Maya Rawal | Informed in isolation

The Maya Project | We must take it upon ourselves to remain informed about current events despite an all-consuming campus culture

By Maya Rawal 09/10/14 11:23pm

I c ame to college as a typical overeager freshman, expecting academic success, lifelong friendships and an expanded worldview. I looked forward to becoming an adult — shaping my identity through late-night discussions of philosophical issues and current events.

To a certain extent, I have had plenty of such thought-provoking debates with friends. At the same time, however, I’ve become very cognizant of the isolation that our campus community fosters.

In high school, I was generally knowledgeable about the world around me. I never spent hours reading The New York Times or The Atlantic. But between my classes, friends, family and casual Internet browsing, I managed to stay relatively well-informed.

That changed drastically when I came to Penn.

For one thing, I never realized how much I was exposed to world issues in my high school history classes and electives. I entered first semester freshman year as a biochemistry major. Most of my classes were completely lecture-based, and my homework consisted of textbook readings and problem sets.

When I wasn’t studying for classes, I was going to club events, making plans with friends or figuring out which dining hall to try next. The days passed in a blur of activities and left little room for keeping in contact with family and high school friends, let alone keeping up with the rest of the world.

I found myself relying on my friends majoring in international relations and political science — and various friends’ Facebook statuses — to learn about major world news. I was unaware of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 and the unfolding events of the Israel-Palestine conflict for hours or sometimes days after the fact.

I realized that, especially given my academic focus and extracurricular interests, it was disturbingly easy to shield myself from everything outside of our small section of West Philly. And that was not okay.

Of course, I contributed to my own ignorance. I needed to make a conscious effort to stay in touch with the outside world. At the same time, though, my problem is part of a larger campus culture.

Everyone jokes about the Penn “bubble.” It’s an unfortunate reality, though, that it’s all too easy to focus on last weekend’s parties, this week’s GBMs, next year’s classes, next summer’s internship...

College is a unique part of our lives. We’re caught between childhood and adulthood, balancing the continued reliance on our families with the pressures of living independently. We worry about career options but still have dorm rooms and dining plans.

We get caught up in this lifestyle. But in doing so, we lose sight of the bigger picture. Once we graduate, we can’t keep preserving our picture-perfect collegiate experience on Instagram. Suddenly, the real world with all its flaws and imperfections is staring us in the face.

Sometimes, that world has terrible, jarring, complicated problems and we need to know how to approach them. This brings me to the significance of today’s date.

Thirteen years ago, nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The resulting decisions and policies the United States has made since then will continue to affect us in the coming decades.

Within the next few years, we will all be living on our own, fully immersed in the world. If we don’t understand and appreciate the magnitude of 9/11 and comparable events, we won’t be able to approach the rest of our lives as informed world citizens. The oft-quoted saying by Spanish philosopher George Santayana goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Just as we remember 9/11, we will have to remember this decade’s turmoil and tragedies.

We need to start paying attention now to the events that will be our past soon. We need to make sure we do remember our past. We need to learn from it.

Penn prides itself on producing the future leaders of America in business, science, technology, academia and so on. It is our duty to shoulder that responsibility and accept the baggage that comes with it – the history and the lessons of our generation.

Maya Rawal is a College sophomore from River Forest, Ill. Her email address is mrawal@sas.upenn.edu. “The Maya Project” appears every Thursday.

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