My Discipline

This is an interesting post for me to write right now, because I'm in the midst of an existential crisis about what I want to study and do in the future. I am technically declared as an environmental science major, but have dropped some of my hard science courses for this semester in order to explore and figure out what interests me most.

I know that I want to engage with environmental justice and  its intersections with social justice, and I really like writing, so at this point I'm leaning more towards environmental studies than environmental science. I'll write about Environmental Studies for this post.

Environmental Studies is under the school of Geography, and is focused on understanding human-environment interactions and environmental policy. Students often go on to grad school, and end up doing work in environmental consulting, law, journalism, and other careers.

I am drawn to the major more in hopes that the classes will be engaging for me than that it will provide an obvious career after college. At this point in my life I believe that opportunities tend to present themselves as we go along, and it's impossible to know or plan for any certain outcome. Because of this I'm going to do what interests me right now and hope that the rest falls into place when the time comes.

Because of the nature of our current capitalist society, I think that sustainability change is going to have to start from the ground up. This means that many of the exciting and influential people are activists. Bill Mckibben is an environmentalist author, activist, and educator. He started the climate activism organization 350.org, as well as began a nationwide effort to divest from fossil fuels. He's written many books, including "The End of Nature" which is one of the first books written for a general audience about climate change.

Chesapeakeclimate. Bill McKibben at Stop the Keystone XL pipeline rally. 10/07/2011 via Wikipedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 2.0 License 

Some important journals in the field are Global Environmental Politics,  Global Environmental Change, and the Journal of Environment and Development.

Reflection:
I read Aaron and Olivia's posts on their disciplines. I'm having a hard time finding direction in colle . ge, so I was impressed by the clarity that they both have in regards to what they want to do in college and in the future. Although I don't factor money very heavily into my choices about a major, I think that it's a smart thing to do, especially if you are still doing something that you love.