Hi, I'm Emma! This is why I came to Tanzania :)
I am a hopeful person.
Outlooks on life are commonly placed into three categories; optimist, pessimist, and realist. However, I don’t identify with any of these three groups. Instead, I place myself in the intersection between optimism and realism: I am hopeful. My senses are heightened to the injustices and problems of the world and I understand that life is by no means “fair.” However, I have never been content with accepting the answer that “that’s just the way things are.” I am hopeful because I believe that nothing is static and that the status quo can and must always be challenged in order to push our world further in the right direction.
Outlooks on life are commonly placed into three categories; optimist, pessimist, and realist. However, I don’t identify with any of these three groups. Instead, I place myself in the intersection between optimism and realism: I am hopeful. My senses are heightened to the injustices and problems of the world and I understand that life is by no means “fair.” However, I have never been content with accepting the answer that “that’s just the way things are.” I am hopeful because I believe that nothing is static and that the status quo can and must always be challenged in order to push our world further in the right direction.
Finding myself somewhere in the middle between identifying as an optimist and a realist is not new ground for me to navigate. In a similar way, I am an ambivert, fluctuating somewhere in between introverts and extroverts. Having no siblings but growing up with cousins in close proximity, I never felt like an only child. Raised by a Catholic mother and a Buddhist father I struggled to feel fully faithful in either religion. As a biracial individual, especially one who looks “ethnically ambiguous” I have never felt fully comfortable in either my Japanese or Irish cultural identity.
Living somewhere in this in-between space my entire life I am often unsure of my identity, my personality, and my purpose. This has made me a very curious and conscientious person and I constantly question myself and my environment. Despite my lack of a well-defined identity growing up, the one thing that was always clear was my love for learning. School always has been and continues to be one of my greatest source of joy (while also at times my greatest source of stress). Most of my passions were sparked by learning and strengthened through experiences.
I am an Environmental Studies major.
I grew up in Seattle, WA, perfectly positioned between the ocean, mountains, and forest. I was taught to appreciate and protect the environment from a young age. My parents whisked me off to hike, camp, backpack, and explore the natural beauty around us at every opportunity. My alternative elementary school was very environmentally conscious. Recycling and composting were the norm and many of our studies were focused on conservation, appreciation, and respect for the natural environment. However, it wasn’t until my first year of college when I took an Environmental Ethics class, that my care for the environment developed from a side hobby into a central passion. Our class was discussion based and we covered a wide variety of topics from the ethical obligations of treating the environment as a moral entity to recognizing the inherent anthropogenic problems of placing human value on the environment. This class broke open my previous understanding of the Earth and natural world and propelled me to declare a major in Environmental Studies. My commitment to the environment was further strengthened by my study abroad experience in Iceland and Greenland focused on climate change and the Arctic. One particular lecture on communicating climate change was incredibly transformative for me. Our guest lecturer, an Icelandic environmental humanities professor had a quote on one of his slides from a Clive James translation of a line from Dante’s Divine Comedy. The quote read “Your future now is to regret the past. Forget your hopes, they are what brought you here.” The words were instantly engrained in my mind and effectively shattered my perspective on industrialization, human development, and the concept of progress. I realized then that I had a responsibility to contribute towards creating a more just and sustainable world.
I grew up in Seattle, WA, perfectly positioned between the ocean, mountains, and forest. I was taught to appreciate and protect the environment from a young age. My parents whisked me off to hike, camp, backpack, and explore the natural beauty around us at every opportunity. My alternative elementary school was very environmentally conscious. Recycling and composting were the norm and many of our studies were focused on conservation, appreciation, and respect for the natural environment. However, it wasn’t until my first year of college when I took an Environmental Ethics class, that my care for the environment developed from a side hobby into a central passion. Our class was discussion based and we covered a wide variety of topics from the ethical obligations of treating the environment as a moral entity to recognizing the inherent anthropogenic problems of placing human value on the environment. This class broke open my previous understanding of the Earth and natural world and propelled me to declare a major in Environmental Studies. My commitment to the environment was further strengthened by my study abroad experience in Iceland and Greenland focused on climate change and the Arctic. One particular lecture on communicating climate change was incredibly transformative for me. Our guest lecturer, an Icelandic environmental humanities professor had a quote on one of his slides from a Clive James translation of a line from Dante’s Divine Comedy. The quote read “Your future now is to regret the past. Forget your hopes, they are what brought you here.” The words were instantly engrained in my mind and effectively shattered my perspective on industrialization, human development, and the concept of progress. I realized then that I had a responsibility to contribute towards creating a more just and sustainable world.
