I have been a complete wreck for the past nine months. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but I have been stressed out about college since August. First it was deciding where to apply, then the dreaded application process, and finally the wait … and the decision.
But with everything going on around me lately, it seems like the universe is telling me to put things back into perspective. My friends Neta-li Gorodetsky and Nofar Ben-Hamo, who are Shin Shin emissaries from Israel, are entering the army this September – not college.
If I were in Israel right now, I would be preparing to leave my family for months at a time – not to get an education, live in the dorms, shop on State Street; but to join the rest of my peers in the Israel Defense Forces.
I went to Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop recently to hear the author Sherman Alexie speak. He spent most of the evening entertaining the crowd with his somewhat raunchy humor. But in the back of my mind, and hanging over many of his jokes, were the realities of reservation life and the American government’s abandonment of the Native American people.
I’m now reading Dave Eggers new book, “What is the What.” The man on whom the story is based, Valentino Achak Deng, came to Nicolet High School on May 15 to speak about his life as one of the “lost boys” of Sudan.
When civil war broke out in the Sudan, entire villages were wiped out – women and girls captured, men killed mercilessly. Twenty thousand young boys somehow managed to flee, to join together in a trek toward safety, propelled by their hope for a future.
Achak Deng witnessed incomprehensible horrors, as his community in Southern Sudan was under attack from government militias. After he escaped, his troupe of lone children faced not only the threats of military capture and death, but also starvation, thirst, and lion attacks as they walked across the continent of Africa.
So what am I doing? How can I go off to college and continue my privileged life when the world seems to be crumbling around me? The seemingly commonplace disasters – tsunamis, hurricanes, shootings – are everywhere. Turn on the news and you’ll hear about three more murders in the city of Milwaukee.
How can I be proud of what I’ve accomplished, of where I am today, when it suddenly feels like it was handed to me on a silver platter? I have no courageous feats to speak of, no agonizing trials that stretched my limits and tested my strength.
Of course I’ve worked hard. I’ve stayed up at all hours studying. I’ve taken leadership positions in clubs and organizations. But what does it all amount to in the end?
I want to be able to look back on my life and know that I have made a difference. That I have provoked change. Maybe you think this is just my naïve, 18-year-old perspective, that I’ll be disillusioned in no time; but I don’t think so.
I have been extraordinarily lucky all my life, and now I will do the only thing that I can do. I will use the advantages that I was blessed with, and the undeniable power that comes with them, to change lives. I will go forward to learn and immerse myself in the effort to improve our world.
Adi Lev-Er is a senior at Nicolet High School and an intern at The Chronicle. She will enter the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall.
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