Column: Advice for first years

Just like every other wide-eyed first-year, I spent my first few weeks mapping out what my path at UNC would look like in the years to come.

The plan? Join some organizations that sound cool, gain leadership in those groups, start my own project or club, maintain a great GPA and graduate as the poster child for the University.

This, of course, could not be further from the truth. Yet this is the perspective many UNC students carry, and it can be detrimental to the way the University functions as a whole, especially in the environmental community.

Centering your time here at UNC on clubs and organizations limits you from contributing to so much more that makes up this University and this town. For many new students, it is still hard to dispel how college applications make us define success and intelligence.

Once you’re accepted into college, things are different. There are more smart minds, more ideas, more resources and more opportunities. If you feel like you’re doing the same type of work you were doing in high school, you’re doing the wrong work.

Above all, don’t start something after assuming it doesn’t already exist. In one of my first classes at UNC, I met a professor who expressed frustration over students who started new organizations so often. It is a root cause for the overwhelming number of feel-good environmental clubs that exist on campus.

Thinking critically as to why we have multiple local food projects, petition and protest organizers and sustainability developers is good practice for vying organizations to find the best ones.

I still remember my first year consisting of figuring out what things people aren’t already covering twice or three times over. My work in the Environmental Affairs Committee in Student Government intersected with what I heard in the Student Environmental Action Coalition meetings and on all the other environmental group listservs. It is exciting that so many people want to be involved in all of these efforts, but maybe there is a way we can all work better together.

To be clear, I am not discrediting efforts made on this campus by passionate students affiliated with organizations I consider similar to others.

I know my limited knowledge of any specific group’s agenda limits me in many ways for what I am claiming. But questioning the efficiency, impact and purpose of these groups is a constructive way to finding better and faster solutions to the problems we want to address in the student body.

First-years, you have a challenge ahead of you. You have to find out how you’re going to make your impact on this school. Or not — that’s fine too. But if you’re trying to get plugged in to the environmental community, commit to things in an intentional and objective way.

Environmental issues on campus need leaders and not resume builders, and we are looking to you for that distinction.