{"id":8,"date":"2017-04-19T04:37:44","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T04:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/?p=8"},"modified":"2017-04-19T04:37:44","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T04:37:44","slug":"life-is-short-and-the-world-is-wide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/2017\/04\/19\/life-is-short-and-the-world-is-wide\/","title":{"rendered":"Life is Short and the World is Wide"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Riding my horse, Starlett, in Fall City, Washington. She celebrates her 31st birthday this year!<\/p><\/div>\n

If I could describe myself in one word, it would be observant. I believe part of this is innate, but part of it can also be attributed to how and with whom I have spent large parts of my life. A huge chunk of my 21 years on this Earth has been spent with someone who to this day has never said a word to me \u2013 my horse, Starlett. Although we can\u2019t communicate in conventional ways, I know Starlett better than I know a lot of human beings. And that has taken years and years of observation, patience and practice. The only way I can communicate with Starlett is through subtle changes in pressure and energy and, of course, loving nuzzles and treats. The only way she can communicate with me is through her body language, responses to my commands and frequent sassy flicks of her tail. Spending so much time around horses has taught me a skill that many people are uncomfortable with: how to understand, communicate with, and respond to the the world without spoken words. This has left me incredibly perceptive to the feelings and moods of others and allowed me to realize how much I truly\u00a0value moments of silence in which I can reflect on and observe the world around me.<\/p>\n

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Fishing at dusk on Vashon Island, Washington<\/p><\/div>\n

I grew up in a\u00a0quiet suburb of Seattle, however, since even before I can remember, my weekends and summers were spent on Vashon Island – my absolute favorite place in the world. Since the mid 90s, my family has rented a cabin on the shores of Puget Sound. This row of cabins was built in the 20s during the Great Depression, so\u00a0in all honestly, it\u2019s pretty much glorified camping. Nevertheless,\u00a0since I could walk, these cabins and the beach have been my playground and my classroom. Not only did this prompt my love for marine life, especially sea stars, but it also sparked my curiosity and interest in the ways in which our world works. Some of this can probably be attributed to the fact that both my parents are scientists – my mother is a marine biologist who spent her career at the Environmental Protection Agency and my\u00a0father is a fisheries biologist.<\/p>\n

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Hiking in Castle Rock State Park<\/p><\/div>\n

From fishing, to\u00a0observing the tides and the playing with the bioluminescent algae, over the years I have become attuned to the subtleties of the natural\u00a0world in a way that I think most people aren\u2019t. The natural world has it\u2019s own rhythm and way of being which, in my opinion, is very out of sync with the world we live in today. I think that\u2019s why I enjoy spending so much time outdoors. Whether I’m\u00a0hiking or simply watching the sunset, being in nature allows me to slow down and reset my own internal metronome, matching it to the beat of the Earth. Last year, on a whim, I \u00a0got a tattoo of an evergreen tree on my ankle that reminds everyday to remember my roots, stay grounded and seek nature when things seem\u00a0to be falling apart.<\/p>\n

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My sister, Kyla, and I at the beach on Vashon Island, Washington<\/p><\/div>\n

Vashon fostered my love of the natural world and also taught me about genuine human connection. When I am at Vashon, I am away from technology and the craziness of the fast-paced world we live in. It is truly the conversations and connections I\u2019ve made with my family members and friends over the dinner table or the campfire that have left me feeling most\u00a0fulfilled. Any material item pales in comparison to authentic human connection and love. To remind myself of this, I have a poem taped into my planner that I make time to read everyday. It is written by Rupi Kaur:<\/p>\n

