A New Endeavor

School has always been where I thrive. I love the act and process of learning, and I am the type of person that works well within traditional school structure. I fully intend to return to school–and I’m excited to do so equipped with the life lessons that came with the bachelor’s degree–but I view learning as a life-long process, one that I don’t want to be dependent on extrinsically-determined syllabi, deadlines, exams, and grades.

The problem is that extrinsically-determined syllabi, deadlines, exams, and grades have been my only motivation for… ever? Sure, I’ve always mustered intrinsic pressure to meet deadlines, study for exams, make good grades. But I’m a chronic procrastinator with too many interests–the non-negotiable structure and focus of school have always felt essential to my progress and achievement.

I don’t like this.

I dedicated a lot of myself to learning and to school, which means I got a lot out of the experience and also means the experience took a lot out of me. However, in the time since my graduation (over a year now), I’ve felt the fog of burnout gradually lifting and a renewed sense of curiosity and verve emerging in its place. Currently, I also find myself with essentially no external structures to inform and motivate how I use my time. Standing at the confluence of an ever-increasing vitality and a new, if daunting, sense of freedom, now strikes me as the perfect time to experiment with a new way of doing things. The new way being, namely, reading and writing just because I want to.

In this space specifically, I would like to engage in literature related to my education and career aspirations and interests, which fall under the broad umbrella of urban ecology. I got a taste of urban ecology research in college while completing my senior thesis on the topic of urban bird communities. This project piqued my interest in the field and inspired a lot of un-satiated curiosity that I’d like to delve into now.

The plan is to dig into literature on topics that most interested me during the thesis process, starting with broad guiding questions and likely narrowing down as I find intriguing veins. I expect my writing here will be some sort of collection of notes and miniature literature reviews–modest reports of what I’m learning and the questions that come up along the way.

I am drawn to urban ecology as a field because of the explicit connection it makes between human structures (whether physical or social) and nature, and I feel a particular passion when the pursuit of equity and conservation become a unified endeavor. A month of my thesis was spent in the field. During most mornings of February 2024, I was driving to public parks across Portland, OR, surveying what bird species were present at each one. I ended up visiting 101 parks, all of varying function and design. Ultimately, I interpreted my bird-related data within the context of systemic racism against black Portlanders. My results were interesting, but left me with a lot of questions about how parks (and other urban greenspaces) are designed and how they can equitably serve a city while also promoting ecologically functional urban wildlife communities.

As such, I’ll start this new undertaking by exploring what is known about the effects specific urban greenspace characteristics have on urban wildlife communities and how those characteristics relate to equity. This is very broad, but focusing in on specific design elements should naturally narrow the scope of my questions. Some potential–admittedly, still broad–topics to guide my research include:

  • Connectivity and size of greenspace (i.e. single large versus several small)
  • Specific land use, including comparing private versus public spaces
  • Diversity and structural design of vegetation
  • Patterns between larger geographic regions (what can be determined across different climates, demographic contexts, and specific wildlife community compositions?)
  • Ethical, equitable community development practices
  • Greenspace designs/design elements that intentionally address specific community needs

My primary goal here is to learn, and my hope is that this learning will help me specify my interests in preparation for graduate studies. My secondary goal is to write. I like writing and want to engage in it with some semblance of consistency. Secretly, I would also like for potential employers and/or grad school application reviewers to see my writing and conclude that I am, in fact, a good person to hire/accept, but I’d like for that live in the back of my mind and let intrinsic motivation live at the forefront.

I used the word “experiment” before, and that is certainly the most accurate way to think about this endeavor. I don’t yet know exactly how I’ll go about pursuing it. I am concretely in an exploratory phase at the moment, and I am excited to see what develops from it, if anything. Regardless, already I have a small win to celebrate: I wrote this whole thing without any deadlines or grades to motivate me! Yay.