Should we be scared to graduate in 2025?

Reaching the home stretch of the environmental studies major is defined by playing a three-quarter-long game of adult simulator. 

The Program on the Environment (PoE) faculty began tossing around the term “capstone experience” the second I declared the major, citing it as both the most rewarding time in a student’s career and their first true step into the environmental field.

Practicality defines the first few weeks, with class time devoted to interview prep and resume workshops. Seminar courses on interdisciplinary environmentalism feel like a hazy memory. 

After mustering the courage and putting on business casual, capstone students join a meet-and-greet Zoom meeting, with the site supervisors of summer internships waiting for the inevitable elevator pitches and not-so-subtle sucking up.

It was there, among 50 familiar faces I’d seen in my classes since 2022, that I came to a realization that contradicted everything PoE had been telling me for years: the internship lineup was objectively smaller than previously promised.

In that Zoom, surrounded by my intelligent, academically diverse peers, I felt overwhelmingly disappointed. None of the internships aligned closely enough with my niche environmental interests for supervisors to recognize my expertise or distinguish me from my peers. 

Conversations with my classmates revealed that many shared my sentiment. Nobody’s internship perfectly reflects their aspirations in the environmental sector; it’s just something… very vaguely related. 

Environmental studies is a labor of love. You enter the field driven by an overwhelming desire to make sustainable change in unique ways — ways that reveal themselves during your education. 

How long do we have to be doing something that’s kind of related? When do we actually get to wake up and work a job that feels like the encapsulation of that change we aim to accomplish? 

Many of the internship offerings felt like ghosts of the topics I feel passionate about wrapped in environmental buzzwords but, in reality, amounting to three months of managing a brand’s social media feed. These critiques, of course, are not directed at the PoE nor the internship partners who have generously offered their resources to me and my peers. 

Instead, they are a direct byproduct of the Trump administration, with the capstone acting as a brutal representation of the environmental sector’s landscape in 2025. 

The capstone was once defined by its plethora of federal internship offerings, with students eager to engage in environmental policy and make governmental change. 

The administration’s impact on the internship list was glaringly apparent: no offerings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or the Washington State Department of Natural Resources were listed. 

Additionally, through several conversations with about-to-graduate PoE majors, it was revealed that some federal capstone internships lost funding, experienced censorship, or were entirely shut down during Trump’s first 100 days.

If students can’t even get a foot through the front door of government as an unpaid intern, how can we feel motivated to chase our college-long dreams of making federal change? 

In this climate, it’s easy to argue that environmental studies majors chose the wrong degree, or at least the wrong graduation year to receive our diplomas. 

“I think the current administration is going to have a significant impact on many students’ postgrad careers, especially in the sciences,” an anonymous medical anthropology and global health alum said. “We’re seeing the impacts already in plans for the EPA, plans to cut funding or ‘reorganize.’ It’s a terrifying time to enter the workforce, much less find ways to exist under this administration.”

However, it’s not just about choosing the “right” degree; the ripple effect of immense administrative change can be felt much more broadly throughout the United States itself.

Although the U.S. is not currently in a recession statistically, societal trends are chock full of recession indicators, and J.P. Morgan has set their recession probability estimation to around 50%.

Either way, we’re navigating a socioeconomic state of disarray — much of it stemming from the chaos of a singular, unchecked force running rampant in the White House. Chaos at the federal level inevitably trickles down, impacting state and local entities and extending into the private sector. 

“Many fields are losing critical funding for research, like the funding freeze that is currently being placed on Harvard, one of our country’s leading cancer research institutions,” the alum said. “The reality is that programs need funding to be able to provide our ambitious and passionate graduates with jobs and with stability. Under this administration, we’re not seeing that.” 

Even fields with widely available job opportunities postgrad, such as education, are experiencing limitations as a byproduct of the socioeconomic climate created by the Trump administration. 

“I think it will definitely play a role [in my finding a job], ” an anonymous fourth-year education major said. ”It’ll still be accessible because teaching positions won’t go away. I just think if I want to do something different — more profitable, or to do with volunteer work — it’ll be more limited, as there is a lot less funding for outside organizations”. 

Postgrad anxiety is understandable and, for many fields, particularly justified based on defunding and censorship. Some of my environmental peers have discussed entering a graduate program just to outlast the Trump administration before they attempt to enter the workforce, federal or private. 

However, graduate school should not be a method of biding your time. Frustration around entering the workforce with a barely-kind-of-related job is understandable, but doing so is taking the first step towards the impact you’ve spent four years hoping to make.

UW students are well-educated, resilient, and adaptable. These are key points to remember as we attempt to launch our careers under an administration seemingly dead set on holding us back. 

Optimism may offer little comfort to those receiving their diplomas in June. However, I hope it creates a distant light at the end of the four-year tunnel, acting as the reason to keep pushing for a future where your dream job feels within reach.

Reach columnist Claire Farber at specials@dailyuw.com. X: @clairefarbs. Bluesky: @clairefarber.bsky.social.

Like what you’re reading? Support high-quality student journalism by donating here.