Expedition Notes

Reflections

by Lily Fessenden, AEI's Director of Academic Affairs, on her son Todd's experience as an AEI student during his first semester.

Todd called me from a phone booth some where in Utah. "Hi Mom, guess what?! My whole worldview has changed!" "Really," I said, "How did that happen?" "I read Ishmael! I can be anything I want to, can't I? What I mean is, I can take this worldview and express it no matter what I choose to do. I don't have to be in an environmental field, I can be a physician's assistant and still think this way."

After more discussion about the worldview in Daniel Quinn's book (are you a leaver or a taker?), I hung up the phone and felt gratitude, satisfaction, and joy. A month earlier I had picked him up for break and his epiphany was about having become a critical thinker. My son was experiencing what every freshman in college should - an expanded vision of the world and his place in it, as well as learning the skills to navigate it. As his mother, I am thrilled. As the Director of Academic Affairs at AEI, I feel a deep satisfaction with the success of the experiential and community centered model of learning AEI offers. I am grateful for the faculty who nurtured my son, and I feel joyful that I know an AEI education can and does create the conditions for personal growth in the context of community. I feel blessed to witness Todd's experience through the eyes of a parent and an AEI staff member.

Sun filtered through the leaves of the filbert tree I scavenged nuts from. A day or two before, my classmates, faculty, and I had driven 12 hours from our site outside of Calgary where we lived at for 3 months last fall. We were visiting Libby and Frank, a couple who had moved from the US to British Columbia about 30 years ago to become homesteaders. They lived 11 kilometers down a steep, winding, logging road. Our reason for the 5-day visit was to study sustainable agricultural practices. On their homestead, Libby and Frank grew almost all their own food, as well as generated all of the electricity they used and safely processed their sewage right their on their land.

Lesley University Commencement

Lesley University Commencement is always a special event during the academic year because it signals endings and new beginnings for AEI students who are graduating. This year 34 AEI students graduated from Lesley University: three received a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Studies, 14 students received a Master of Science in Environmental Education, and seven received an MS in Ecological Teaching and Learning.

The Lesley University Commencement activities were extra special this year in part because activism, an important feature of an AEI education, was a common theme in the commencement address delivered by Representative John Lewis, a long time civil rights activist, and in President Margaret McKenna's remarks. Lesley's commencement activities also featured two AEI students, Alexis Gelb and Kate Hughes who are both graduate students. Kate received the Diane Price Graduate Student Leadership Award that recognizes a graduate who has consistently shown qualities of leadership, commitment to lifelong learning and professional excellence, and promise of a future best exemplifying the Lesley ideal. Alexis delivered the commencement address for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences diploma ceremony. Below is a copy of Alexis' remarks.

Remarks of Alexis Gelb

We spent the day working on the homestead: weeding, collecting potatoes, grapes, and hardy kiwis, nibbling the tasty, organic foods as we worked. While I used my hands and body to work, my mind kept going over my amazement of the creation of these two people. Wouldn't it be exciting if I could build up something like this?

Now it was late afternoon and most of my classmates snoozed under trees, or wandered off to stroll the wooded paths around the small orchard and vegetable garden. I had enjoyed my day's labor in the soil and sun so much that I wanted to keep helping. I joined one of our hosts, Frank, to collect nuts from one of the trees in the orchard. We chatted about the homestead, and about the leap into the unknown he and his wife had taken on their move to this piece of land 30 years ago. At the time of the move, they knew almost nothing about farming, building, or generating electricity from a moving water source. But they had built so much themselves with help from a few friends and a lot of research, patience, and trial and error.

Then the conversation turned toward me, and Frank asked me that question we've all been asked dozens of times since starting our time with Lesley: "What do want to do when you graduate?" After finding inspiration from a rewarding day of manual labor, I loved the idea of creating a homestead and growing food in a low impact, Earth friendly way, and thought about combining sustainable agriculture with teaching. I responded by saying that I would never be able to start anything like that. Where would I start? I wouldn't be brave enough to do that. Then Frank asked me, "Why Not?" "Why couldn't you do that? ... I paused, thought for a few moments, and could not think of any reasons "why not." In the complete absence of good reasons not to believe in my ability to carry out such a grand scheme, I responded, "I guess I could do something like start my own sustainable teaching farm."

Since that afternoon collecting nuts with Frank under the filbert tree, I have had many opportunities to ask myself "Why Not?" as choices, questions, and career options arise in this transition between college and the real world. Each time my mind wanders back to that moment when I realized, "Yes, I can do this; this is possible." I know that I have spent a lot of time finding reasons not to do things, guided by fears and hesitations at my own abilities. But my mind wanders back to sitting under the filbert tree and talking with a person who had no idea what he was getting himself into so many years ago. Even if an idea seems impossible or at least a little crazy, remember to ask yourself..."Why Not?".... And maybe, with a little effort and a willingness to risk venturing beyond the familiar, an unusual idea will become an amazing future.

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