Who am I?
During my time as a bachelor student in Liberal Arts and Sciences at University College Utrecht in the Netherlands, I was largely exposed to concepts I understood but had no names for. Growing up on a post-colonial island in a British educational institute, we were often fed the phrase "you were part of an empire" rather than the correct phrasing "you were colonized". This perspective shift was an important one that introduced me to the value of restructuring language to better represent reality. It introduced me to one of my major interests, editing language to ensure the intention runs through from the writer to the audience well and accurately. My investment in human rights issues grew from simply there to something I understood.
Also during this time, I took an elective introducing geology and environmental science, which shook me to the core. I fell in love with the textbook, the way it read and how the information that seemed so dull – rocks and tectonics and groundwater – proved to be so entertaining and exciting. The earth below me came alive and so followed my interest. I finished my degree with courses in Earth & environment, literature and global health. My bachelor thesis was an attempt to communicate the interdisciplinary truth of Aruba's gold mine industry, to maybe better introduce the non-geologist to how even the rocks below them were used by the colonial presences to control and alter the people and the land.
Every concern is interdisciplinary, every existence is intersectional, and to simplify it to its parts, belittles the truth of the whole. We must work together from multiple angles if we wish to repair, restructure, regenerate for a more optimistic future.
This academic experience was precious, albeit complicated. An interdisciplinary degree greatly prepared me for life but less so for qualifying in strictly STEM master's, as such I am returning to a bachelor setting, now in the US, to deepen my scientific background so that I may proceed down the path I have discovered is right for me. I will be a science communicator. In some ways, you may think of this as curating content to a standard that may be consumed by a greater range of people. Science belongs to us all, so to all it must be shared with. My aim is to establish myself as a communicator, as a vessel to carry meaning and to play my role in society.
As simplistic as it may seem, we have two outcomes as we are now. We either survive or we don't. We must actively put effort into regeneration and restoration, because to consume would be to accept that what has been lost is not worth being found. I am someone who believes, who hopes, that we can work collectively and collaboratively to improve the state of the world for us all, from the smallest sapling to the largest mammal.