A shade of green tints my earliest memories: From the peach tree that grew in my front lawn to the wild onions that my sister and I feasted on in our treehouse, the world always seemed to be in a perpetual state of growth. The salad at my dinner table was a rich collection of lettuce and tomatoes, which, unaware of its rarity; my mother grew in her so-called Garden of Eden. I followed the green into my High School days and ended up working on a local Christmas Tree Farm, falling deeper and deeper into a reverence for wide-open space. Then came college, and everything changed. It wasn’t until I entered the city that I realized: the color surrounding my world wasn’t the same shade for everyone around me.
While trying to find my niche and balancing an abundance of new college-related feelings, one of my friends recommended the Sustainability Summit, a weekend-long retreat out in the middle of the woods where students learned about social, environmental, and financial equity. The minor anxiety of attending a seemingly random retreat with random people ended up being far outweighed by the life-altering perspective that the summit gave me. And this, this is where my journey as an advocate took flight.
No need for a fancy title or polished degree; living as an advocate means fighting, whether it be through words, personal or collective actions, for a cause that you passionately believe.
After the summit, my thoughts were in a constant waltz, dancing around the interconnectedness of all things. While living in the city, it’s almost impossible to avoid disparities, so I decided that it was time to take the next step and plug into a place that would provide me with tools for the change I wanted to see.
As of now, working for the Department of Sustainability has created a network of like-minded individuals in my life that provide me with insights that I could have never personally perceived. In a large college like the University of Cincinnati, I started to recognize people tethered onto the same string of advocacy. Likewise, this position has allowed me to venture off of the campus, and interact with people in the city who are actively making change, broadening my understanding of larger communities. Overall, living as an advocate has taught me that, sustainabitily, like the world, is not a static thing and is a continuous, collaborative outreach for those seeking change.