Nov
3
Zoe Grows Up: Autobiographical Statement
November 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I grew up in Iceland from the age of eleven till the age of twenty-one. I lived for a couple years with a family on a small dairy and sheep farm in the far north-eastern reaches, during which time I became involved in politics. The community was in the midst of consolidating districts; schools were closing; jobs were scarce. There was a lot of political tension. My foster-mother was running for a county assembly position. Everyone was engaged and had an opinion. Kids came to school knowing which side my foster mother was on. So, I was quick to read up on the different positions so I could answer attacks. Quickly, I realized I disagreed with my foster-mother’s position–a more conservative approach which favored consolidation and increased privatization. Instead, I favored the green-left party’s doctrines, and immediately signed up for newsletters.
A year later, I turned sixteen, the age of graduation from High School in Iceland. I moved to Akureyri to continue my education, and then again to Reykjavik the following year. During this time, I became increasingly involved with various divisions of international and national social and environmental justice groups which staged protests against smelters being built by the American aluminum company, Alcoa.
News circulated about the irreversible damage to the nature the smelters were causing, in addttion to the increased pollution which was harming local farmers’ crops and animals.
I relate this particular aspect of my youth because it is my early experience with politics that helped mold many of the opinions I hold today regarding issues pertaining to the environment, legal approaches, and political philosophy. When I moved back to America at twenty-one, I had lived half my life in Iceland–eleven of arguably the most formative years of a person’s life. I had married an Icelander, spend some years living with an Icelandic family, I felt Icelandic. So, when the Icelandic economy collapsed in 2008, it was scary. Not only did I have all of the money I had saved up for Brooklyn College in an Icelandic bank account (which was frozen for two weeks), but my husband was called home to help his family recuperate some of their own economic losses by adding an additional household income. When I finally did have access to my bank account again, the money was worth 1/3 of what it had been only 14 days before.
The financial collapse, coupled with my history of involvement in the environmental justice movement in Iceland, made me want to write my thesis on what Iceland needs to do to recuperate not only financially, but also environmentally, following the increased privatization of their natural resources and the economic collapse of 2008. Stylistically, I chose to approach the thesis as a legal analysis because I hope to attend law school, where I intend on pursing public interest law. This in turn meant that I expect my audience to be professionals and/or scholars, but I also expect to give enough information that the reader will need no prior knowledge of Iceland to become engage in the text.
