On our first day of class I remember our teacher asking us to go around the room and tell our major and why we took this class. I was seated almost directly in the middle of the classroom and heard the first half of the class talk about how they were either Environmental Studies majors, thinking about majoring in Environmental Studies, or English majors. Here I was, a Psychology major senior just needing an upper levels honors course having no connection whatsoever to the environment or English. I had never taken any type of course in Environmental Studies and my last English course had been 3 years ago. After this classroom discussion and seeing the syllabus with all of the activities and projects, I figured this would be the class that I “bull crapped,” my way through. I knew then I would have to make up a lot of personal stories and “connections,” with nature in order to fulfill the course objective, finding my place in nature. Even the title of the class made me chuckle. After these hypotheses I made in the first day of class I could never have imagined myself connecting with this course, seeing this course relate to my major and minors, or having found my place in nature. I made connections with this course and its objective as soon as we discussed some of the work we read in class. These connections grew with each guest speaker and project, and my final connection and overall epiphany was connected with the final digital storytelling project.
I had obviously disconnected myself with nature at some point in my life, where this happened I am still not sure, but my first realization that this connect was apparent was when discussing John Burroughs “The Art of Seeing Things.” Not only had I realized that in my busy life, focusing heavily on my career and preparations for it, had I stopped simply taking a closer look at things. I had a deep connection to Burroughs’s statement that: “But nothing can take the place of love. Love is the measure of Life: only so far as we love do we really live. The variety of our interests, the width of our sympathies, the susceptibilities of our hearts- if these do not measure our lives, what does?,” (Burroughs, p.147). I had been so focused on my future career the past 4 years here, that I let this focus get in the way of passion. This passage helped me to create an emotional connectedness with nature.
My second connection was made with a combination of reading Tom Looking for Hickories and his discussion with our class. Reading his work really started my connection with my past experiences with nature and how these have impacted my life. I had never read work that I could relate so closely to home, and my connections to his work brought me back to my childhood. His piece “Forgotten Fossils From a Local World,” gave a me a sense of childhood euphoria that brought back many memories I had long forgotten, memories that had been shoved aside by tests, graduate school applications, internships, and a lack of sleep. A section that really stayed with me was in “Forgotten Fossils From a Local World,” when he said “In the way of most natural discoveries, the moment was magic and unexpected. Jody told me at school about the fossil beds and we peddled to the creek after baseball practice. We parked our bikes at the small bridge, its pavement warm, and its blackened timbers sweet with the scent of sun-baked creosote… But that feeling, of kneeling at dusk with wet sneakers and the world’s mysteries at my feet, is a touchstone memory of childhood,” (Springer, p. 8). I was shocked at the physical sense of nostalgia I got from reading Tom Springer’s work, and his presentation helped me to start making connections back to my childhood experiences. Tom Springer’s presentation also gave me great insight to creative writing and its structure. I had been writing lab reports, behavior modification protocol, and research based papers for the last 3 years and his insight gave me motivation to write some more creative pieces.
My last connection was made in our unit with Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This connection was probably the easiest for me to make because it hit so close to home for me. My personal connections to this class have also been reflected in a lot of concepts I have found in my minor Social Psychology. Kingsolver’s book allowed me to really connect with some of the values our society holds at a high standard and why these are seemingly so important. Kingsolver states in her book “It is both extraordinary and sympathetic in our culture to refrain from having everything one can afford. Yet people do, mostly because they are allergic, or religious. We looked around the table at one another, knowing we had our reasons too. Strang, though, how much it felt like stepping into a spaceship and slamming the hatch,” (Kingsolver, p. 35). I loved reading about her family living off the grid, and being able to connect this concept to my values as a person. This unit helped me to connect with my values as an individual and conceptualize how these values were instilled in me, which also helped me with my final project. This conceptualization helped me to achieve the course objective, finding my place in nature.
