page 6 | the daily northwestern
GRADUATION ISSUE
monday, june 17, 2013
Senior Columns | Daily staffers’ reflections on the past four years
Why seeing NU’s silver linings is a choice By Sarah Freishtat My roommate and I sat trapped in our apartment during a thunderstorm, debating what I could possibly write for this column. As I distracted her from studying for her last exam — as I have done every finals week since freshman year — I worried about sounding cheesy, or like I had no idea what I was talking about. After all, I haven’t even graduated college yet. But then I realized that was something I would have worried about freshman year. And if there’s one thing four years here have taught me, it is to stop caring what faceless readers might think. My college experience has been about what I choose to make of Northwestern, not what everyone else makes of it for me. This may seem fairly obvious, but it gives perspective to of some of the big, campuswide discussions that have happened during the time I’ve been here. When national media picked up on a rather explicit demonstration of a sex toy in Prof. John Michael Bailey’s class, I could have been scandalized by the portrayal of my prestigious institution of higher education, or, I could have thought it was cool to study with professors who push boundaries and take risks. When students wore blackface to a Halloween party, and then again when minority students were harassed on a shuttle bus, and then again when a student group hosted a party involving racial costumes, I could have lamented the state of diversity at the school. Or, like so many students did, I could have taken the opportunity to discuss a difficult issue with friends and colleagues from a variety of backgrounds.
MARKET FRESH
When the religious student group Campus Crusaders for Christ began its very vocal and effective “I agree with Markwell� campaign, in which students signed on to and publicized the beliefs of alumnus Matthew Markwell (McCormick ‘12), I could have taken offense at the apparent rejection of students of different beliefs. Or, I could have been inspired by one group’s ability to express its beliefs freely, in its own way. I’m not saying I always had the reaction I should have had to these events, or that it’s easy to take something constructive from them. But, I could choose what to take away from them, whether I actually did so or not. I could have chosen to seize an opportunity, or to accept my school’s flaws for what they were. NU is far from perfect, and can be unforgiving at times. But every fault of the school has a silver lining, if only that you can work to fix that fault. This, I would imagine, will be what the real world is like. I can be worried about not having a job, or I can take advantage of having one last summer. I can stress about having to moving away from my friends and family, or I can be excited to explore a new place. It will be easy to look back at NU and coat it with a rosy glow, or a shadow of thank-god-I’m-out-of-there-negativity. But neither of those reflects what we have gotten out of this place, good or bad. It is those moments when we choose to see an event in a certain light, or take advantage of a certain situation, that we should remember. The moments that teach us the most are the ones when we choose what we want to make of our experiences.
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By David Uberti I had never been beaten up until I was 21 years old and in the best shape of my life. A Fourth of July boating accident killed three children outside New York. As an intern for Newsday, I was sent to do journalism’s dirty work: knocking on survivors’ doors. A pair of angry neighbors threatened me as I approached one of the kids’ homes. Only a second after I rapped my knuckles against its front door, the two bounded up the stairs, grabbed me by the neck and threw me against a wall. They tossed me off the porch as if I were a rag doll. After I landed in crumpled heap on the grass below, they shoved me across the front yard for good measure. I politely suggested they screw themselves as I dialed 911. The best part? No one was even home. I never opened that door, let alone walk through it. But that’s Life. Sometimes you get beaten up – a lesson college, land of risk-free opportunity, often fails to teach. That’s not to say it was worthless. Far from it. Northwestern instilled in me an unquenchable thirst to become smarter, better, faster and stronger in every sense of the words – not to get good grades, but rather to grow as a human being. That’s the foundation higher education is supposed to build. Multiple stints in Washington made my last two years of college a blur. But they cemented a lesson commonly repeated by my Medill professors: Real education and self-improvement occur outside the classroom. The Ivory Petri dish can only culture students so much, for a big part of a fulfilling life is finding your own doors to open. College sets the table for that. It’s as much about learning what you don’t want to do as it is about understanding what you do. NU is among the best in that respect. And the quarter-million-dollar piece of paper I’ll pick up on graduation day boasts as
much. You can learn to speak Arabic, how to put together a college newspaper and which drugs not to do. You can take dance classes, even if you can’t dance. You can study how to build jet engines or master the intricacies of fashion design. And you’ll definitely find out how to win an argument. I felt like I needed to do it all when I was a freshman, from making friends to acing classes and everything in between. It was overwhelming at first, but I realize now that the pressure was a good thing. It forced me to test my limits, expanding them in the process. College — as advertised — makes you better at learning, organizing and analyzing information. The 10-page paper I wrote last week while watching playoff hockey took me as much focus as a five-pager once did in the library. I’m leaving college in the best intellectual shape of my life, a feeling sure to be shared by many. So it’s time for me to disentangle myself from Northwestern’s safety net. It’s time to take risks and flirt with failure. But most of all, it’s a challenge. Silver-platter opportunities are few and far between outside of college. Besides that, they’re boring. Northwestern provided the skills, knowledge and practice I need to create my own opportunities. What’s more is that it taught me to venture outside my comfort zone. That slice of mental territory is a living laboratory by itself, where you really gain self awareness. To be sure, there’s plenty of college I don’t want to leave behind. Shotgunning Busch Light will no longer be socially acceptable. I won’t be able to wear jeans and a T-shirt wherever I go. Friends will fan out across the world. But I can’t look forward and continue growing if I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for the gift-wrapped opportunities handed out at Northwestern. Life is about opening doors, sure. But it’s about closing them, too.
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