Rather than bore you with a play-by-play of my trip, I've decided to dedicate a theme to each post while in Australia to give you a sense of the culture and how it compares to some of the research that I've been doing through the University of Kansas over the past couple of semesters. Knowing how I got here requires a bit of background.
I was accepted into the McNair Scholars program last spring, which is a pipeline program for minority, first-gen, low-income students to earn doctoral degrees. I'll admit that I applied to the program on a whim, not really knowing what I would do after graduation, but thinking that at least having the option to go to graduate school (or, to be quite honest, to understand what a graduate degree is) would be beneficial, even if I didn't follow through. I went into it having tentative plans to spend the year after graduation in Ireland (more on that later).
McNair allowed me to go to Minnesota. It also showed me how the graduate school application process works, and taught me a lot about using my education as leverage to improve my community. The program paid for a research internship this past summer, where I interviewed farmers to look at the barriers to entry for young and beginning farmers in Kansas. I ended up focusing on the experience of female farmers and found that a lot of what I learned along the way directly impacted my thoughts about farming as a profession--it also led me to the decision to become a farmer myself one day! I'm still not sure if I will end up going the homesteading route, grow for profit, be in the educational setting, or what have you, but I know that working in the field of food and farming is the best fit for me long-term.
This past semester, I took an honors research course through Environmental Studies, under the supervision of Paul Stock, to look at the same issue of young and beginning farmers, but from the other side of the spectrum. I went into the class with the following question in mind: What are states and municipalities doing to reduce the barriers to entry for young and beginning farmers? I was confident that I would find a lot of evidence to pull together as a case study of where Kansas can go in the future of food systems planning, but ended up taking a more critical look at food policy reports and finding the efforts of planners disjointed in comparison to the needs expressed by new farmers today. I have to give some credit here to Shannon O'Lear's class that I took (Political Geography) for allowing me to step back from all the literature and analyze it for what it was missing instead of remaining in my enamored state as I had earlier in the semester. Who knew that I would come to love critical thinking? Haha I'm sure only the nerdiest of the nerds will understand what I mean...
Anyways, amid issues of trying to study abroad through KU to a Spanish-speaking country, I decided to take a more open-minded approach to getting out of the country. Not being able to study spanish abroad and get credit for my Spanish minor (I had already come in with too many credits from JCCC and Middlebury to make it work for me), I figured I should try to combine my interests in food systems with my goal of seeing my sister before she graduated. As it turns out, I arrived a few weeks after her graduation, but alas, I am here! I started researching my options pretty soon after I returned from Italy last year, and had started communications with the Slow Food coordinators in Melbourne back in January of this year.
The other part of my goal was to avoid having to pay for the trip out of pocket, since I didn't want to take out any loans to pay for KU. Many months and essay drafts later, I managed to receive every scholarship I applied for through KU to fund my trip (for a total of $5000). For those of you out there thinking that studying abroad is cost-prohibitive, I urge you to think again. :) And reach out to me if you have questions about how to go about funding your study abroad experience. It takes time and planning, but it's well worth it, especially if you do something as career-specific as I have.
You must be wondering how I convinced so many people to pay for my trip to Australia, and what the heck I'm doing here that others deem valuable. Well, first and foremost, my previous two semesters of research set the stage for having experience conducting interviews, coordinating meetings with people involved in food policy, and having an excellent sense of the state of agriculture in Kansas. I proposed a research internship through the Honors program, which would consist of my collective experiences interviewing and volunteering for people involved in food policy/food waste/farming in Australia. Of course, coming during the holidays makes it difficult to accomplish as much as I would like in four weeks, but having my sister as a local guide allows me to see and do things that otherwise might not have been options.
The posts that follow will all discuss a particular topic or theme that I think it worth highlighting as part of my comparative analysis of food systems between Kansas and Victoria (the state in which Melbourne is situated in Australia). There may also be some additional insights that are not food related, but I think those parts of the experience are important to understand the cultural context.
Lastly, I just want to say thank you to everyone who encouraged me to continue along this trajectory and those who have agreed to meet with me during this wonderful hot winter term. I am quite sure that once I return I will not be the same person who left Kansas a little over a week ago.
