Someone close to me once described college as the most selfish stage of our lives thus far. The more I thought about it, the more I noticed it.
One of our unfortunate idiosyncrasies as college students is to center and focus these four years of our lives around doing that which most directly benefits us.
We take courses that will better ourselves. We try to establish internships and business connections with people that will most benefit us in the corporate world. We work for a degree -something that will improve our overall chances of success.
It is not necessarily our fault. We are instructed and expected to do so -to figure out who we are and what will make us happy. Otherwise, there are few pressures for us to deal with. The majority of us have no all-too-serious obligations to our classes, our peers, or our community. If we wanted to blow off all three, we could -because the environment college provides would allow us to.
This is a phenomenal privilege that is overlooked by most of us as college students. We sometimes forget there are people our age working minimum wage jobs in order to support their family. Or that there are some to whom college never has been an option nor will it ever be.
Please understand I am not trying to make you feel horrible and guilty on the last day of Post publication, I only offer a reminder that Martin Luther King, Jr. has put it far better than I can: Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?
As college students, given these four years of intellectual freedom and opportunity, I think we should hold it as our civil duty to give back. And what better time to do so than the months after school closes?
This summer, many of us will be working to make up for all the money that slipped out of our bank accounts this year. But do not just work for yourself, work for other people too -volunteer.
We are looking forward to going home so we can spend time with friends we have missed. Don't just hang out. Engage them, and learn to understand them more. Ask about them rather than talk about you.
Tell your family what you appreciate about them, now that you have been so far removed from them and all the amenities of home.
And perhaps most importantly, even though we will be selling our books back and tossing class notebooks into summer bonfires, don't stop learning. Read books, have intelligent conversations, keep track of world events -just plain be involved.
Alleviate some of this inherent selfishness we have acquired and show to yourself, but more importantly to others, that there is more to summer (and life) than the importance of the individual.
-Show Paul that not everyone is selfish. Send him an e-mail at paul.kita@ohiou.edu with your plans to help others for the summer.
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Paul Kita
