Overwhelm

I'm having some feelings so as part of our processing, I'm writing them down. 

I started watching the Star's report video of their project in order to gain a better understanding of the process which I'm a part of and what has been done already. Here is what I felt:

1. The extreme difficulty of working with the transience of understanding due to the fact that we are all students. Watching the video, I saw that a huge amount of work had been put into it and a huge amount of knowledge and networking had been generated. Yet all that information and all those relationships have not smoothly transferred to this working group. I am so so so thankful for the documentation done by the previous Stars group and the fact that I have the technological ability to communicate with them currently. As I move forward, I feel an obligation to the future students to create some sort of cohesive body/timeline of the activities and thoughts that have gone before them.

2. I feel a sort of impossibility in trying to get UCD to have a sustainable food systems. Everyone talks about the scaleability of different sustainable solutions and I would argue that rather than question the validity of the solution based on it's ability to scale up, the finger should be pointing at whatever it is that is working on such a huge scale that it can't accommodate sustainability. 

3. I'm still feeling that I would like more time to plan our upcoming stakeholder meeting on the "How?" of sustainable food systems. I think we need to have a conversation with one of the former Stars and possibly Gail F. to make sure that we are not repeating something that has already been done and that we get the best info possible to make it useful. I'm going to write Navina now to ask her about her recommendations. 

4. Despite the worry you may hear in the above writing I still feel that this is important work and am committed to facilitating a conversation between stakeholders because I feel that the students are the best players to be bringing the other stakeholders together.

5. Finally, I was thinking as a goal/objective of our meeting to speak about the importance of the meeting as a safe space. Recognizing that there are huge pressures on each stakeholder regarding time, money, and energy and that these forces should not be taken personally by the others.

That's all for now. Whew! I do feel better :)