For me, the environmental policy major is Barnard’s best-kept secret. It afforded me the perfect way to major in something that both involves science—a passion of mine— and is interdisciplinary at the same time. As a first-year, it seemed ideal that I could have a major, do premed, cover the Nine Ways of Knowing, and still be able to study abroad. I started out with this perspective, not really caring deeply enough about the environment to dedicate my life’s work to it. I chose this path initially not out of environmental enthusiasm, but out of knowing that this was the easiest way for me to combine my interests.
Two years down the road, I decided to enroll in an Ecology and Conservation program with the School for International Training in Ecuador to cover major requirements as well as improve my Spanish. I really did not know what I was getting myself into. It was a program that allowed me to travel to a biological reserve in the middle of a pristine primary rain forest in the Amazon, where I took a plane, two buses, and two boats to get there from the capital city, Quito. It debunked all the myths I had heard about the rain forest having swarms of insects, wild animals in plain sight everywhere, and danger around every turn. In fact, you are more likely to get hit by a falling tree than attacked by a jaguar or any other “wild beast.”
The program also took us to the Cloud Forest in the Intag Valley, a location with immense biological diversity. The Intag Valley is home to a huge mine, and I learned firsthand from a local perspective about the inhabitants’ fight to rid the region of a transnational mining company. This company would reap all the financial benefits of the work, and leave the valley with contaminated land and water that would pose further health problems for the local people.
Our final excursion was to the amazing Galapagos Islands. Each small island has such different characteristics—one island is like a desert, while another contains penguins. We also learned about the local fishermen’s struggle to both conserve natural resources and make ends meet.
I ended the program with an independent-study program based in an indigenous village in the Amazon. Here, I did policy work for a future World Bank sanitation project for rural villages. The only sanitation systems these people were educated about were water systems that had been shown to fail in that exact village, so I faced a challenge. I was there to build a model of an ecological dry toilet, so that nonconventional systems that do not pollute the water could actually be a choice in choosing a sanitation system.
My stay in the village made me question many of the values and cultural norms prevalent in the United States. In the village, I lived with a family of 11 brothers and sisters in a place with no bathrooms and electricity only on rare occasions. The brothers shared shoes and clothing. It made me question my sense of materialism and what I value. Why do I need so much to be happy? Or do I? I came back from the trip and now live with far fewer material items.
While there, I noticed a distinct divide between women’s and men’s work. It made me examine why Americans question gender roles. In the United States, perhaps people might fight against gender roles because such roles do not have to be present in society anymore—the men no longer have to cut wood or hunt in the rainforest for tonight’s dinner. Although I participated in as much “man” work as possible, I was happy to wash dishes and beat the clothes against the rock. If more Americans lived in these circumstances, I am sure we would be more understanding of what we automatically decry as sexist.
What seemed to me like a hardship at the beginning became by far one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I made a huge family in Ecuador and look forward to going back. I never in my wildest dreams imagined I could receive college credit for such an experience. The academic director on the last day told us, “If you still don’t care it is because you don’t know enough.” I came back to Columbia and halted all my premed studies, because now I only see myself on a path to more environmental and social justice. What started out as an easy way to fulfill my requirements, what I thought was Barnard’s best-kept secret, turned into my true passion.
The author is a Barnard College senior majoring in environmental policy.