Let’s just say that the speaker on Thursday’s class scarred me. It was not her appearance, an honestly, not even what she said that scarred me. It was the visual aids she used. The film specifically was the metaphorical drop of water that breached my levee of comfortable ignorance. I left that class in utter shock, and my values and morals and emotions were all so shot and twisted (I felt like my whole life was a lie), that I called my friend and demanded to speak about her vegetarianism. I wanted to change my eating habits at that exact moment. I would start immediately. Aldo Leopold asserts in A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation that “there is some virtue in eagerness, whether its object prove true or false. How utterly dull would be a wholly prudent man, or trout, or world!” and I tend to agree (37). Maybe my inaction before made me dull, but my great eagerness (and ability) to change right now made me feel alive and interesting. So change I did.

I never ate a lot of meat before Thursday’s class anyway, but the YouTube film the speaker showed, “What Cody Saw Will Change Your Life,” made sure I would never eat meat again. Leopold’s Almanac is full of one-liners that completely describe my mental process after watching that film. He states that “we grieve only for what we know” because it is easy not to care about what we don’t know (45). Ignorance is bliss, society tells us, as it grinds up male chicks because they won’t lay eggs.

Before I knew about the chicks, I had no real problems with chicken or eggs. There were worse things happening to pigs and cows, right? Wrong. Animals are all treated poorly in industrial farming, and our ignorance (or extremely low morals—which I hope is not the case) is letting it happen. Leopold writes that education is “possibly a process of trading awareness to things of lesser worth,” and I notice that in most of my own education (18). How is it possible that I know 92 prepositions, but not the origin of the banana I just ate? Why is my education so focused on small parts of small concepts when the entire world needs to focus on larger issues to operate effectively? What else am I missing? I understand that we need people to specialize in anything from open-heart surgery to US and foreign policy and law to the 1920s. But I also yearn for more comprehensive education about larger, essential, everyday topics: food, chemicals in products, politician’s platforms, cultural customs, and perspectives of oppression from the oppressed to name a few.

After talking to Rachel (my vegetarian friend), I decided that vegetarianism is a great starting point. It is obtainable, not that difficult, and healthier anyway. I told her that my overall goal was to become a vegan, but that I know that I cannot commit to that for now. I meditated. I created a timeline of change. I will, in the next sentence, put the timeline out in the world. I started vegetarianism Thursday, on December 27^th I will start veganism for two days a week, and on February 16^th I will be a vegan every day before 6pm. I will care more deeply about the food I will plant and harvest on Nancy’s farm, because it represents almost everything that I will eat for the rest of my life. I know I cannot fully commit to veganism now or in the near future; but at least a majority of my day will end up without animal products. I will change. And I will change now.