I grew up in Brewster, Washington and there's not much to
that town. It's kind of like a passerby town.
You go through it when you're traveling to somewhere else, but we have
a lot of orchards in that town and it kind of promotes
all of those jobs throughout the year, definitely during the summer
I asked myself, what career would be important,
you know, what can I do to best help out my community,
my future generations and everybody around me.
And I decided on Environmental Studies because I feel like it's
not as popular and it should be, because
we're really going to depend on it in the future. Some people think it would
be a waste of time to do research in sustainable development
and Environmental Education and anything along those lines.
I got asked "why" so many times it made me question, it made
me question it a lot, but I'm so glad I made the decision.
Evergreen has really been a supportive environment,
really encouraging of this goal of mine.
Everybody that I talk to is like "Thank you. We need more people like you."
That's just really really encouraging to hear.
You don't hear that every where you come from. It's definitely an Evergreen
thing to be so supportive and progressive and it's something
I really appreciate about Evergreen.
It makes it easier to continue and it motivates me a lot.
The Dan & Sheryl Tishman Scholarship has been really important to me.
It's been super supportive. The fact that it's renewable is
such a big blessing to me, that I'm going to have this next year.
I really have no extra money to not work while
I'm in college, I have a job here on campus, but the scholarship
has allowed me some freedom in the job that I have chosen.
My work as a lab aide here at Evergreen has really allowed
me to get education outside of class.
I have gotten to work with other faculty, preparing different labs.
Sometimes it's just a bunch of gathering materials, other times I
get to test the labs. I've only been working in the lab
now for about 6 months, but the amount of experience
that I've gotten has been irreplaceable and
the environment is so fun to work in and so professional that it's
experience that I could have only hope for really.
I've taken the INS, which is integrated Natural Sciences and it's placed
in biology and chemistry. And that's been really lab heavy,
which has been really fun for me. We've done some field work.
We've gotten to read some scientific literature
that's kind of out of our leagues, but you know, she wants
to challenge us and I think that's really important.
I do feel like the concepts that are in practice and the
interdisciplinary aspects of the education that I'm receiving
here at Evergreen, all of my lab experience and the experience
with people working in teams and collaborations and so forth
is really going to prepare me for the career that I want to develop in.
I see myself in near future working
with a research company with the like-minded sustainable development ideas and goals.
I would love to start to develop sustainable Education Curriculum.
That would be a dream of mine come true is to
start teaching young ones, and
people of all ages. I think I'm just setting the example
for people who come from a small town who think they can't
and for my brothers who come from that small town
who don't feel like there's a lot of opportunity anywhere,
but, you know, once you step outside of that and come to
place like Evergreen, that opportunities are just you know, all around you.
I feel ready right now to go and start
this career in sustainable development, and it's only been a year.
and I feel ready right now to go and start this career
in sustainable development and it's only been a year.