most importantly love<\/p>\n

like it\u2019s the only thing you know how<\/p>\n

at the end of this day all this<\/p>\n

means nothing<\/p>\n

this page<\/p>\n

where you\u2019re sitting<\/p>\n

your degree<\/p>\n

your job<\/p>\n

your money<\/p>\n

nothing even matters<\/p>\n

except love and human connection<\/p>\n

who you loved<\/p>\n

and how deeply you loved them<\/p>\n

how you touched the people around you<\/p>\n

and how much you gave them<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I like to think of myself as a “glass half full” kind of person. I think people are inherently good and at the end of the day, truly care about one another and the common good. I thought I knew how the world worked, until I realized how incredibly sheltered I\u2019d been. While I am an expert on my own small part of the world, it took going to college and traveling internationally for me to realize just how big the world is and just how little I really know about it, it’s people and it’s problems. Although I\u2019d volunteered and participated in charity extensively throughout my child and teenage years, it wasn\u2019t until college that I learned the difference between charity and justice. The most transformative class I have taken during my time as an SCU student was called \u201cFaith, Justice and Poverty.\u201d In this class, we studied the nitty-gritty details of global poverty and what that meant for the daily lives and futures of those who lived in it. Additionally, as part of the curriculum, I spent two hours every week working with students at a youth center in a gang-ridden neighborhood of San Jose. Often times I left this class frustrated and sad because of how messed up, unequal and selfish our world is in so many ways. What disturbed me even more was how many people are either unaware of or turn a cold shoulder to these social issues. However, despite these realizations, I felt inspired to seek out more opportunities for justice in my own life so that the social equilibriums keeping these children, and the vast majority of the poor, from reaching their full potential can be shifted. This class not only illuminated to me how the majority of the world truly lives, but also irreversibly shifted and broadened my entire worldview by revealing to me a part of the world that I knew little about. While I still like to think that people are inherently good, we must be reminded of our common humanity if we are to truly care for one another and create lasting social change.<\/p>\n

Despite my love of nature, vocationally, I always thought my calling was to become a doctor. For as long as I can remember I\u2019ve been on the pre-med track. My plan was to go to college, major in biology, go to medical school and become a doctor – simple enough, right? That\u2019s what I thought until I realized that I really don\u2019t want to be a doctor. I love biology, I love working as an EMT and I love helping people, but I don\u2019t know if I would ultimately feel fulfilled as a doctor within the current American healthcare system. What I value most is human connection and, with the amount of time that doctors spend charting and filling out paperwork nowadays, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d feel as if I was making as much of a difference in people\u2019s lives as I could. Don\u2019t get me wrong, documentation is incredibly important and doctors can and do make remarkable impact on our world, but I think there may be other occupations in which I could form deeper, more authentic human connections than I could as a doctor. \u201cWhat are those other occupations?\u201d you may ask. I don\u2019t know, but that\u2019s what I\u2019m on the hunt for.<\/p>\n

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Jumping on a trampoline on the way to class in Copenhagen, Denmark. There’s a reason that Denmark is the happiest country on Earth!<\/p><\/div>\n

I learned about the Miller Center and this fellowship from previous fellows that I worked with on the SCU on-campus EMT squad. In all honesty, I really had no idea what social entrepreneurship was, but the fellowship sounded really cool and after spending an amazing summer studying abroad in Copenhagen, I had the travel bug. So, I did a lot of reading, learned about the action research projects for the upcoming year and was completely hooked. Social entrepreneurship, and specifically an organization such as Nurture Africa, could be the ideal marriage between science, humanity and the promotion of the common good that I\u2019m looking for. While I still have a tremendous amount to learn about social entrepreneurship, I am humbled and excited about the opportunity to help develop long-term health solutions that will have a lasting impact on the people of Nansana. More than anything, I look forward to learning about the culture of Uganda and forming connections with those I am working alongside. Life is short and the world is wide, so my plan is to learn as much as I can about the world and hopefully discover how I myself fit into it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I could describe myself in one word, it would be observant. I believe part of this is innate, but part of it can also be attributed to how and with whom I have spent large parts of my life. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2033,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"Grace Krueger","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/author\/gkrueger\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"If I could describe myself in one word, it would be observant. I believe part of this is innate, but part of it can also be attributed to how and with whom I have spent large parts of my life. … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2033"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/43"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/gkrueger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}