My intellectual journey has been comprised of different phases in my life. To be the person I am today, I haven’t done many things in a traditional way. I will have lived and gone to two schools in three different states and attended two different universities by the time I get a bachelor’s degree from PSU. I’ve gained as much influence toward shaping my intellectual journey from classes as I have from internship, practicum and work experience. I remember sitting in a general education course, Good Mushroom, Bad Mushroom, thinking, “When am I ever going to need to know the latin names for mushrooms? I just want to be able to identify them in the wild!” Little did I know that I would continue to study and learn more about mushrooms, that knowing how to be able to discuss mushrooms in an academic way would help me have conversations with the mushroom community. I am able to speak with knowledgeable people in the mushroom community thanks to this class. Then, there’s the work I’ve done for different nutritionists.
In 2015 when I worked for a nutritionist at an organic café and health food store. It was right around this time that I took charge of my own health and began to eat healthy foods and learn about living a healthier lifestyle. With the help of my boss, I discovered that I was gluten free, ending a decade-long struggle with migraines. That was the turning in which I was hooked on holistically feeling better and helping other people do the same. At this job, I learned about the healing powers of food, herbs, natural medicine/supplements, diet and running a business.
The woman I was working for is still one of the smartest women I’ve met in the world of natural and holistic medicine, but did not know how to run a business. The summer after I graduated from high school, I was practically running the store I worked at. I opened and closed most days, dealt with the same customers on a daily basis, “filled” their (natural) prescriptions given to them by my boss, ordered and stocked inventory, as well as running the café all while my boss was trying to open another store location. Although I was running the store, I wasn’t getting compensated for my efforts, but I was young and happy to do it because I had so much respect for my boss and her ideals. It was one of the happiest jobs I’ve had to this day due to the work I was doing and the responsibility I had. After months of trying to keep her business afloat, she went bankrupt and both of her storefronts closed. What happened? She was health oriented, but not business oriented; she simply didn’t know how to run a business. This experience has fueled my desires to combine the disciplines encompassed in the health and wellness field and in business to create my IDS degree.
It was a year later when I was living and going to school in Manhattan adjacent to Wall Street and studying finance. I would someday work on Wall Street and make enough money to someday support my passion to start my own business in holistic medicine. That’s what I thought. While living there, I worked for another nutritionist at an organic, vegan, raw café. The school I went to in New York was traditional. I knew I could not continue to shape my education based on a simple template that every Finance major followed. I quickly realized that working at Magic Mix Juicery were some of the greatest learning experiences I had living in New York and that I needed to pursue something that was going to make me happy and eager to show up everyday when I was struggling to find relevance in my classes at school.
By the time I took Applied Nutrition for Healthy Living at PSU, I already knew so much about nutrition because I had learned how it works in a clinical setting and in a café setting. Although I already knew a lot of the practical nutritional information, I gained an understanding of how all of the different body systems function and more about our digestive system from this class; a perspective I didn’t already have. These experiences have all helped to define my lifework because they have been constantly generating my personal definition of lifework this entire time. IDS has allowed my life work and school work to be one-and-the-same. This fusion of classwork and real world experience has defined my intellectual journey. Although I’m connected to the PSU community, I’m also very connected to the individual communities within my fields of study which has been an important component to my intellectual journey.
I decided to pursue an IDS degree so that my career could ultimately support my lifework. Once I graduate from PSU I will study to become a clinical herbalist. Practicing herbalism is something I would like to know more about; I want to feel confident healing people from sickness with natural health. It will take me three years to become a clinical herbalist and in the meantime I hope to get a marketing job and gain insight in the market. Someday, I’d like to combine nutrition, natural medicine, food and consultations and open my own cooperative space based on the idea of sharing a healthy lifestyle rather than selling it. I dream of someday opening a creative space like this someday welcome to travelers, local and visitors.
It’s so much fun to see the various places your journey has taken you! I’m really interested in an idea you bring up toward the end here: Participating in various communities. Often, we think of the world as separate communities, but it’s a very IDS thing to conceive of our identity as composed of interlinked communities, an idea which not only imagines an interconnected world, but also shows how individuals can be the links creating those interconnections. You are part of PSU, of course, but that doesn’t mean you’ve given up your link to other communities, and by maintaining that link, you bring those communities closer into contact with PSU. Kind of rhizomatically!