Empathy 101 by Cailee

Empathy 101 by Cailee - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

Empathy 101 is not a class you can take in high school, or at least not in the school that I attended. The lessons that are prescribed to us teach about the wonderful world we live in and how to get a respectable job. A side effect to good schooling may even include a healthy dose of competitiveness or independence. However, I learned something unexpected in what I thought was going to be a “blow-off” class my senior year of high school.
AP Environmental Science. Everyone knew that the only reason students took this class was to get an easy AP credit for college or to boost your GPA. In this class we learned about the natural world including succession, natural disasters, climate and human ecology. Most importantly, however, we learned about pollution. This was the first time I had taken a class that was directly associated with my behaviors. Now, at the time, I thought I was a respectable tree hugger because I recycled. Isn’t that the only way to be environmentally active? I was in for a rude awakening! I quickly learned that all of my everyday actions resulted in a consequence that the rest of society would have to eventually pay for; or every action has an equal and opposite reaction. My teacher, Mrs. Peffley, made sure that we understood where our trash goes when we put it out on the curb every Monday and Thursday. She made us aware of just how wasteful we are by requiring us to collect and carry all of our trash for a week. As a 17-year-old girl, carrying around a trash bag in the hallways of school was not ideal for looking “cool” but it sure was a wake up call to how much I was wasting!
We learn simple social lessons in kindergarten about how to treat others but those lessons somehow neglect the importance of how to treat the planet. Not everyone is raised to be compassionate towards the earth. Mrs. Peffley taught me to be empathetic to those impacted by my first-world actions and to take responsibility for the damage I’ve done. Whether it’s because I’ve used ozone depleting chemicals, or because I’ve littered, those actions impact someone or something down the line. While I understand and respect the importance of competitiveness and independence in our society, I would like to see empathy be a side effect of more classes.