“I’m from Orange, Connecticut. I’m a sophomore at Eastern Connecticut State University, environmental earth science. I’m 20.
I teach nature at a summer camp, and I just fell in love with it. I’m just so into the environment. I’m into keeping our clean water supply at its maximum level. I don’t know, I just think it’s really cool. You know, I hopped around with what I wanted to do. So first I was English, then Sociology, and then I kind of just found my way into science. It’s just so fascinating. You know, like every action that we do makes a big difference, and history repeats itself all the time. You can see through – most of environmental science is geology – so you can see through the rock structures and stuff.
[The camp]’s in Silverlake Conference Center in Sharon, Connecticut. Yeah, so we have children from 8-18 who come for a week. They do their week long program, and I teach classes for nature. We have a stream, so we’ll do stream hikes, animals – God, we have so many animals. We just got goats, which I’m really excited about. That’s like my, one of my jobs, is to maintain the animals. And then just like basic science lessons. We talk about the water cycle. I just learned about fracking, so I’m really excited to teach about that this summer. You know, anything that can shape the younger generation so that they can at least have a foundation to build upon – how they’re affecting the planet with what they’re doing.
I would love to be a park ranger at a national park. Preferably the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. I went there last year for the first time. We only got to stay for three or four days, but I couldn’t bear leaving. I was so in love. It’s so beautiful there. It’s really cool to see a plot of land that hasn’t really been touched by man. It’s just completely natural. I take like a yearly road trip out to hit up a lot of national and state parks, but when I’m just hanging around, I try to go hiking as much as possible in my free time.
I do [have a couple tattoos]! Let me tell you all about them. This is a Dumbledore quote. It says, ‘It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.’ This is my own quote, which is, ‘It does not do to dwell on life and forget to dream.’ I think it’s kind of like a ying-yang kind of thing. I got them on my feet particularly, because when you put your feet together, they make the Deathly Hallows. You got the cloak, the stone, and the sword.
I actually didn’t get into Harry Potter until my freshman year of high school, but it just shaped me so much. I just LOVE reading the stories. It’s really important to me. Definitely. It got me into reading, so that was a big, life-shaping. That’s why I wanted to be an English major four years after that. Also, just the message behind it. Like, you know, there’s a lot of struggles in life, and you just keep on going. The love that both Harry showed for all the people, and the love Harry’s mom has, just like love overall is the most powerful weapon and salvation that we have. So just love life, love what you do, love yourself, love the people around you, and that’s my answer.”
Excerpt may be edited for clarity.