Jason, the Professor:
"We've moved past the era where we rely on science and progress, structure and hierarchies to look for security. How do we reconcile the Enlightenment and democratization with the fact that billions of people are starving, right now? I know that even in this room, life is not easy for some of you. Some of you are working one, two jobs to pay for tuition. But you are all here. You are all college students. There are a billion people living on a handful of rice a day, and billions more working to move past that. You guys are it. You are at the tippity-top of the pyramid. You are the Global Shit.
Now the question is, what are you going to do?"
Something I learned over the summer is that the problem with privilege is that I'm always looking ahead. I'm always looking at my deficits. My inadequacies. My insufficiency. What I don't have and still want. I do some quick calculations in my head on how to progress, how to achieve, and work towards fulfilling our my equations and my agenda. Who I have to know, what I have to say so they like me, what I have to do.
What I fail to do is look behind me: even geographically, to look at those who were not born in the United States, not born into an affluent East Coast county, not born into a neighborhood with a strong tax base to support public education, not born into a state that subsidizes university study, not born into a country or state that could afford it if it wanted to. This doesn't even take into consideration all the other obstacles that were removed for me on my fast track towards success and working up towards job stability and security, because that's what we all want, right? That's just geography, the longitude and latitude I'm in, on no merit of my own. And it has made all the difference.
Jason's question terrifies and empowers. Here I am, at state university. On the quad, in the dorms: these are the world changers, the rising leaders, earth shakers. It's like merely walking out of here with a college diploma gives us a megaphone from which we can shout, and people will listen. But Jason's right: what will do, what will we say? Our amplified, elite-educated voices could drown out those of others, or amplify theirs.
I know I risk sounding cheesy, but more than unoriginality, my fear is that I will do nothing. That I will slap the faces of those who support me being here: God, my family, my friends, my professors and teachers, my university administration, the politicians who decided that I was worth investing in, the tax payers who pay so that I can have wireless internet in my dorm room. That I will accept going to college as the norm, and not the incredible blessing and privilege that it is.
Readers, the next time you hear me moan and complain about that killer 10-page bio paper or how I'm sick of the dining hall, please punch me and tell me to shut up. Tell me that I am the Global Shit. And that it's about damn time that I start acting like I deserve it.
