That million dollar question of what would you do if you were given a million dollars is one of those weird ice breaker questions that I have heard a lot in college. It usually is joined by, what three things would you want with you if you are stuck on an island and if you could be a utensil, what would you be {side note: one would think that we would get some kind of reward for going to college and finally start to see some more thoughtful icebreakers, but once a semester I still find myself saying I would want to be a fork, I still haven't thought of a reason for why}. But the what would I do with a million dollars question is an interesting one. For the sake of this post, I am going to change it to what would you do with unlimited amounts of money. The answer is that I would ideally create a better world. But I don't think that even money can solve the problems that our world faces. Sure, we can create homes and provide food for all those without, but ultimately society reaches a limit, and the important things in life become materialistic and relative to what others have or don't have.
Now that I am into my junior year and my classes have dwindled down to the ones that I actually enjoy learning, I have spent a lot of time focusing on the issues that affect people on a long-term, multi-generational scale in the United States. I have learned a lot about how the smallest opportunities can contribute to your future, and the future of your children and even grandchildren. So I think, that when it comes down to it, the way to ultimately change the world is through opportunities. Opportunities come in all shapes and sizes, they can be a proper education, an income that allows a person to put food on the table for their children, or simply the opportunity to see how contributing a few minutes of your time to helping someone can change their lives. For me, Semester at Sea is all about the opportunities. When the majority of people I spoke to couldn't imagine why I would want to spend my semester abroad traveling to Asia, Africa and South America rather than go to a luxurious European country, my answer was always that it is an amazing opportunity. Hopefully, I will be able to share my opportunity of going on SAS with those less fortunate than I am by creating opportunities for them through the service projects at the ports.
So by now you might be thinking, why would I choose the quote that is titling this post? I recently wrote an extra credit paper for a class on Racial Ethnic Families in the US about how I grew up in a town 40 miles away from a city that is known for its extremely diverse population, also known as New York City. I wrote about how even though I lived so close to this place that has such a large cultural mix, I have spent my life gaining experiences with people that fit a certain mold that I can directly relate to. I can walk around Chappaqua on most days and the only people that I interact with that are not white work as bus boys and do the chores for us that we don't want to do. Most people, in fact, ignore them. In Wisconsin, it is even worse. We don't even have the people that are commuting from NYC to throw a little diversity into the Madison population. My freshman year, the chancellor made a very excited point of saying that there are finally over 1000 non-white undergraduate students at Wisconsin out of 28,000 undergraduates. So really, I have never stepped outside my comfort level. I have surrounded myself with people that are also part of the majority race in the US. So all-in-all, I have not had enough opportunities to interact in a diverse world and gain the knowledge and insight that I hope to be able to apply when working with diverse populations of children. Just to clarify, I am not saying that I am not appreciative of all the opportunities that my parents have created for me and the life that they have allowed me to live. However, it becomes more and more apparent every day that I have been so sheltered and taken care of, and that it's crucial to see what a lack of opportunities leaves others with in order to fully appreciate my own life. I hope to be able to bring back new perspectives on the world, as well as on my world, after traveling the globe, and to be able to spend the rest my life appreciating everything. I think it is so important to have these cultural interactions early in my life so that I can share them with others throughout the majority of my life. So on that note, I plan on traveling to faraway places to watch in fascination, the kind of people that I have [been blind to] at home.
No comments:
Post a Comment