Just Figuring It All Out Really

A quick shot from the bridge. 

As my senior year of college inches closer and closer, I become increasingly preoccupied with next steps-- When do I take the GRE? Should I wait a year or five for grad school? What part of the country (or world) do I want to make my home post-graduation? Then there's the dreaded existentials, fraught with self-doubt. For example: Will an environmental studies degree qualify me for a job I'd want? Am I cut out for a 9-5? Do I even know myself well enough to pick a career at all?

With graduation on the horizon and the number of middle-aged+ relatives regularly asking for my future plans increasing every day, it seems to me that while I know what I love to do, I don't yet understand unequivocally what I love enough to step confidently forward in any particular direction. Indeed, the hardest part of college, and one of the biggest sources of self-doubt in my life, was the selection of my major. Sure I love the environment, but do I love it more than any of the other things I care about? More than Women's Rights? More than Human Rights? More than World Peace? Honestly, I'm still not sure.

Golden hour on the Red Cedar Trail. 

But in the internal conversation I'm perpetually having with myself, I've identified one common thread: human beings. I care very deeply for people--which, ironically, hasn't always translated (and still doesn't always) into a love of human interaction--not in the cliché "I'm friends with everyone," but in a way that propels me to speak out against injustice, and seek out opportunities to learn more about the ways human beings mistreat one another. One of the biggest reasons I decided to pursue environmental studies and not environmental science (other than avoiding taking more calculus than is absolutely necessary) is because I am much more interested in how denigrated environments disproportionately affect vulnerable populations and the broader environmental justice movement than I am in pure environmental science.

Blue skies over the Red Cedar.

During the Fall Semester of 2017, I got the opportunity to conduct original research (of both the qualitative and quantitative variety) with a group of my peers, and I fell in love with qualitative research methods. I love using interviewing as a tool to better understand individual narrative and to more deeply conceptualize individual choice and experience, which is a big part of the reason I decided to come to the Lakes REU. In this way, I am hoping to learn more about qualitative research methods as a way to gather, collect, and understand individual behavior in an effort to solve some of society's most complex environmental issues. And while I can't promise that this is my life's calling, I know I'll enjoy myself along the way. As always, here's my week in pictures. Thanks for reading!

A Perfect Summer Day...

            A perfect summer day for me would be 80 degrees with a nice breeze.  I would jump on my bike and ride like 8 miles along a bike trail.  The trail would have people of all kinds riding their bikes, jogging, or taking strolls with their families.  Everyone would take their garbage and either recycle, compost or throw it into the right garbage bins.  This trail would be right along a lake and have the right amount of tree coverage.  I would stop a couple of time and just take in the beauty of the outdoors; snap a couple of pictures each time and continue my ride.  And best of all, no mosquitoes anywhere! 

Environment Through a Camera Lens

If you ask my friends and family what I like to do for fun, they’ll all tell you that I am an avid photographer. Five years ago I got my first camera (Canon Rebel T3i) because my family’s old one broke, and we needed to be able to take high def pictures on special occasions. I first played with the camera like it was a toy, pressing the buttons and twisting the lens back and forth. I didn’t know what I was doing and wanted to take pictures properly without the automatic settings, so I surfed the Internet for countless hours watching YouTube tutorials and reading about aperture, focal length, ISO, shutter speed, composition, etc. To practice what I’ve learned, I brought my camera with me everywhere I went (in one year I took about 2500 photos) to the point that everyone knew about my hobby. People started to ask and even paid me to take pictures for them, from family portraits to senior pics. I saved money from these small gigs to buy better equipment, and over the years my collection has grown to 2 camera bodies and 5 lenses.

A Canoe for an Office

When I think of childhood I imagine running through farm fields, climbing trees and swimming in a mucky pond full of leeches and snapping turtles.  My warmest memories smell like rain, fresh cut hay and pine sap.  Years later, these are still what I hold dearest. 

