocal about these feelings, the student sitting next to me spoke out numerous times when people were discussing India. As a student from India he was constantly poking at the details missing from the presenters, which it seems like you only can have having spent significant time in that place or maybe only growing up there.

Overall, this conference challenged me in ways beyond academic knowledge. I was beginning to think outside the box about the role academia can play within society as well as the importance or role of the outside in research. Though this seems to be the conversations that sociologists and anthropologists have been having since their inception, if I understood my college roommate correctly, its seems as though I am finally beginning to feel the impact of a researcher discussing your own home.

Feelings on Systemic Change - October 20

I thought I found my people from the moment I stepped off the airplane and realized that the entire airport was wooden. As the escalator lowered me down, I saw the words “made by nature” etched into a grass wall, and I felt my body uncontrollably give way to relaxation. But, then it seized up once more as the lights of sale signs dotted the floor, and people began rushing past me. So much for my assumptions of Norway, I guess I fell for the marketing.

In front of a bathroom mirror, I stared at my shy face and repeatedly told myself that I had better be extroverted and make the cost of this flight and conference ticket worth it. “Go get some answers and footage!” The conference felt academic, so I felt partially at home in this foreign place. But, these were designers. And what even is design? What was its purpose?

This was a conference on systems design, which seemed to be a self-congratulatory field of design because instead of designing products or experiences, design was now working in multi-stakeholder systems. In other words, designers were now working at the table with politicians, NGOs and citizens attempting to redesign and thus fix the current problems of society. Despite its intentions for change, I began to feel this strangeness wash over me as I mingled more with the designers and listened to their presentations. I had heard conversations before this conference about systems change and systemic problems, but usually it was coming from activists or even academics discussing inequalities such as race, gender and income. However, this community of designers was also speaking of systems change and systemic problems, but they were predominantly white and European.

It was neither whiteness nor European-ness that made me feel unsettled, but the discussion of systemic change. In many regards this was an academicized version of a general concept of activism, but there was this eerie abstraction of change. Perhaps my discomfort with the abstraction stems from how I learned about activism and injustices from my peers at college. In college, we would point out injustices within society and trace the history of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression through different policies and institutions. Sitting in the conference, I questioned how we could speak of systemic change but not acknowledge the past or these inequalities. We were dancing around the problem, yet dreaming of the future. Though optimism is good; I continued to struggle with this discomfort. Finally, I brought it up to a professor attending the conference. My experience with the conference suddenly changed.

He spoke out critiquing the conference in the panel discussion following our talk; his voice wavered yet was strong, and in the end people feeling the same way walked towards him. As people spoke to him about their similar feelings, I joined into these new discussions. People were brought up the lack of people of color in the conference space, the privileged audience of the conference attracts and lack of acknowledgement to those who must work against the oppression within society. We discussed colonization, cultural appropriation, globalization, spirituality and the devaluation of emotions.

By the end of the conference, I felt a slight sense that I had found a field I wanted to pursue. But, the largest lesson from the conference was not the same as my takeaway from the lectures. At the lecture level, I learned of the importance of morality and ethics and the loss of these two concepts within our current society. Though this is certainly a realization I seek to learn more about, watching the professor speak out was my greatest lesson. By speaking out, he shifted the conference dynamic or system, and witnessing that shift was an invaluable lesson.

Setting Off - October 16

I am privileged. Not only does my skin color prevent discrimination as I move through the world, but my class privilege of my family has distanced me from the typical daily life experiences of most other Americans and the world. College peeled back the mirage of American greatness and my place within it. While at school I could feel like we were all just college students among our other identities, I have now lost that label and I have returned home, which means face to face with my privileged upbringing, but now there is a strange disgust in my mouth.

My bed and pajamas were my place of refuge for the month after I walked across stage to shake the college president’s hand. I was depressed. Escaping into television shows and comparing myself to friends on Facebook and on LinkedIn, I felt isolated in my own thoughts.

I had been researching the global environmental all my life and the social problems through college. I have been wanting to jump in all my life, but now that I graduated and I am free to act, I felt overwhelmed. Where do I start? Where do I fit trying to remedy hunger, climate change, racism, and all the other problems humanity is grappling with? The list seemed endless and intertwined. There seemed to be so much greed, pain, anger, and sadness and I wanted to take some action to resolve the big picture. But, this internal struggle to “find my place” was only one piece of the problem.

The deeper question was about privilege itself. Where do go live that does not gentrify an area? What community do I join? How can I help from this high privileged place? These questions and thoughts restrained me to my bed. As I noticed these thought-loops and my actions bringing those around me down, I decided to leave. Travel to attend a conference on systems design in Oslo and get footage to make a food documentary as an extension of my college capstone on biology, food and systems.

As I asked for help paying for the trip from my grandparents, I tried to rationalize my ask by telling myself that it will enable me to help people and the environment. But, in reality, people everyday are stepping into the “frontlines” to fight for their rights or the rights of others. So my ask was simply a privilege, and I feel guilty for having indulged in it and guilt in how I got to Oslo. After spending weeks emailing cargo shipping companies and reading blogs of people traveling around the world by ship, I bought an airplane ticket. And it was cheaper.