I was accepted into the McNair Scholars program last spring, which is a pipeline program for minority, first-gen, low-income students to earn doctoral degrees. I'll admit that I applied to the program on a whim, not really knowing what I would do after graduation, but thinking that at least having the option to go to graduate school (or, to be quite honest, to understand what a graduate degree is) would be beneficial, even if I didn't follow through. I went into it having tentative plans to spend the year after graduation in Ireland (more on that later).
McNair allowed me to go to Minnesota. It also showed me how the graduate school application process works, and taught me a lot about using my education as leverage to improve my community. The program paid for a research internship this past summer, where I interviewed farmers to look at the barriers to entry for young and beginning farmers in Kansas. I ended up focusing on the experience of female farmers and found that a lot of what I learned along the way directly impacted my thoughts about farming as a profession--it also led me to the decision to become a farmer myself one day! I'm still not sure if I will end up going the homesteading route, grow for profit, be in the educational setting, or what have you, but I know that working in the field of food and farming is the best fit for me long-term.
This past semester, I took an honors research course through Environmental Studies, under the supervision of Paul Stock, to look at the same issue of young and beginning farmers, but from the other side of the spectrum. I went into the class with the following question in mind: What are states and municipalities doing to reduce the barriers to entry for young and beginning farmers? I was confident that I would find a lot of evidence to pull together as a case study of where Kansas can go in the future of food systems planning, but ended up taking a more critical look at food policy reports and finding the efforts of planners disjointed in comparison to the needs expressed by new farmers today. I have to give some credit here to Shannon O'Lear's class that I took (Political Geography) for allowing me to step back from all the literature and analyze it for what it was missing instead of remaining in my enamored state as I had earlier in the semester. Who knew that I would come to love critical thinking? Haha I'm sure only the nerdiest of the nerds will understand what I mean...
Anyways, amid issues of trying to study abroad through KU to a Spanish-speaking country, I decided to take a more open-minded approach to getting out of the country. Not being able to study spanish abroad and get credit for my Spanish minor (I had already come in with too many credits from JCCC and Middlebury to make it work for me), I figured I should try to combine my interests in food systems with my goal of seeing my sister before she graduated. As it turns out, I arrived a few weeks after her graduation, but alas, I am here! I started researching my options pretty soon after I returned from Italy last year, and had started communications with the Slow Food coordinators in Melbourne back in January of this year.
The other part of my goal was to avoid having to pay for the trip out of pocket, since I didn't want to take out any loans to pay for KU. Many months and essay drafts later, I managed to receive every scholarship I applied for through KU to fund my trip (for a total of $5000). For those of you out there thinking that studying abroad is cost-prohibitive, I urge you to think again. :) And reach out to me if you have questions about how to go about funding your study abroad experience. It takes time and planning, but it's well worth it, especially if you do something as career-specific as I have.
You must be wondering how I convinced so many people to pay for my trip to Australia, and what the heck I'm doing here that others deem valuable. Well, first and foremost, my previous two semesters of research set the stage for having experience conducting interviews, coordinating meetings with people involved in food policy, and having an excellent sense of the state of agriculture in Kansas. I proposed a research internship through the Honors program, which would consist of my collective experiences interviewing and volunteering for people involved in food policy/food waste/farming in Australia. Of course, coming during the holidays makes it difficult to accomplish as much as I would like in four weeks, but having my sister as a local guide allows me to see and do things that otherwise might not have been options.
The posts that follow will all discuss a particular topic or theme that I think it worth highlighting as part of my comparative analysis of food systems between Kansas and Victoria (the state in which Melbourne is situated in Australia). There may also be some additional insights that are not food related, but I think those parts of the experience are important to understand the cultural context.
Lastly, I just want to say thank you to everyone who encouraged me to continue along this trajectory and those who have agreed to meet with me during this wonderful hot winter term. I am quite sure that once I return I will not be the same person who left Kansas a little over a week ago.
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| Reassuring the parents through Whatsapp that my sister picked me up from the airport |
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