In an effort to pump myself up for the upcoming semester, I decided to look for some inspiration. While paging through my quote book, I found some cool quotes from even cooler people.
“Cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or be disappointed in us… Cynics always say no ... for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.” - Stephen Colbert
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight- never stop fighting.” - T.S. Elliot
“I think they should modify strawberries so their seeds aren’t so sharp and dangerous” - my younger sister
Okay, you had to be there for that last one. My point is that almost all of of these quotes encourage being the best version of yourself, to be honest and genuine and contribute to making the world a better place.
When I graduated, I had a very set image of what my future held. Throughout high school, I volunteered in a local youth court system, which took me on an intense path of working with disenfranchised minority youth. Many were often denied the proper resources to advocate for themselves and faced serious injustices. For example in truancy cases, students who didn’t have access to doctor’s notes or proper transportation were disadvantaged. This journey was full of emotional ups and downs and failures and successes, which ultimately made me a better person. Throughout these experiences I had many wonderful mentors and teachers who guided me. However, by the time I graduated, I had gained a reputation from them, an image projected onto me.
So when I went off to college, I was convinced that I fell into a specific bucket. I let adults, albeit important adults like parents, teachers and mentors, tell me who I was. They told me I was destined to be a public defender, maybe even a judge. I didn’t question this destiny and assumed I was going to be a pre-law undergraduate with dreams of going to a top law school.
When I finally was thrown into the depths of campus my freshman year, I found myself discovering all sorts of new interests. I learned about design thinking, took a coding class and explored global value chains.
Finding these new interests were fun, but also unsettling. One of my biggest struggles last year was feeling like an imposter. My new passions were shaking preconceived notions, and I worried that I wasn’t staying true to who I was.
Coming into this new semester, I still don’t know exactly what I’m majoring in. I certainly don’t know what I’m going to do when I grow up. However, I’ve learned something important.
What I major in or choose to study doesn’t influence whether or not I will create positive change in the world. I’ve decided that at Duke we are at risk of buying into a harmful dialogue that categorizes students into different buckets. There are the dreamers who will work for government organizations, lead campaigns and work for non-profits. There are also the heads-down, cutthroat, go-getters who give in to the realities of student loans and aim for high-paying, soul-crushing jobs.
When we create this dialogue of “greedy corporate sellouts” or “idealist unpractical dreamers,” we fuel a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Wall Street bankers and consultants might think less about how they can live their life to create positive change. The non-profit dreamers might feel guilty about pursuing new passions that don’t obviously help others. Worst of all, we create divides in our student body and become less likely to hang out, collaborate and learn from each other. Instead of seeing ourselves as collective agents of change, we are broken up into fundamentally different groups.
This mentality is stunting our growth at Duke and our potential to do great things even after we go out into the real world. What we can take comfort and encouragement from is that changing the world isn’t about your career or job title; it is about your approach to the world.
The people who embody this best are the ones that take their career or degree and then go on to apply it in non-traditional ways. Atul Gawande, a doctor by training, has written several books challenging the problems with the medical field, access to health care, and addressing mortality in end-of-life care. While medicine already has a degree of social application, Gawande inspires me because of his approach to take his degree and see how it impacts society and individual people.
There is nothing more dangerous than limiting the purpose of yourself or your peers. The truth is that none of us are corporate sell-outs that don’t care about society. None of us are idealistic, head-in-the-clouds dreamers that are doomed to live in cardboard boxes either. Examples of this are everywhere. Take Sheryl Sandberg, a senior executive in a corporation, who took her experiences and used them to address issues facing women in business.
I almost fell into the trap thinking there was a “good” or “bad” education from a moral perspective until I realized that there is no such thing. We exist as people first, outside of our respective majors or careers.
Don’t fall into the trap of categorizing yourself as a “selfless do-gooder” who plans to go into nonprofit work or a “corporate sellout” who only can use your degree to make a lot of money. You are neither of those. We are better than that.
Shruti Rao is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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