University of Southern Maine
Being from Connecticut, I saw Portland as being different from the rest of New England. I wanted to get out of the suburbs, but be close enough to home. USM also offered a great chance to study environmental science; the program is pretty strong here.
There are maybe 15 students in my major. The whole environmental sciences department is small. There are four full-time faculty. Teachers are really approachable. Getting to know the professors on a personal level helps you focus better, and you get more involved with class, and do better overall.
In my major, internships usually include a lot of work in the lab, or field work. But right now I’m doing an internship with Reverb, a nonprofit group that does sustainability work in the music industry. We do things like organize bio-diesel fueling for tour busses, setting up composting and recycling at concerts, helping establish carbon offsetting measures and using reusable energy recourses at venues. Guster founded it, and John Mayer and Dave Matthews Band are involved. This kind of internship is cool because there’s a big environmental education part of it.
All my professors have been really tough. There’s a lot of encouragement to figure things out on your own. Rob Sanford tells you not to think of him as a teacher, just as a guide. He’ll tell you what the task is, but it’s up to you to figure it out, and he’ll only make suggestions. It’s definitely challenging, but I’ve learned a lot.
There are a lot of older people in the environmental studies classes. Not just environmental sciences. They’re in other majors too, like nursing, and business. At first I was a little intimidated by it. After a little while, you see what they have to offer, and that makes classes so much more enriching.
There’s always some sort of intriguing event going on. I drag my friends in other majors to environment-related lectures and events, and they drag me to theirs. There are tons of networking events. Maybe we’ll go see a band on campus, or go out in Portland.
I lived in dorms for three years, but now I live in an apartment with friends about two blocks from the Portland campus. It’s my senior year, and I’m trying to adjust to what it’s going to be like living on my own in the real world.
I’m involved in the Outing Club, where we’ve gone on some cool hikes and gone skydiving. I do activities with environmental sciences student groups. I also play on the club volleyball team. We play other club teams in northern New England and the Boston area.
I’ve never been anywhere else that has such strong support for locally owned businesses. Look around the city. You don’t see McDonald’s or stores you see everywhere else in the country on every corner. People here support and preserve their way of living by keeping the businesses local.
I’d love to go into the Peace Corps’ international master’s program. Basically, you go to graduate school and your master’s thesis is your Peace Corps service. I’d like to get degree with a focus on global environmental health.
