"I knew I was done with the conventional academic world, I just didn't know where to go next. After four (and a quarter) years of thrills and spills getting my undergraduate degree, I'd had about all I could stomach of university bueracracy. Though I attended a rather progressive school, the black sheep formerly known as UC Santa Cruz, I continued to feel like a number, another cog in the machine. Now I know why Pink Floyd used the Meatgrinder metaphor in “The Wall.” I had created my independent major in Ecopsychology more as a protest than anything; a demand to be acknowledged for my fringe-thinking, an assertion that there are other effective means of education than in the rigid halls of academia. They still failed to take but passing notice. I was greeted with a diploma and a “move along, hippie.” Ok, so now what?"

a warmup for my soon-to-be-published article on CIIS