It's not easy being a college student right now. The campus, although beginning to wake up after its winter hibernation, is not nearly as cheery as it normally is.
This year, my third year in college as an undergraduate, is the dreariest yet. Now don't get me wrong- college students are always having fun- and they still are. Nightly romps to the local pub after hockey games, karaoke Tuesdays, and spontaneous drinking parties are not uncommon. Kids in general can turn the most mundane activities into adventures- and I include the vast majority of the campus population in the term "kids." However, this year with an economy that is bottoming out and a school that costs our parents almost 50,000 dollars, there's apt to be some affect on us.
And I think it is apparent on the faces of every student walking down the street. It may not be that every student is severely depressed or dealing with the fact that they will not be able to afford to return to school the following term...that is the minority and the extreme. But everyone has it in the back of their mind...a lurking fear of the future of the country. Because that future becomes less and less of an abstract concept and more and more a reality: their parents' retirement, their grandparents' health care, and their future marketability in an almost impossible job market. There is a lot to be fearful of and the anxiety on campus has gone up a few notches.
Every morning I wake up to headlines filled with words like "struggle," "victims," "loss," and "bankruptcy." It started in September with the failure of Lehman Brothers and then Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America. The federal government took control over troubled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and investors got pretty nervous. This didn't help the DOW Jones, if anything it sped up the inevitable. Then everything went to hell. How could these financial institutions ever come back from this recession turned depression?
The market's downward spiral didn't scare us students at first- we live in a nice college bubble that allows us to look at the world through a nice, neat microscope with an encouraging professor offering his or her perception over our shoulders. It might seem like we are being spoon fed, however, our food for thought is much more fiber filled than anything we have ingested prior to university. And to put it plainly: we are experiencing a little indigestion.
But the news is getting more and more dreary and we have to leave our state of denial. At least I am not a senior, my egotistic self thinks. But then again, how can I be sure that we won't be in a worse position one year from now? I can't be.
That's why you need moments like this (refer to attached YouTube URL). Moments to remember that we all have biases, we all prejudge, but the world is a better place when we refrain from these things. And when we let ourselves be open minded, we can experience little moments of joy that help us keep living. And keep watching the DOW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk
By Catherine Moore
camoore@bu.edu