I am a feminist.
I had a challenging middle school experience. I was bullied by my male peers for speaking up in class and doing well in school and constantly received judgements on my physical appearance. Attending an all-girls high school was liberating. For the first time I wasn’t forced to act, speak, or appear a certain way. I no longer had to conform to the societal expectations of femininity, I could just be. My high school was my safe space. I began to recognize and fully understand the oppression I had experienced while discovering my own potential and agency. In class, I learned about the history of women’s rights and the conditions of women around the world who continued to face extreme oppression and violence. I felt a connection to these women, and all women apart of our female community and sought to raise them up. Leaving my high school and starting college at Santa Clara University was disjointing at first. I lost my voice in the classroom, primarily because I had lost my voice in my personal life. I had entered into a toxic relationship that took me nearly a year to get out of it. Rebuilding from the ground up, I became the strongest version of myself yet. I decided that I not only needed to continue to learn, but to act. I became a peer health educator and trained students on how to recognize and prevent relationship violence and I acted in and directed the Vagina Monologues, a performance piece expressing the female experience.
I strive to fight injustices in my community and around the world.
In the winter of my sophomore year at Santa Clara, I went on an immersion to Oakland for one week. In the quarter leading up the immersion we attended weekly meetings and went on a retreat to prepare for our experience. I distinctly remember watching a video on our retreat that explained wealth inequality in the United States. In the video there was an animated graph that demonstrated the disparities between what Americans think the wealth distribution should be, what they think it actually is, and what the reality is. My heart sank when I watched the graph shift from the gradual curve of idealism to the stark exponential “curve” of reality. One day on the immersion, a homeless court was held at St. Vincent DePaul, the homeless shelter where we were staying. The homeless court is a less threatening and easier to access approach to the traditional criminal justice court system for those on the margins. It resolves minor infractions and alleviates barriers in order to allow the homeless to integrate back into society. Minor infractions such as simple as a parking ticket had been holding people back for months, if not years. With their driver's license revoked many were unable to apply for jobs, furthering their position in poverty. One woman burst into tears when she received early probation and the judge absolved parking tickets she had for over ten years. In absolute gratitude, she hugged everyone working in the court. My heart was full for those in the room, but it also begged the question of how these people could be helped more effectively since such small infractions had been holding them back for so long. As time passed after returning from my immersion I felt that I was slipping back into contentment with the status quo in my community. Seeking to keep pushing myself to confront and alleviate injustice, I joined Food Recovery Network (FRN), an on-campus student organization that reduces food waste by donating leftovers to Martha’s Soup Kitchen in San Jose. Recovering food with FRN allows me to still be an active participant in my community's well being even with my busy college student schedule. Next year I will serve as the organizations Outreach Coordinator. To continue engaging with social justice and action learning, I applied to be an immersion trip coordinator for my senior year. I was chosen to lead the Appalachia immersion which focuses on sustainability, energy, and public health issues for communities rooted in the coal mining industry. My trip will take place during spring break of 2020.
Recovering food from the Beer and Bacon event at Avaya Stadium in San Jose
Participating in the Global Social Benefit Fellowship and conducting action research for Solar Sister is at the intersection of the environment, feminism, and alleviating injustices. Through this fellowship I am excited to further push the curiosities and deepen the passions I have developed throughout my life. In particular, I am eager to place these intersections under a global lens. While I have some hesitations and questions about my impact and role in the fellowship, I have hope for the opportunity the fellowship offers to generate real good in the world. This will be my first extended experience in the developing world and as such, I know there will be many times I find myself in between familiarity and foreignness. Luckily, I have experience navigating the in-between.