If you want to sing out, sing out…

… and if you want to be free, be free. Cause there’s a million things to be. (Cat Stevens)

I’ve always liked this song and I try to live by it, more or less. My mom also kept telling me kind of the same things (in her own words, of course) when I was growing up. So maybe that’s where this weird obsession with wanting to change the world and make it a better place comes from. The wish to make the world a better place surfaced pretty early in my childhood after reading some eye-opening books about environmental destruction. Now before completely weirding everyone out, I have to say that I grew up in the countryside, partly on a farm (and proud of it!), so I’ve always felt a strong connection to the environment. At a later point in my life, when I wanted to take action, I bought the book How to Make the World a Better Place. Honestly, this book wasn’t as helpful as its title might suggest. Still, no harm in trying, or better yet, reading.

I realized quickly that a solid education would be fundamental in order to achieve my, uhm, humble goal. Because as we all know, knowledge is power. After putting a lot of thought into what to study, and a gap year after high school which I partly spent in Costa Rica, I realized that the best course of action would be to study Ecology and English at the University of Salzburg. The wish to change the world (and two months living in the rain forest) led me to Ecology and my addiction to books (don’t we all have a little substance abuse problem?) and my love for the English language led me to English. 

Now how should you use your knowledge to change the world? In order to give this all a proper structure, here are the steps I intend to follow to achieve my goal:

 

Step 1: Attend university. Check.

Choosing the right field of study is an important first step. However, I think it is equally important to make the best out of one’s options and this includes choosing classes according to one’s interest. I succeeded pretty well in doing so this semester. My classes included learning how to blog (properly), and my crazy-long reading list covered everything from Henry James to Cecilia Ahern (believe me, there is a connection) and from Zoë Wicomb to Rudolfo Anaya. Just covering all the bases.

 

Step 2: Apply for a study abroad program. Check.

The painful application process has been explained thoroughly in my last few blog posts. They range from how to get started, listing the necessary application documents, explaining in more detail how to write a good letter of purpose and how to survive the TOEFL. The result of this struggle will be revealed in my next and final blog post.

 

Step 3: Get my degree(s). I’m on the road to getting my degrees at the moment. What I plan on doing with my degree will be explained in the next two steps.

 

Step 4: Write a book like T.C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth. Only my book is not only going to be dystopian, it is going to be sadly more realistic at the point of writing it. So you can see that on the road to achieving my ultimate goal I kind of also plan on becoming the next Jack(ie) Kerouac. I only want to change the story slightly to one without the substance abuse problems – still love his book, though, and dread the movie.

 

Step 5: After writing a couple of international bestsellers and becoming an internationally recognized writer/ecologist, I will use my knowledge and fame to appeal to people’s ecological consciousness and, at the same time, try to combine this with love for literature. And I know that those darn books kill our trees. As a reward for my hard work and effort to make the world a better place, I hope I will receive the Nobel Peace Prize or a Nobel Prize in Literature. I am fine with either one of them, really. 

But this is not all. Even if you have not taken my previous points seriously (which you actually should, at least partially), I do think it will become increasingly important to raise awareness for, and to promote interdisciplinary studies.

It should be clear by now that my schedule for the next decade is going to be pretty busy. On the bright side, I am finally able to answer the ever-annoying question of „Where do you see yourself in ten years?“ And if all of my best-laid plans should not work out, I’ll just become a yoga instructor in Panama.

Yours truly,

Lemon