 "Photo: ERIN MITCHELL | STUDENT LIFE")
While perusing CNN.com for a subject to write about this week in hopes that I could pass as, somehow, maybe, an intellectual, or at the very least, an informed member of the community, I found that I really didn’t know what to write about. I don’t really like to analyze current events and foist my still adolescent presumptions on how the world should work on everyone. I’d rather burden you all with my adolescent opinions on adolescent topics. That way, you have options: you could laugh along with me, laugh at me or simply disregard my opinions. I don’t like to pigeonhole the reader. That’s not fair to anyone who’s actually made the effort to fold through a newspaper, perhaps the must cumbersome construction of ink and paper known to man.
So while on my search, I did in fact find some interesting headlines. The breaking news banner on CNN was, tragically, that another schoolhouse had fallen in Haiti. There was an article on the expansion of the bailout strategy, and then 400,000 articles on Sarah Palin or Barack Obama. It’s not that none of this stuff is interesting; it really is. It’s just that my opinions on each tend to be very simplistic. What’s happening in Haiti is sad. It’s terrible. Haiti should get its act together. I don’t know enough about the bailout strategy to comment on its expansion, and like 90 percent of this campus hooted and hollered when Barack Obama was elected president. There is no point in wasting an article on one subject when I feel like I can summarize it one sentence. There will be someone who writes a caring and heartfelt article about the Haitian crisis, and there was and will be plenty of election coverage that is far superior to what I could offer.
What this all brings me to is one thing. On my quest for information, I found that I knew more about the limits of series than I did about the current state of our economy. Sure, I know that it sucks and we are going to be facing some major issues in the very near future, but the specifics escape me. I have found that as a college student, I tend to be extremely disconnected from the real world. College is definitely a bubble, but I expected to be able to reach outside of that bubble and bring information back. I am swamped by green this and recycle that, which is obviously important, but it seems to be the only societal problem that perpetually pierces the bubble.
I have only myself to chide for my own ignorance. Some say ignorance is bliss, and in this case, as I walk from class to class somewhat uninformed of impending doom, perhaps it is. However, I do realize that it is important for me to really learn the policies of our future president along with supply and demand, and as soon as midterms are over, I promise to do so. And for those who join me in my purgatory of knowledge, please don’t bloviate. It’s irritating.
Be the first to comment on this article!