Critique, please....
Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:15 am
You may safely be as brutal as you like. I kind of like the thing, but I'm obviously partial.
I awoke one March day during my eighth grade year with an insatiable desire to plant a vegetable garden. Time has dulled the memory of whatever exactly inspired the sentiment, but I vividly recall how strong it was. Thus I began digging, although I must confess that my labor was as much influenced by sheer fourteen year-old boredom as it was loftier ideals like hard work, self-sufficiency, patience, environmental responsibility, or even great tasting, nutritious food. I just had an itch to try something new. With time I would come to realize how inextricably linked these are.
Like most things in life, however, gardening turned out to be more difficult than it looked. To say nothing of the manual labor required to break ground, I had no knowledge of what made a garden work. Basic questions like when and how to plant prompted my first venture into something like comparative research. I spent a good portion of that summer devouring any books I could get my hands on, in addition to talking with some older people who had successful vegetable gardens.
I read a good bit as a kid, but had never tried to wade through all the literature on any one topic. My “research” was normally a simple thumb to an encyclopedia article. If the encyclopedia said it, it was good enough for me. Having now taken the time to consult numerous books over vegetable gardening, I could see I had my hands full. It wasn’t possible to just take one at face value, for they all seemed to say different things and offer different instructions.
The entire process invigorated me. As I continued to work through the material I discovered both a love and aptitude for critical thinking, to say nothing of the fact that I was becoming pretty knowledgeable about vegetables. The ten years since that first garden have obviously brought about significant changes in my ability to think critically as well as my methods for growing vegetables. Different as they may now be, however, it is fundamentally the knowledge and interests gained in that first garden that is driving my decision to attend law school.
The story continues on throughout my time in high school and college as I moved from an interest in my garden alone to an interest in the larger issues surrounding food and agriculture. With all I was learning about an individual’s ability to grow his own food, it struck me that our present means of production and distribution are seriously flawed. Whereas I was able to grow nutritious, delicious vegetables in an economical way while exercising good stewardship over the environment, the food I grew up on in the grocery store tasted inferior and put an unnecessary strain upon the environment without much concern for the future of agriculture.
If my time as an undergraduate flew by without much intellectual development, my time in graduate school stood at the opposite end of the spectrum. I read between 500 and 700 pages every week during seminary with an accompanying writing schedule that constantly forced me to closely consider my reading material. I learned to read quickly without sacrificing comprehension or my ability to carefully weigh the argument. I learned to see through an individual’s presuppositions and identify the important while discarding the unimportant. I learned that the “answer” to a question is rarely black and white and that it is often better to just embrace a tension rather than try to offer something definitive. I finally learned to actually use some of those principles I had learned in my first garden.
My decision to plant my first vegetable garden set two different but complimentary trajectories in my life. The first is my interest in sustainable agriculture; the second is my appreciation for divergent opinions. Through pursuing a law degree at the University of Arkansas, I know that I will be well-equipped to use these two personal convictions and pursue a career working to achieve better practices in the production of food. I do not consider myself to be on some sort of crusade, nor do I think I can alter the face the American agriculture alone. The fact remains, however, that there is a great deal of work waiting to be done to bring healthy, better-tasting food to consumers while maintaining a commitment to sustainability. The University of Arkansas School of Law continues to demonstrate their excellence in the field of agricultural law and provides the finest opportunity to pursue this field, both regionally and nationally.
I awoke one March day during my eighth grade year with an insatiable desire to plant a vegetable garden. Time has dulled the memory of whatever exactly inspired the sentiment, but I vividly recall how strong it was. Thus I began digging, although I must confess that my labor was as much influenced by sheer fourteen year-old boredom as it was loftier ideals like hard work, self-sufficiency, patience, environmental responsibility, or even great tasting, nutritious food. I just had an itch to try something new. With time I would come to realize how inextricably linked these are.
Like most things in life, however, gardening turned out to be more difficult than it looked. To say nothing of the manual labor required to break ground, I had no knowledge of what made a garden work. Basic questions like when and how to plant prompted my first venture into something like comparative research. I spent a good portion of that summer devouring any books I could get my hands on, in addition to talking with some older people who had successful vegetable gardens.
I read a good bit as a kid, but had never tried to wade through all the literature on any one topic. My “research” was normally a simple thumb to an encyclopedia article. If the encyclopedia said it, it was good enough for me. Having now taken the time to consult numerous books over vegetable gardening, I could see I had my hands full. It wasn’t possible to just take one at face value, for they all seemed to say different things and offer different instructions.
The entire process invigorated me. As I continued to work through the material I discovered both a love and aptitude for critical thinking, to say nothing of the fact that I was becoming pretty knowledgeable about vegetables. The ten years since that first garden have obviously brought about significant changes in my ability to think critically as well as my methods for growing vegetables. Different as they may now be, however, it is fundamentally the knowledge and interests gained in that first garden that is driving my decision to attend law school.
The story continues on throughout my time in high school and college as I moved from an interest in my garden alone to an interest in the larger issues surrounding food and agriculture. With all I was learning about an individual’s ability to grow his own food, it struck me that our present means of production and distribution are seriously flawed. Whereas I was able to grow nutritious, delicious vegetables in an economical way while exercising good stewardship over the environment, the food I grew up on in the grocery store tasted inferior and put an unnecessary strain upon the environment without much concern for the future of agriculture.
If my time as an undergraduate flew by without much intellectual development, my time in graduate school stood at the opposite end of the spectrum. I read between 500 and 700 pages every week during seminary with an accompanying writing schedule that constantly forced me to closely consider my reading material. I learned to read quickly without sacrificing comprehension or my ability to carefully weigh the argument. I learned to see through an individual’s presuppositions and identify the important while discarding the unimportant. I learned that the “answer” to a question is rarely black and white and that it is often better to just embrace a tension rather than try to offer something definitive. I finally learned to actually use some of those principles I had learned in my first garden.
My decision to plant my first vegetable garden set two different but complimentary trajectories in my life. The first is my interest in sustainable agriculture; the second is my appreciation for divergent opinions. Through pursuing a law degree at the University of Arkansas, I know that I will be well-equipped to use these two personal convictions and pursue a career working to achieve better practices in the production of food. I do not consider myself to be on some sort of crusade, nor do I think I can alter the face the American agriculture alone. The fact remains, however, that there is a great deal of work waiting to be done to bring healthy, better-tasting food to consumers while maintaining a commitment to sustainability. The University of Arkansas School of Law continues to demonstrate their excellence in the field of agricultural law and provides the finest opportunity to pursue this field, both regionally and nationally.