Dear Reader,
Someone said something to me the other day that really surprised me. We were talking about some club on campus and this girl says, “if you hate it, join it.”
So I’m thinking how does that make any sense? But she explained.
Don’t join clubs about things you hate, necessarily. I mean, if you can’t stand to write, you probably shouldn’t join the newspaper. But her point was that you can change things.
I feel like a lot of people don’t realize the power they have to change things. Of course you have people like Martin Luther King Jr and Steve Jobs, who challenged the way things were and evoked true change, but they’re one in a million, right?
Well maybe not. Maybe the only true difference is that they believed–I mean truly believed–that things can change and that they can be the ones to prompt it.
So why don’t we all think like that?
I mean, think about something you hate and think about why you hate it. Maybe you hate your student government because the rest of your grade doesn’t care, or maybe you hate modern rap because the messages are always vulgar and meaningless. But maybe you actually love leadership and decision-making or amazing combinations of rhythm and rhyme.
The point is that you can change it! I truly believe if you are passionate enough about something and remain hardworking and dedicated, you can achieve anything.
And yes, I realize I’m coming off as a huge cheese ball, but think about it!
I was thinking about this the other day in one of my classes because we were discussing modern architecture for an hour. And I hated it. And I thought how are people fascinated by this?
But then we started analyzing premodern architecture designs, like cathedrals that took hundreds of years to build because of all of the intricate details. And I thought this is beautiful. This is art.
And then I got mad because I hate modern architecture. I hate how everything changed just to put functionalism first. Sure, it’s great to have functional buildings, but that doesn’t mean they have to be ugly.
And I started thinking, if I were really, truly passionate about architecture, I could change things! I could inspire people to start making buildings like they used to, while still being functional. I mean, why not? There’s got to be some solution that could work.
So I don’t know, maybe this isn’t making much sense due to my incredible lack of sleep, or maybe this is nothing new. Maybe you’ve heard it all before. But it’s a pretty new idea for me.
In my life, I feel like everyone around me are ruling out certain occupations because of things they hate. I’m an education major and believe me, there is plenty to hate regarding the way our education in the US is changing, but I’m not going to quit because of that. I’m passionate about teaching and evoking the kind of change in young people that I wish had been evoked in myself.
And yeah, common core sucks and deciding teachers’ fates solely on test scores is wrong, but that doesn’t have to be our future.
So this is my point: Do you hate how photoshopped the models in magazines are these days? Do you hate greek life because you think everyone hates each other? Do you hate how every teen novel these days seems to have a love triangle? You may not be able to change The Hunger Games or Twilight, or force everyone on campus to be best friends, or convince everyone in charging of editing photos for those magazines to go on strike, but you don’t have to. You can write your own book, publish your own magazine, or at least try and inspire others to coexist.
You can be a trailblazer. You can do big things and make real change, even if it seems impossible from where you are now.
It’s possible.
Just don’t knock it ‘til you try it.
Sincerely,
Sammy
SINCERELY, SAMMY 