Dear Anita

Glad to hear from you.

when i was really struggling and not really sure where to go in life, liam encouraged me to talk about my gender dysphoria with him and it was helpful working through things. he made me laugh and believe in myself again when i felt like gender dysphoria was eating me away. ashley helped encourage me to go outside more and spend time in nature. I am glad that she encouraged me to go try the sustainable agriculture class. I am still healing from some things but thinking that I am building more clarity in life.

Sustainable agriculture is fascinating helping with soil health. A lot of the conventional agriculture uses tilling that destroys top soil and limits ability to regrow crops as it removes soil nutrients. No-till is part of sustainable agriculture where the land isn’t plowed but a tarp is used to kill the grass then the dead matter (grass and other weeds) is allowed to go into the soil using a tilther to move the dead, grass loosening the soil. Then the soil is loosened and a tractor is used (the sustainable farm at stockton has an electric tractor) to make the fields ready for planting. My favorite part is collecting compost in wheelbarrows to lay over the fields as nutrients for plants, it makes me feel grounded, connected with the earth. Sustainable agriculture also helps with providing and managing resources well so that they are still available for future generations use. The stockton sustainable farm collects rainwater to help water the plants. I feel that sustainability is important since the earth is a beautiful planet that needs to have resources protected. If conventional farmers used many pesticides that harmed other wildlife and might pose risk to human health then it would be quite sad. Also using less pesticides reduces costs that go into buying the pesticides and those costs could be saved for other things. I love being outdoors in the stockton farm learning how to grow squash, tomatoes, potatoes, spinach, garlic, and helping with the greenhouses. I feel I have learned a lot about nutrition and the value of quality of food. Also I have learned about the dust bowl in my sustainable agriculture class and how farmers plowed their lands and the wind blew the soil around because there was no topsoil covering. Sustainable agriculture and ecology have been my two favorite classes at stockton. I loved learning about the wildlife interactions in the environment and how human interactions can harm or help nature.

I thought I had to chase money and go into genetic engineering or medical field to be able to support myself. I was very afraid that if I dropped biochemistry to pursue biology for a time that I wouldn’t be able to go learn about medicinal herbs because one school that I wanted to apply to after stockton required biochemistry degree. But after more searching I found some other ways to learn about plants and human health. The stockton farm decided to plant hemp to make bracelets to sell to fundraise for cancer one time and it was awesome. I realized that I could still help contribute to plants research for human health and preserve the environment being a biology major. Also, biology degree had many more options working outside like the ecology class that I took and explored how trees help the earth. There were some sustainable things like nature reserves volunteer opportunities that were open to environmental science people so I decided to add environmental science too. The two degrees biology and environmental science are very versatile, I can learn about the living things in the environment and also environmental science provides me tools to go outside and explore.

I feel much better pursuing something that sparks joy in my heart and even though it might not earn as much as genetics or medicine it’s still lots of fun.