Influences on my Concentration

When I was in high school I did my senior exit project on medicinal plants. My father is life long friends with plant and wildlife guru Doug Elliott.He was my mentor on the project and helped me to see the reasoning behind why plants are not valued as valid medicines in our culture, which in simplistic terms is largely shaped by Capitalism. My uncle took me on walks through out the project introducing me to a variety of medicinal plants that grew in my back yard. In the following years I began collecting these plants to supplement into my diet  because of their adaptive qualities of preventing different illnesses. I realized that collecting the plants myself made me much more aware of how i treated my body, as well as how different plants were able to alter the way i felt. 


I was homeschooled for the first fourteen years of my life and was offered a very kinaesthetic education. I realized when I entered college that I did not want to enter a field that focused predominately on writing. I flirted with several disciplines that lended to hands on learning experiences, but did not feel passionate enough about one to settle down. I took classes within the industrial design department, apparel and textiles, and than discovered the sustainable development department. The Principles of Sustainable development class first introduced me to the disturbing processes utilized in the industrial food system, with its exploitation of the earth, animals, and humans. As knowledge is often like chains, I could not leave this information behind. 


I discovered the interdisciplinary department after taking histories of knowledges as a requirement through the sustainable development degree. I realized I could continue my education that would most engage me by combining multiple disciplines. At first I saw these disciplines as very separate experiences, especially because of the unsustainable jargon of the fashion and product design fields. However, sometimes these disciplines did come into dialogue with one another. For instance, I participated in a fashion show organized by a sustainable development graduate student, who challenged us to make couture out of trash. 


Several readings have aided my self-designed studies. Paul Hawken's "Blessed Unrest" was of large significance in his metaphor of the thousands of non-profit organizations,which are working for social justice, environmental justice, and indigenous rights, as the immune system for the earth. This comparison of the microcosm of bodily processes in humans to the larger macrocosmic processes of the earth has had great influences on my way of thinking. Paul Stamet's book "mycelium running" has also been of great influence on my major. He introduces the prolific healing abilities of fungi for both the human body and the ecology of the earth.