The Earth We Live In

As a child, my dad would sometimes drive me and my siblings over to a store called "Dave's Down to Earth Rock Shop". Inside you could find beautiful minerals polished into beads including small rabbits the size of your thumbnail, blue and purple geodes cracked open like eggs, and fossils tucked into petrified mud on bright glass shelves. After looping around the store, a doorway can be found where stairs follow down to the basement containing an array of fossilized creatures. To this day I still have my treasured bag of rocks and fossils from the shop. Now I am an undergrad studying Environmental Geology, and I can seek out rocks on my own with some contextual understanding on how these formations metamorphosed from exposure to various degrees of heat, pressure, and tectonic shifts over a long, long ... long period of time. To think that something so tuff and seemly stationary continues to change and evolve is pretty wacke! 

So now you know that rocks really do rock and you that you never want to take them for granite. I do however have interests of my own aside from these awesome rocks. 

Like a rock or mineral, I myself have had exposure to things which have caused my interests to evolve. The summer after my freshman year of college, I was given the opportunity to work in my school's Beloit Urban Garden for the summer and the local Community Sharing Garden. Before that summer I had scoffed at gardening, a task that involved much weeding I learned from the chore my dad assigned to my siblings and I in our elementary school years. We also were told to harvest dozens and dozens of smelly tomatoes which coated our hands in yellow pollen.
Gardening now brings me great joy -- to be in the sun and around happy plants raised from a tiny seed. Plants are pretty wild!! 

Additionally, I am an avid composter and I am proud to say that my family now voluntarily save veggie and fruit scraps in a bucket sitting proudly on our kitchen floor. Once full, the contents are dumped into our home compost pile where a party of insects and microbes feast on the pile night and day. I am also having fun picking up playing piano again amidst my daily activities, bike riding on nature hugged trails, and spending time with my much loved Red Eared Slider turtles. 

The margin at which these personal interests converge with the research I am doing this summer is within the movement of environmental and sustainable actions. Every being, critter, nook, and cranny within this planet makes it (and us) exist. My wish is for there to be an equal love and respect for our earth and each other, for this planet you are sitting in has allowed life to survive through its finite resources and beauty.

My research project focuses on learning how the presence of dissolved iron affects the growth of cyanobacteria and understanding the nutrient content within some of the Red Cedar Watershed rock formations. For my end result, I hope to discuss possible ways in which cyanobacteria blooms can be mitigated in waterways including Tainter and Menomin Lake. These waters contain speedy fish, muddy turtles, and sun-soaking plants stretching up to the sky.

Lets clean these waters not only for ourselves but for the life which thrives in it.

Pursuing Passions

This week’s topic prompted us to think of our favorite things to do and to think about the ways in which this informs and inspires our research and academic pursuits. Reflecting back on my upbringing, many of my most influential memories have some kind of relationship to the passions that I choose to pursue in my life now.

My dad is a visual artist and I was raised with the role of his studio assistant. Together, we would draw, paint, think and create. Growing up with those values and traditions at the core of my childhood, I have learned to see the world through thoughtful and creative lens. I have a studio art minor at the University of Vermont, where I primarily focus on relief printmaking, paper making and drawing.

If I am unable to create things in a studio space, I translate those ideas into the way I process the places around me through note taking. I wouldn’t consider myself a journaler, but rather someone who processes the people I meet, the books I read, the stories I hear and the sights I see by recording them on paper. My notebooks are filled with memorable quotes, big words that I have yet to fully understand, pamphlets, photos, feathers and sketches. I bought a new notebook for my time here working in the LAKES project. It started as a strictly “research” notebook, but quickly turned into a collection of observations, thoughts and histories of the area. Having a notebook solely dedicated to my experiences here has been extremely helpful in gaining a better and more holistic view of the cultural and physical landscape around me.

