My Graduate Decision
Hi y’all! Jumping right into it…
I’ll be a gaucho again! After a long time deciding & traveling to all my other options, I decided to attend UCSB’s Bren School for their Masters in Environmental Science and Management. There are a dozen reasons why (so if you’re curious, reach out 🤙) but here are a few thoughts that clarified it for me:
After two years, where did I want my community to be? Spending time forming a graduate community in CA would help to centralize my people (and avoid an extra stop on future Love Tours).
The curricula at UCSB & Duke were extremely similar, with SB’s curriculum having more time in the lab and the technical skills that come with that experience.
The differences between the two schools were truly minute, so choosing a spot close to home, with easier access to TA positions, and in a place I know I love feels good to me.
CMU’s Engineering program offers a flexible curriculum & some great opportunities to learn modeling & sensing techniques, plus very accessible professors. If I need those skills in the future, I’ll have to work on them. However, the ecological knowledge and the focus on pollution remediation at the other schools better align with my career/life-knowledge goals. I’d still recommend the other programs based on what I learned!
Other Things Going On
I worked another outdoor education trip in March and will start to get much busier in May / June taking out trips. Very excited about it!
I traveled to Indiana with my farm friends to see the eclipse and I simply cannot do the experience justice by expressing it with words. It’s like my eyes shouldn’t have been able to see such an incredible solar-lunar phenomenon. How PERFECT an era we live in to see the moon cover the sun (the sun is 400x larger than the moon & the moon is 400x closer to us than the sun, making them feel like a literal heavenly match for us on Earth to view). The shadow bands & the warmth fading away make me highly recommend this experience for anyone lucky enough to be around Spain in 2026 to see it again.
After the eclipse and a quick day of farming, I flew to Duke to check out campus, which turned out to be a very cool space (like the rest of NC, the campus feels like it’s in the middle of a forest).
Angela Lapin, Natan’s mom, passed away as I was flying home that night. I’m having trouble writing more here but I miss her presence. Through each day & activity I keep recognizing how much of my current care for community/curiosity/nature/life came from her. I wish I had that perspective of how much she influenced my worldview to have communicated that to her.
To you, someone in my mesh community who cares about me enough to read about my meanderings in life, I LOVE that you continue to read my life updates and SO appreciate the presence you share with me, that you share your self with me. If it’s been a while, will you text me already? If I haven’t responded, will you call me out??
I decided to meet with a psychologist to see if I had ADHD (after listening to Faster Than Normal by Peter Shankman & relating to many of his tendencies) and was diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive & hyperactive-impulsive). It’s fairly recent and I’m trying to learn how to strategize around these traits. My asks:
If you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD in the past and have created interesting methods of getting around life with it, I’d love to hear about your experience!
If you’ve heard/experienced anything helpful in spending time around people with ADHD, I’d love to hear your perspective.
If you had a strong feeling I’d have this diagnosis one day, share what tipped you off 🙏
What I’m Reading
I took a bit of a reading break (grad school travel & general anxious thinking) but have been reading like I need to catch up. Here’s what’s most recent:
🌍 Earth is Hiring by Peta Keely: I took this from Angela’s place, she targets millennials using the most “I’ve found my aura and here’s how you can find yours too” voice that will feel comfortable to my generation and uncomfortable/unfollowable to anyone older. One of her main points: only through play & taking yourself not too seriously can you impact mission-driven, people-oriented work. It’s more nuanced & I’m still reading but I’d recommend!
😩 The Anxiety Audit by Lynn Lyons (LICSW): Her writing helped me recognize many anxious mental patterns I’ve been allowing to grow in my head throughout the years, understand where they may have originated, and helped me open the conversation with my therapist to help manage my anxious thinking. It’s been tough to wrap my head around (I’ve been practicing how to think anxiously for ages) but I’m learning ways to replace anxiety with joy & eagerness for life. I recommend this to anyone who feels that anxiety may be lurking, or if you’re looking for more ways to identify where anxious patterns exist in your life.
📔 The Disorganized Mind by Nancy Ratey: A personal coach for people impacted by ADHD (whether they have a diagnosis or are close to someone diagnosed), she shares strategies others have found useful and how to create individual ways of navigating life. It could be helpful to anyone trying to make long-term changes. I’m trying to get daily exercise back into my life (>20min/day) — if anyone else is trying to build a daily habit let me know and we can help each other out!
The other things on my mind:
🟨 There is SO MUCH INVASIVE BLACK MUSTARD in SOCAL 👎👎 Learn how to ID it & learn about its presence here. Remember the flowers & seeds are literally mustard (edible & tasty), and they can’t re-seed in the ground if you eat them (aka a mitzvah). If you’re having trouble ID’ing them, download Seek or hike with me!
✡️ The Moishe House in PB is facing closure because of a lack of local funding. If you’re someone who might be interested in supporting the local young Jewish community, please reach out to me so I can connect you to MH. I’ve been going to their programming since coming home in October and it’s been highly enriching for me to join community & make new friends in town. As much as I love shabbat dinners with family, spending dinners & events with people my age has allowed me to continue building my personal Jewish identity while living at home.
📞 Reach out! Entering a time of personal change and would love to have y’all call in and spend time talking together 🤗