Dear Janus:

It is good to read from you again. You started this thread on December 30, 2015: six years, seven months and 11 days ago. You were a junior in high school at the time, 17 and now 23 or 24. You shared yesterday that you took a break from school, spent time in nature, took a sustainability farm class in the fall of 2021.

* Here is a quote from sarep. ucdavis. edu/ sustainable agriculture: “The goal of sustainable agriculture is to meet society’s food and textile needs in the present without compromising the ability of futire generations to meet their own needs… Practitioners of sustainable agriculture seek to integrate three main objectives into their work: a healthy environment, economic profitability, and social and economic equity… Growers may use methods to promote soil health, minimize water use, and lower pollution levels on the farm… promoting farmworker wellbeing“.

You shared yesterday that you love nature and being outside and you decided to go for “double degrees: biology (less stressful then biochemistry with less lab work) and environmental science… I love studying living things in nature and helping preserve it so biology and environmental science fit well together”.

Here is a bit of what you shared in the past showing the evolution of your career-choice-thinking leading to what it is today,  August 12 2016:  “I think most of my career is headed in the medical field b/c I have a lot of information in my mind about human and animal systems. I want to be a molecular biologist and study how to help people prevent diseases such as cancer”=>  September 18, 2019: I have started Stockton University as a sophomore studying Biochemistry/Molecular Biology and Applied Physics => July 19, 2020: “Lately I’ve been debating about my career path because I love nature and it would be fun to go into environmental science but I feel like I’ve been studying Biochemistry for three years… and I think Biochemistry makes more money… I find that I enjoy being out in nature more than being in a lab... I am currently feeling conflicted about how to have both science studies and nature as part of my career…. I’m just wondering if there’s a way to be able to find a good career with nature and medicine which will help me become financially independent”.

I think that a career in environmental science could be exciting and most valuable when it comes to helping our sick and struggling planet when it comes to preserving life on earth.

You also shared yesterday that your friends, Ashley and Liam, helped you with your gender dysphoria, and that you are still struggling to understand yourself and to communicate your emotions adequately. You feel misunderstood by authority figures like your academic advisors. You wrote: “I don’t know how to explain to my academic advisors that I spent so much time chasing things that I had interests in but later realized didn’t make me happy on the inside… I just wish that I could work on communicating things better with my advisors about things but it is a bit hard“- in my next post (in a few hours from now), I will elaborate on this part of your recent post.

anita