Spending time with my family is one of my most valued and favorite things to do. I am proud to be an aunt, a sister and a daughter. The familial support network I have has also shaped the way I strive to learn about the lives of others. This interest in making connections with people has largely informed my academic interests and pushed me towards the social sciences, particularly human geography, where I have the opportunity to listen to people’s individual narratives and work to understand the formation of communities and places.

With the gathering of family, comes the sharing of meals. I love to cook and spend time in the kitchen with my friends and family. My love for food has translated itself into my interest in studying food systems, farm-to-table initiatives, principles of food sovereignty and better understanding the reality of farmers. Together, all of my life experiences, passions, interests and the people who have informed the way I live my life have prompted me to follow what I love.

Learning the Ways of the Watershed

Two weeks ago, we began the LAKES experience by visiting a farm to understand the problems of runoff and fertilizer use in the region. We then went on a pontoon ride on Lake Menomin to experience the water first hand. Finally, this past Friday, the entire LAKES group canoed down the Red Cedar River together to experience the final stage of the water pollution problem that the region faces. Although the water was fairly clear and we were able to swim, we were given the opportunity to comprehensively experience the landscapes that are affected by the excess phosphorus in the watershed. Now that we have seen and interacted with the lands and waters involved, we are ready to fully dive into our research.

This summer, Tara, Dr. Innisfree McKinnon and I will be researching independent conservation practices and perspectives on restoration land use happening in the Red Cedar River Watershed. We will be interviewing land owners, managers, and key conservation professionals about their goals around land and water management and ideals for conservation and restoration. We will mainly focus on interviewing farmers, both conventional and organic, as well as lakefront owners about their conservation practices and reasonings behind their decision to implement or not to implement conservation initiatives on their land.

Recently to prepare for our interviews, I have been researching the topics of asset based community development and solidarity economies. The literature surrounding these topics is applicable to the region and excites me to pursue the themes further later on in my academic career. I am constantly learning in the LAKES program by living with students from across the country and working with mentors from a variety of academic backgrounds.

I am excited to learn more about the community here in the Red Cedar River Watershed by having meaning conversations with the people who live here. I hope to really engage with the interviewees and take time to understand their narratives and connections to the region. I am also very interested to see if there are any overlapping themes in conservation practices between conventional and non-conventional farmers in the region, and if so, how those similar practices could have the potential to bring separate communities closer together.

Learning on the Lakefront

As the subject of this week's blog post is metacognition, it seems only right to mention that these first two weeks have been filled to the brim with learning experiences--and not all academic. From finding my way around Menomonie, to locating the cheapest can of beans, to navigating the bar scene; from crashing my bike, to celebrating birthdays, to learning more about one another and the watershed we're all studying, this experience has been full of new facts and figures.

But as we all become more familiar with our surroundings, the bulk of our attention will turn towards our projects, and learning more about the dynamics at play in the system we're exploring. Fingers crossed, Lucia and I will begin interviewing this week in an attempt to learn more about the management practices of both lakefront property owners and upland farmers. 

As far as lakefront property owners go, we're hoping to gain insight that can be split into three categories: management and maintenance practices, information sources, and attitudes toward restoration. By asking lakefront owners about their habits in terms of maintaining their property, we can learn more about trends in land use that impact the area adjacent to the lake, whether they be constructive or destructive. The spread of information, whether accurate or otherwise, can be spread by both formal and informal networks. By asking property owners where, if at all, they get their information pertaining to their lakefront or the lake, we can learn more about how this type of information is disseminated in this area. Lastly, as several of our colleagues are investigating the possibility of wild rice restoration, and wetland restoration more generally is a phosphorus mitigation strategy, by asking our interviewees how they feel about restoration near their own properties, as well as in the watershed more broadly, we can hopefully gauge the receptivity of the community to possible restoration efforts.  

So hopefully with this post I've proven that in the past few weeks I've learned more than how to balance my research responsibilities while keeping up with my favorite teams as they battle for the World Cup. And that as a group, we've done our fair share of both work and play. Thanks for reading, enjoy the picture I snapped while taking a break from rain-gardening.