I am a twenty-year-old, third year student at Vassar College, located in Poughkeepsie, New York. As an environmental theory major, I am interested in the social, cultural and human sides of environmental problems. I feel that we too easily defer responsibility for managing our environmental conditions to "experts." Any real success we have in healing ourselves and the Earth will come from people consciously deciding to live differently, in a less consumptive, more compassionate way. Unfortunately, many people at present are highly attached to their sometimes self-destructive ways of life, despite the existence of ecologically-positive and self-fulfilling alternatives. I am attending SFS to work with other solution-oriented students on improving our lives and the lives of others.