Close to Final Draft - Tear it Apart Please!
Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 6:48 pm
I am a product of my environment. Growing up with professors as parents a certain scientific fascination with the world was instilled in me. For hours as a child I would sit outside watching ant hills, marveling at their industrious nature, observing the complex organization of work coming from such simple creatures. My love of nature’s wonders and desire to further explore them was reinforced after reading famed entomologist E. O. Wilson’s autobiography Naturalist; I considered pursuing entomology myself, and spent a summer volunteering in the entomology lab of our local natural history museum. I was tasked with the labeling of insects brought back from a recent expedition to Costa Rica, and ended up working my way through 13,000 of them by the end of the summer. I loved being surrounded by such a beautiful and diverse array of creatures, but something was missing for me, namely the sense that my work truly mattered to anyone outside the world of taxonomy.
Ants appeared to have their version of society figured out, whereas we as a species still seemed to be finding our identity, our equilibrium of ideals. After taking an introductory class on philosophy, I fell in love with the subject, as its broad analytical focus encompassed virtually every aspect of human existence. Political theory and environmental ethics in particular grabbed my attention; the relationship between human society and its environment, it quickly became apparent, was full of complexity and struggle. Despite the fact that much progress had already been made, there was still an immense amount of work needed to be done. The preservation of our environment’s health and the communities that depend on it became an obvious imperative to me. In university, I dove into philosophy and political science with a hunger for knowledge and a desire to equip myself with the tools necessary to deconstruct problems such as these and work towards their solutions. I wanted to effect change.
Soon after graduating I found an outlet for this motivation in Clean Water Action, a non-profit focused on lobbying for public health and environmental protection. I started as a field organizer, going door to door in communities fundraising and gathering support for our campaigns. I found the work deeply challenging at first. I was approaching strangers to talk about controversial issues; reactions often ranged from simple apathy to the occasional hostility, both potentially demoralizing interactions. But I quickly found that I could reveal overlapping values and concerns with virtually everyone, and could logically communicate with them why it was so urgently important to resolve these issues. Sharing my motivation, and in turn motivating those I talked to, was thrilling, and I quickly realized that I excelled at the job.
Within months of starting I found new opportunities to further challenge myself as I was promoted to Trainer and then Field Manager. I was no longer only responsible for my own performance, but for recruiting, training, and coordinating a crew of other canvassers; I had to maintain their performance and confidence in the face of the same challenges I had faced. Clean Water Action gave me the chance to take these skills on the road, sending me to underperforming offices across the country. In a foreign setting with no personal ties, I had to quickly adapt to this new context and immediately build the respect of a staff of strangers from scratch. I worked to build stronger a staff in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and finally Austin, leaving each office stronger and more self-sufficient than when I had arrived.
Serving those around me and building their success has been immensely empowering to me, I love the fact that I can see the quantifiable impact of my influence on the organization’s strength. I am now the Assistant Canvass Director of our office in Pittsburgh, with a legacy of canvassers who have grown under my tutelage, as well as numerous campaigns that I have had a hand in winning. I now want to have a more direct impact on initiating and guiding political change and I feel that law school will give me the tools to do just that. We are all products of our environment, but our environment is also a product of what we put back into it; I plan on using every resource that I have to ensure that future generations can grow off of the work that I have done.
Ants appeared to have their version of society figured out, whereas we as a species still seemed to be finding our identity, our equilibrium of ideals. After taking an introductory class on philosophy, I fell in love with the subject, as its broad analytical focus encompassed virtually every aspect of human existence. Political theory and environmental ethics in particular grabbed my attention; the relationship between human society and its environment, it quickly became apparent, was full of complexity and struggle. Despite the fact that much progress had already been made, there was still an immense amount of work needed to be done. The preservation of our environment’s health and the communities that depend on it became an obvious imperative to me. In university, I dove into philosophy and political science with a hunger for knowledge and a desire to equip myself with the tools necessary to deconstruct problems such as these and work towards their solutions. I wanted to effect change.
Soon after graduating I found an outlet for this motivation in Clean Water Action, a non-profit focused on lobbying for public health and environmental protection. I started as a field organizer, going door to door in communities fundraising and gathering support for our campaigns. I found the work deeply challenging at first. I was approaching strangers to talk about controversial issues; reactions often ranged from simple apathy to the occasional hostility, both potentially demoralizing interactions. But I quickly found that I could reveal overlapping values and concerns with virtually everyone, and could logically communicate with them why it was so urgently important to resolve these issues. Sharing my motivation, and in turn motivating those I talked to, was thrilling, and I quickly realized that I excelled at the job.
Within months of starting I found new opportunities to further challenge myself as I was promoted to Trainer and then Field Manager. I was no longer only responsible for my own performance, but for recruiting, training, and coordinating a crew of other canvassers; I had to maintain their performance and confidence in the face of the same challenges I had faced. Clean Water Action gave me the chance to take these skills on the road, sending me to underperforming offices across the country. In a foreign setting with no personal ties, I had to quickly adapt to this new context and immediately build the respect of a staff of strangers from scratch. I worked to build stronger a staff in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and finally Austin, leaving each office stronger and more self-sufficient than when I had arrived.
Serving those around me and building their success has been immensely empowering to me, I love the fact that I can see the quantifiable impact of my influence on the organization’s strength. I am now the Assistant Canvass Director of our office in Pittsburgh, with a legacy of canvassers who have grown under my tutelage, as well as numerous campaigns that I have had a hand in winning. I now want to have a more direct impact on initiating and guiding political change and I feel that law school will give me the tools to do just that. We are all products of our environment, but our environment is also a product of what we put back into it; I plan on using every resource that I have to ensure that future generations can grow off of the work that I have done.