The minute hand on the clock moved from thirty-nine to forty. For the first time in recent memory, I found myself riveted, saddened a class period would soon end. I wanted the minutes to stretch out for as long as possible.
Don’t get me wrong; I’ve enjoyed graduate classes. But I’d nearly forgotten the feeling I had in high school or as an undergraduate, when I took a class with a fascinating topic and an enthusiastic teacher. That feeling of not wanting to leave, of wishing for a little longer to discuss Sandra Cisneros’s “The House on Mango Street” or Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” It’s a feeling I’d forgotten until last week when I attended a lecture by a former agronomy professor now working as a Senior Scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The speaker was a tall man, probably in his early fifties, and amiable, the kind of person you’d like to get coffee with so you could pick his brain. He seemed the kind of person who would be genuinely interested in your opinions. He opened his talk with graphs and statistics about the rising population, the depletion of natural resources, the increase in diet-related health issues, the correlation between greater income inequality and an increase in social problems. He charted the world’s countries, pinning the United States as one of the outliers—in the least desirable spot—in that last category. He said he did this to highlight the difficulties my generation faces, the problems we already know about.
Then he backtracked. He told his story. He grew up in Mexico, the son of a Native American father and German-American missionary mother. He knows multiple cultures and languages, being educated abroad and then in the United States. The story moved from family farms in Mexico to agricultural studies in New Mexico to corn in Iowa. He told of the opportunities he encountered, the choices he made that at the time didn’t seem like choices; some of them just things that fell into his lap. When he reached the end of his own story, he paused, pressed the tips of his fingers together, and looked out at his audience.
The reason he told us this, he said, was to show how he got where he is, and the important role his history and perspective played in helping him comprehend the problems of his time and make choices to help solve those problems. He said because he grew up comfortable in many places and with people of many backgrounds, he came to understand the way that many of the problems we face are not the problems of one city, one region, or one country. They are not the problems of one place, but rather the problems of the whole planet. When the population reaches 9 billion around 2050, as some scientists predict, the problems we will face will be global in scale. We will have to work together. The agronomist gestured to his PowerPoint slides and referenced his earlier material, the trends he opened his presentation with. These things, he said, are the global problems you face.
Perhaps I should have mentioned earlier: I am a writer. I’ve always been fascinated by science, but chose to study the subject I loved instinctually: language. I studied literature and writing and then added a major in Spanish. I loved the way words could travel from one language to another, their sounds shifting, their meanings often changing, too. Language was like a puzzle, and the words held secrets.
But as the agronomist answered the audience’s questions, I wondered if I hadn’t made a mistake. I wondered if I should have chosen something else, a different path, a different discipline. I agreed whole-heartedly with what the man told us about the importance of understanding other places and cultures. But what if I had no useful knowledge base to share, to apply to the growing problems our planet faces? Had I made the wrong choice, approached the problem from the wrong angle?
The last question I heard during the Q&A session was from the student sitting on my left. He asked whether it was more important to focus on local change-producing food locally, helping create better social systems in our communities-or to try to create large-scale policy change. Yes, I thought. That’s a good question. To paraphrase one of those philosophers who had likely riveted that eighteen-year-old college freshman in an introductory philosophy course, How should we live? But I didn’t get to hear the agronomist’s response because the minute hand ticked toward 4:50, and the friend sitting in the chair on my right grabbed my arm and raised her eyebrows, indicating we needed to hurry or we’d miss the bus.
Outside, the agronomist’s facts, statistics, and story of Zapotec descendants bounced around in my brain. Maybe I should have made different choices, but maybe that line of thinking was futile. Maybe I had to do the best I could with the knowledge I had. One of the reason’s the agronomist’s lecture was so engaging was because he was an amazing speaker. He spoke the language of science, but also the language of his lay audience. He knew how to reach us. My language, too, is the language of words, of trying to use them to understand places and the people who live in them. What I think we can all do is keep learning, keep attending lectures-literally or metaphorically-that keep us on the edge of our seats. Then we can do what we can with the tools we have. I don’t know how the agronomist answered the last question about how we should live, but I like to imagine that’s what he said.
Katie Sukalich grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the edge of Lake Michigan. Consequently, she feels slightly disoriented when there isn’t water nearby. She has worked as a composition instructor in Iowa and taught English in Mexico, among other things. She will receive her MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University this May.