My whole life, I’ve lived near the water. I grew up in one of Long Island’s beach towns on the North Shore and I spent my childhood vacations at my grandmother’s log cabin on one of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes. Even in my teenage years, I returned summer after summer to a camp on Vermont’s Lake Champlain.
It was only fitting, then, that I found myself at Dartmouth, with its campus lining the Connecticut river. During the winter I watch the river freeze, only for it to thaw again in the summer, calling to students to canoe and kayak for hours on end. It was here in New Hampshire that I finally realized my self-selecting nature that drew me to these places was born of an innate love for the outdoors, and that I wanted to spend my years at school studying the environment I so cared about.
Then, like many other young students who are passionate about the environment, health, and social justice, the presidential election last fall had me reconsidering my academic and career goals. I knew that I wanted to study the environment and all of the nuances of its systems, but I no longer could justify any kind of career that would not work to correct the chaos within our country -- I needed to be an advocate for the issues that I cared about.
My first step into advocacy begins here, as I start my work as the National Communications Intern for Clean Water Action. Clean Water Action simultaneously fights for the environment, health, and equality in its work to protect and provide clean drinking water for all. With my passions for environmental justice and public health, and my studies in public policy at Dartmouth further propelling my interest in using legislative action and grassroots organizing as a force for change, working for Clean Water Action is, as my friends describe it, “a perfect fit.”
My days living next to the water may be numbered after college, but I know that the time I spend fighting for clean water isn’t. Rather, it has just begun.
