Thursday and Friday mornings I sit at the welcome desk of our neighborhood nature center. My days of leading groups in the outdoors are over, but I am happy to sit behind a desk for four hours a week and free up the paid staff to do the work that they were hired to do. My main responsibilities are to greet visitors when they walk through the door and to answer basic questions about the building and the surrounding parkland. Most people just want to know the location of the restrooms and the length of time it takes to walk the main loop trail.
Last Friday, during my normal stint at the center, Craig, a retired wildlife specialist with the Department of Natural Resources, came into the building. He was there to speak with Stephanie, the community outreach director, about conducting a beginner birding program. Ten minutes later Alysa, a professor from the University, showed up with a dozen college students from her capstone environmental studies course. About that same time Cindy, the head naturalist at the nature center, stepped out of her office into the main atrium.
It was a coincidental convergence of five naturalists, three active and two retired. At different times over the years, I’d worked individually with all of the other four, but I don’t remember all of us ever being in the same place at the same time. Neither, apparently, had Alsya. She immediately asked whether we’d all meet with her class to describe how each of us got started in our careers. It was a good idea. I’d taught the very same course years earlier, and I knew that the students in the class were interested in environmental work, but didn’t know how to take that first step.
I cannot say for certain whether the impromptu gathering was an education for the students, but it was for me. The five of us met each other only after we’d all already settled into our respective careers, so I had no idea how Craig, Stephanie, Alysa, or Cindy had broken into the field.
Although all of our first nature-related jobs were in different venues (e.g., zoos, wildlife sanctuaries, residential environmental education centers), all five of us began our careers with a series of short-term minimum wage positions. We’d all packed up and moved to new locales to take those jobs. We’d all bounced around for years before landing what most people would consider “real” jobs.
I did not think about it while we were talking to the students, but afterwards I wondered whether our romantic recollections of the early years appealed to today’s young adults. One thing we’d left unsaid was that we all possessed a faith that everything would eventually work out. As entry-level laborers, we were having fun in our belief that environmental work was an honorable pursuit, and we were confident that a permanent job would present itself when we were ready for one.
Maybe it doesn’t work that way anymore. Maybe these young adults see the sad conditions of both the natural environment and the job market and are unable to muster up a comparable sense of optimism.* When my daughter Clare had a hard time finding an environmental job straight out of college, I reminded her that she could always find something in environmental education. “Dad,” she said, “environmental education worked for you, but it won’t for me. There isn’t enough time.”
* When I sent a draft of this blog to the four naturalists to get their okay to post, Alysa reminded me that many of these students also have sizable student debt to deal with.
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