The good old days (?)

We have all heard our grandparents (and sometimes parents) wallow in nostalgia for "the good old days" when life was harder, opportunities scarcer, and those who managed to scramble to the top were more grateful than our own generation.  Over the summer, historian Rick Perlstein wrote an article for the New York Times called "What's the Matter with College" that lamented the declining radicalism of college culture. Whereas colleges used to be harbingers of social change that tore down old norms, Perlstein feels that todays colleges merely act as an extension of dominant cultural trends instead of questioning them.  He completely embodies the outmoded, essential Sixties point of view that life was not something that could be crafted by an institution but was an organic experience found in pseudo-intellectual arguments when you were supposed to be in class.  So maybe it isn't such a bad thing that Perlstein and his contemporaries have fallen so horribly out of style. 

Don't get me wrong, I love the Sixties as much as the next person.  There is enough Credence Clearwater Revival in my iTunes library to attest to that.  But I think one of the student essays that was a runner-up in the New York Times contest for best response essay to Perlstein put it best:

The vast majority of Perlstein’s complaints fit under the above rubric [of whining about the good old days]. Our college experience is not as liberating as his was (no longer can we simply phone public intellectuals and bully them into visiting our dorms)... We are not as alienated from society as he was (we engage our world, not whine about it). Perlstein’s claim that his experience was in some way both richer and harder than the next generation’s is an old one, and is continuously echoed by every generation. Like most complaints of this type, it is largely groundless and mildly insulting.

Even though it seems a little dramatic, it definitely is a little insulting to have an entire generation assume that our college experience is anything less than theirs.  At one point in the article, he calls our generation "organization kids" suggesting that we are "cogs" in the organization who (*gasp*) go out into the world and actually contribute to society instead of lamenting its supposed demise.  Perlstein and his generation don't stop for a second to think that maybe our generation is on to something.  That maybe channeling our intellect into organizations, school activities, and classes might actually serve us well one day.  And, moreover, that instead of tearing down institutions from the outside, we can build them up from the inside and leave the world a little bit better than we found it. 

One of the things that I have found at Hopkins is that few people leave here without having done something for Hopkins/Baltimore community.  There are so many opportunities to help Baltimore through the Center for Social Concern--Hopkins students tutor kids from the city, go give ballet lessons in schools, lead girl scout troops and a hundred more different things all around the city. But you don't even have to step off campus to help out.  Helping our community doesn't necessarily mean community service in the traditional sense.  By performing in a play, helping to organize campus events like the Milton Eisenhower Symposium or  being a resident advisor you can make Hopkins a more vibrant and exciting place to be.  Hopkins students spend their summers on programs abroad, taking classes, or completing internships all to help us be better lawyers, better doctors, better business people, better teachers, and better men and women. 

So while our college experience may not be as radical or overtly controversial, it is definitely unfair to have our involvement written off as fueling the organization.  Not only are we in the organization but we make it better every day.  I think right now is a really cool time to be our age--late high school and college aged.  I don't think people really know what it is yet, but there is definitely a big wave of change coming and what could be a better time to ride it than as a college student?--Someone who has not settled on a career or a path of life and who can see what opportunities lie ahead and can pick for themselves. 

Forgive my rambling, but I think now is a great time to help out and be an agent of change and what would be a better way to do that than to give yourself the best education you can?

And at the risk of turning my entire blog into shameless Obama propaganda, I'll take my chances and leave you with the new music video of Yes We Can which is all over YouTube now:

Watch it.  No, really, do it now. It's awesome.  (and all you Republicans out there can go find the McCain spoofs.)

Comments

[Jackie]

I like the new blog format!