I wanted to use my final blog as an opportunity to reflect on my experience and share my thoughts with future Sustainability Specialists and the USF community. When I first got to USF, I was full of both crushing nervousness and glistening possibility. I was excited to be in a beautiful, diverse, unique place like USF. But at the same time, I’d never lived in a city before, and I was a long way from home. I had no idea how fast the next four years would go, and even now, I truly can’t fathom how four years can go by so quickly. I know there’s the cliché, “time flies,” but I never realized how true that was until now. Here I am now, writing this, weirdly and simultaneously the same–yet completely different–person I was four years ago. I think the time passing so fast and my weird feelings now are due to learning so much in such a short time. This learning, from my personal, academic, and professional experiences in San Francisco has changed me so much. So before I go, I hope to share some of this with you all here. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on my time in the sustainability office and notes for future Sustainability Specialists.

Team members from the USF Office of Sustainability at USF Earth Day 2025

From me to future Sustainability Specialists 

When I found out I was selected to be a Sustainability Specialist at the USF Office of Sustainability, I was so excited because I had always been inspired by their work and looked up to the other students I knew who worked in the office. The first bigger project I did independently as a Sustainability Specialist was organizing the Fort Mason Habitat Restoration Volunteering Event. If you want to know more about how I did this, feel free to reach out. I chose this event because I always find that tending to the land feels really good. For me, it’s a really therapeutic and meditative practice. The restoration volunteering was a huge success: we completed the project and contributed meaningful work to Fort Mason, got to know each other, and spent a beautiful morning outside for a good cause. I would definitely recommend this event to future Specialists, and I hope it continues to live on once I graduate. I would suggest planning it a couple months in advance though, and make sure to do enough promotion so you have as many participants as the project requires. Another reason I hope this event continues is because during this time, as the federal government is slashing funding and doing widespread workforce cuts, our public lands will only need more community support.

Another aspect of my work as a Sustainability Specialist that I particularly enjoyed was the ability to engage students in environmental education and sustainability campaigns. Every interaction I had with students during events meant a lot to me. To see how much students care for the environment and want to learn about sustainability on campus was energizing. So whether I was working with fellow students on how to properly sort waste, connecting over shared concerns for our planet’s future, witnessing volunteers learn how to remove invasive species, seeing friends discover the importance of native biodiversity, explaining to friends what I was doing on my weekly neighborhood clean-up, feeling passionate energy from our whole campus and community partners on Earth Day, interviewing students about zero waste, or just handing out stickers and buttons that encourage us to love Earth–all of these moments taught me so much, and they’ll always be special memories to me. 

Something I want future Sustainability Specialists to consider is practicing perspective and gratitude. Sometimes when you’re in the thick of it and have a lot on your plate, it can be easy to lose sight of the positive, like what an amazing job being a Sustainability Specialist really is! I really don’t want future Specialists to lose sight of this. Always try to center what is possible instead of what isn’t, and who you are rather than what you are. I know I got a lot out of this role, and you can too, so make the most of it! Being a sustainability specialist gave me so many transferable skills that helped me get internships, and I hope it will continue to support me professionally after graduation. 

Also, as Specialists, we have the freedom to do monthly blogs on a topic of our choice. I loved this because it allowed us the space to explore topics on the environment or sustainability that we were interested in. Through monthly blogs I was able to expand my knowledge, hone my research and writing skills, and share a finished product online with my community and the world. I tended to do blogs that related to my professional interests. For example, I’m interested in ecology, so I wrote one about endangered species and biodiversity in San Francisco. I’m also interested in environmental policy, so I wrote one analyzing Trump’s Executive Order “Declaring an Energy Emergency.” I’m also interested in environmental justice, so I wrote one about community resources for social and environmental action, one about the Oakland Airport expansion from an environmental justice perspective, and one about farmworker justice in California. Looking back, I’m grateful for how much I learned through working on these blogs and for how much I was able to improve my skills in research, writing, and environmental communication. I encourage future Sustainability Specialists to take these blogs seriously, work hard at them, and enjoy the process–because it’s such a privilege to have a position with so much autonomy, creative space, and freedom to explore your passions. One thing I wish I had done but didn’t get around to was interviewing someone for one of the blogs. Interviewing is a really valuable skill, and it would also just be fun to integrate more perspectives in the blogs. 

Another amazing aspect of this role is the team. Throughout my journey as a Specialist, I’ve been inspired by the team and learned from everyone. Each person on our team brings their own unique background, expertise, skills, campus involvements, and interests. This diversity makes our team so strong, so I would encourage future Specialists to get to know each other more and collaborate! I think sometimes in this role it can be easy to go with the flow and replicate what’s already been done, but don’t be afraid to contribute new ideas! If you have an idea about how something could improve or an idea for a new event, bring it to the team like I did with the habitat restoration volunteering event. Another good example of exercising creativity and courage to try something new was the letter writing campaign led by fellow Specialist Sophia Earnest. The campaign was a collaboration between our office, USF Votes, and Ignite (which is the women in politics club) for USF’s Earth Day event. Our office did the organizing, Ignite made the letter templates, and USF Votes sent the letters off to the respective recipient political offices. I loved this event and hope to see it continue, or at least hope to see more events that mobilize environmental action. Another recent development from this year’s team was the Sustainability Organizations Council. This is an amazing campus community for sustainability-minded students and student organizations. I can’t wait to see it grow and flourish. It has so much potential for student collaborations and to drive more change on and off campus, so I encourage the future Specialists to keep working on this.

Finally, on a more personal note, I often worked outside on the patio, so if you need some fresh air or some sun on your face, try working outside for a bit–just spending thirty minutes or an hour outside working improved my mental state a lot. Overall, I’m so grateful for all of the opportunities, learnings, experiences, and relationships that came from working in the Office of Sustainability, and I’m always wishing you all the best!