By Jennie Krems
The last few days I have been doing a lot of contemplation. At first I was going to write a blog post about the campus smoking ban and why I think that a few issues relating to it should be addressed before I would fully support it. Those issues are namely the fact that it would be very hard to enforce, would get rid of cultural events on campus that involve smoking hookah/shisha, and the fact that University employees as well as international students have been largely overlooked throughout this process, which I believe is extremely unfair.
Next I was going to write about GW’s “unranked” status in US News’ rankings and the fact that I think that the outcry about it is extremely overblown. This lead me to think about the fact that many University students in our country, particularly in my generation, take so many things that they have for granted. I find that this issue is quite problematic. The fact that students spend much of their free time ranting on Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites portrays many in our generation as superficial and I think that portrayal is largely accurate.
Before I go on I will first give some background on me. Last year at this time I studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain, one of the most wonderful places on Earth, in my opinion. Choosing to study abroad and particularly there will surely go down as one of the greatest, most life-changing decisions I have ever made. It allowed me to become more independent, do a lot of contemplation about my life and what is important in life in general and along the way I made incredible friendships with people from around the world.
Last year it was great to be away from GW and the sometimes self-absorbed, materialistic culture that consumes many students here. I learned that this is not the only way to live and that it is by no means the best way. I love GW, I applied Early Decision 1 and could not be happier with my choice, and it annoys me to no end to hear and see people complaining about our University, preferring to focus on the bad and rarely the wonderful things that go on here.
The “controversy” this week with the rankings made me realize once more that in some ways I do not fit in here, with people who care more about arbitrary college rankings than world issues and focus on the negatives in life more often than the positives.
This week is Hunger and Homelessness week on campus and the week before Thanksgiving. I can only hope that some of my classmates and the wider spectrum of likeminded people will take this time to be grateful for what they have been afforded in life and start to think about how they can use their knowledge and skills to help others.
A close friend of mine is Israeli and is currently serving in the IDF. In light of the escalation in fighting between Israel and Palestine, I think that many people in our generation need to do some soul-searching and must realize that what we have and what we can do to make the world a better place, in which violence ceases, is much more essential than a silly college ranking.
The world is full of sadness, but also beauty. We must focus our attention on the important issues of our time and help to solve them. If we do, the world will be better for it.
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