Zachary “Buoy” Whitener, from Long Island, just finished his junior year at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. In addition to receiving a scholarship this year, he was awarded the Island Institute’s largest award before his freshman year, the Academic and Community Leadership Scholarship. Whitener spoke at the May 31 banquet in Rockland at which the Island Institute presented the Maine Island Scholarship Awards. The institute awarded $125,000 in college scholarships to 59 island students.

I’ve decided that I’d like to talk about why we’re all here, about our education.

It took me a while to figure out what I want to do at Brown and after, and it’s a little late, but Brown provides opportunities for altering your education late in the game.

I went lobstering the day after Christmas last winter, with a man from my island, down to the sou-west almost to Boone Island-coming from Long Island, we had about a three-hour steam. I’d never been out with him before, but got the day as his helper was off island for the holiday.

We made conversation the best we could, not knowing each other that well, and the talk soon turned towards school and about what I had been studying. I told him about when I tell kids that I lobster. The best response is “is lobstering like the crab fishing I see on the Discovery Channel?” The reply is always: “yes, very similar.”

I also told him about the class I had just finished, titled “Marine Conservation Policy and Science,” an environmental studies class in which we talked about things including pollution, eutrophication, and fisheries management, and what academia had to say about how to address these issues.

Most people in the class, like the rest of Brown, were pretty gung-ho environmentalists-they meant well, but the means they advocated were far too drastic; it was clear that most of them had never known anyone from a fishing community, much less ever been to one themselves.

It basically fell on a Native Alaskan student and I to inform them about our problems and the ramifications of draconian regulations on the people and places that rely on the ocean-it was a fun class, to go and argue with people a few days a week.

This lobsterman and I talked for a few hours about these arguments, I mean discussions, that we regularly had in class, and I we came up to the first stringer, he wrapped up the conversation with a simple: “Well Jesus, Buoy, I hope you got through to those kids, some of them will probably be making the decisions some day.”

That got me thinking: why can’t I help make the decisions some day? Basically I had an epiphany halfway to Portugal.

My point is that it took me two-and-half years to figure out in what direction to take my education in a meaningful way, to get involved in a career field which has affected all of our lives to varying degrees and will continue to do so.

My forthcoming anthropology degree ought to have more relevance to fisheries management and science than most people will give credit-I hope so, anyway.

This summer I’ll be doing an internship as a fisheries observer; my way to give back to the fishing industry in the form of accurate data collection to ensure improved policy.

My point that I am trying to get across is this: as islanders going after higher education, we are in a unique position to shape not only ourselves, but influence others and our communities. Following through with post-high school education, whether finishing up with an associates or bachelor’s degree, a Ph.D or a trade, what you are doing for yourself also affect your community and everyone there in some way, through your absence or presence. By going to school you are making a difference for yourself and your community-it’s important to make that difference positive.

It’s easy for some students to take scholarships for granted, thinking “thanks for the money” and then choosing a life which forgets their past, using their education to “escape”-and to each their own.

But it’s important to remember something-we are receiving money from the Island Institute, an organization dedicated to the promotion and support of Maine’s islands-and with our education, we ought to consider doing the same for our islands. Growing up on our islands made us who we are, and in the long run or the short run, in some form or another, our islands deserve to get our support as well.

I hope it doesn’t take you as long as I did to figure it out.