Formerly a young angry environmentalist, I seak a new voice

I was a young angry environmentalist, captain of the debate team and a firm believer that rationality could save us all. It was these traits, my love of being ankle deep in a bog and my hatred of office work that set me on the path toward graduate school. The path was much longer than I had expected and along the I way mellowed into a less angry environmentalist. I went from being a proselytizing vegan to mostly vegetarian moral eater. Debating and the power of a rational truth lost their charm when I began to encounter people who were smarter and better read than I and who disagreed with my view points. I did not have the arsenal to one up them, but I still firmly believed I was right, and so I stopped talking to people about my "radical" views because they either already agreed with me or could not be defeated through debate.

Going to graduate school to study freshwater wetland plant ecology seemed like a good idea because it would allow me to eventually become an expert on one small ecosystem. I hoped to appeal to the masses and decision makers' rationality using this expertise to protect wetlands.

I am nearing the end of my first semester of graduate school and it is still my plan to become an expert in freshwater wetlands in order to have the tools to protect them, but I find that I have lost my voice from a lack of writing and debating and the whirl wind of graduate school which is, of course, nothing like I thought it would be. I have not yet figured out how to combine science and my world view into convincing words let alone string those words into sentences and paragraphs. Thus the new goal for this blog is to try to find my voice and synthesize what I learn at graduate school with my "beliefs."