Alexandra Kassinis

I graduated from The English School in 2020; shockingly and unnervingly, it has been four years since the days of Senior Choir, the Phoenix, Grease and Talent Night. Four years since A-Level mocks and papers in Geography, English Literature, Math and Physics. Albeit a strange combination of studies (or so I was told), I became fascinated by how these fields interacted. I soon became especially excited about how they all, in a way, culminate in environmental issues. Even T.S. Eliot had insights to give into how the the world should dare to address global challenges like climate change. After all, we “dared to disturb the universe”, and now, globally, we are dealing with the repercussions of global warming. I didn’t realize it at the time but it was in the halls of the Main Building that I started to develop an interest in the field of environmental science and my enthusiam grew when I moved to the US for college.

At Harvard, I was able to dive deep into the world of earth and environmental sciences. Conducting research alongside academic coursework opened my eyes to key issues related to sustainability, renewable energy and conservation efforts at both national and local scales. But, the more I understood, the more uncertain and fearful I became. The more I learned, the more I saw that developing science can be quite removed from policy making; some scientific mechanisms driving climatic phenomena are not fully understood by researchers, let alone politicians and people in power are often driven by self-interest and profit not the global or public good. My peers and I started to see that unwavering uncertainty and the sizable scale of environmental challenges were a fixture of our world rather than a hurdle to be quickly overcome. After all, temperature increases, biodiversity loss and forced human displacement will continue to accelerate at an alarming rate, regardless of what I wrote about in my final research project or what I coded for in my senior thesis.

But, the work I was encouraged to pursue and the people I had the privilege to work with (starting at the English School and culminating at Harvard) inspired persistance and resolve. Learning about community and grass roots organizations striving for more climate resilience and food secure societies in the face of changing rainfall and humid-heat is energizing. Working as part of a research team that encourages collaboration and reflection is motivating. Figuring out how to model climatic changes and make actionable, grounded policy recommendations myself is empowering. All of these made a global problem feel less hopeless, less impossible to tackle. Instead, while urgent, it feels understandable, accessible  and even (dare I say) fixable.

I started at The English School in 2013, a time of economic crisis in Cyprus. I graduated as part of ESL20 whose senior year went on-line and then endured lock-down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I started my undergraduate studies behind a facemask. I graduated from Harvard College in May 2024, against the backdrop of new (and old) international conflicts and persisting discontent and increasing polarization. While I wish I had a better answer, I have come to appreciate that the only ceaseless constant is actually uncertainty and change. More than ever, as I get ready to leave a rather idyllic academic setting and enter the elusive “real world”, I can’t help but wonder if hope and uncertainty are two sides of the same coin. Maybe you need both in order to optimistically strive to make change (and not give up) while acknowledging the intricacies of the world we live in. It’s complicated and we can only strive to get better at confronting problems because they aren’t going away. Maybe it really is about the journey, and learning to navigate its storms, rather than the destination.