This past week I flipped through my ENV100 notebook from the first semester of my freshman year mostly to just compare what I learned then to what I am learning now. I learned two things while flipping through my notebook: 1) I doodle a lot and 2) my goals and dreams for what I want my life to be haven’t changed at all!

Here is what I mean: on the last day of class my professor had us free-write about what we consider to be a good life.

This is what my response said:

To me, a good life would be one where I can travel unlimited. Discovering new cultures, trying out new food, and learning new languages. Camping, hiking, biking, by train, by plane, backpacking. If I could consistently travel the world for self-discovery, service (Peace Corps, WWOOFing, etc.), learning, then I would feel satisfied with what I was doing with my life. Then once I had finished traveling the world and had seen everything I had wanted to see I would come back to America and have my own organic farm. There would be a little house with multiple acres of land just waiting to be cultivated. And of course, there would be chickens running around. I would grow local organic food for not only myself but for the surrounding community. Call me old fashioned but I still abide by the old American Dream - being able to own your own land and cultivate it. I don’t need much to keep me happy, and consuming would not be a huge part of my lifestyle (except the consumption of fresh produce). Let me farm for the rest of my life.

Man, freshman year Allie knew what was up. Now as a junior in college I am pleased to say that my definition of a good life hasn’t really changed at all. I still really want to travel the world after I graduate. My ideal job is still to be a farmer. If I could do those two things, I really would be completely content with my life and what I have accomplished.

However, now that I am a junior I do look at this statement with more of a critical eye. Like there is the question of how am I going to pay for all this travel? Sure it is easy to say I just want to get up and go, but when would I go where and for how long? And let’s face it running a small community organic farm isn’t the highest paying job in the world. But don’t think I have given up on my dreams, I will hopefully be able to do all these things one day even if it is in just moderation.

Now when I went to my ENV100 professor, who also happens to be my adviser, I told him about how I still have the same goals and haven’t really changed. He responded that hopefully in these past two years, even if my goals haven’t changed, at least my way of approaching these goals has, or I have a better sense of how to accomplish them. That got me thinking… having a plan on how you are going to accomplish your goals and dreams is just as important, if not more important, than having the dreams in the first place. Luckily over these past two years, I somehow have come up with ways to make sure these dreams get accomplished.

First off, I am going abroad in the spring to Australia so that will be the start of my traveling journey. There is hope that I will make new friends from different places and that opens the door to even more travel opportunities in the future. So even just by taking advantage of opportunities my school has to offer I have started to accomplish my goals before graduation. Likewise, these past two summers I have done an AmeriCorps program and I hope to do another program post-graduation, and this will not only promote more travel within the United States but also hopefully open doors to doing the Peace Corps later in life.

Now for owning my own farm I definitely have less developed plans but I have opened up my career goals a little more than just straight up owning a farm. It would be completely rad is I could do community outreach and education about local food and sustainable agriculture! Even better would be if I could do that through owning my own farm, but let’s not get to picky. I have also taken classes about food and agriculture and how they fit into society. I have continued to grow my connections with small organic farmers from my hometown and learn from their personal stories of how they got to where they are today. Plus I have learned about possible opportunities where I could run a farm for a education center where I would be able to make all the decisions, increasing my experience. So opportunities are out there, now it is just up to me to go a find them.

A couple of months ago I had a really big realization on my life outlook. Right now, I feel like everyone is so focused on being able to change the whole world but I realized I don’t need to change the world, even if I just bring change to a small community or a couple of people I am changing their world and that is all that matters. So while it would be great to travel the whole world and own a big organic farm the gives vegetables to millions of people that is never going to happen. But on a smaller local level it just might. I want to make sure that everyday I am moving closer and closer to making these dreams become a reality. None of these realizations would be possible if I hadn’t by chance flipped through my ENV100 notebook.

Okay, so what are the takeaways from this really long ramble of an article?

1. It is important to look back at your goals/dreams and make sure you are still on track for the direction you want your life to go.
2. Having a plan for your dreams is just as important as having dreams.
3. You don’t need to change the whole world, small impacts make just as big of a difference!

Happy dream chasing!