Truthfully, I have been thinking on and off about what to write for this column for two years – ever since I first came to work at The Crimson White – and I had no idea what to write for much of that time. But it came to me while walking around shopping with my sister last Saturday (don’t ask me why), and so here is the advice I will impart: Find something that makes you angry.
I think that’s the key to leaving college better, really. We’re all here to improve ourselves, through learning and all of that is great, but if in that learning you don’t realize what it is that makes you tick, I’m not sure what the point is.
When I came to the University, I was pretty unassuming in both manner and ideology. I was going to get a journalism degree, make friends and get out. I had no burning political leanings, nothing I would really get too worked up over. But somewhere in the four years I’ve spent here, my eyes were opened to misogyny, racism, transphobia and other injustices, and I became angry. And it ended up becoming one of the best things that happened to me here.
Don’t listen to people that tell you that cynicism and apathy are cool, because I promise you, they aren’t. There is nothing cool about passivity. One of the most beautiful things I can find in a person is the way their face lifts and lights up when they talk to me about something they’re really, honestly passionate about. That’s what makes your time here worth giving.
Get angry while at The University of Alabama. Get angry over national things, get angry over campus things, just get angry. Because anger requires caring, and through caring you find what you love. You find that your years here don’t have to be taken up by the time it takes you to mindlessly walk from class to class. You can care about something.
Get angry over what the University administration does without students looking and what it tries to slip by you. Get angry over what you’re not being told. If you do, you will leave here better for it, and you will leave the University a better place.
There is no pride in being from a school that withholds so much from the people who support it, so try and change that. Students are loud, and no matter what you may feel, people listen to you, so get loud.
If you leave here without finding something you can become passionately angry about, I’m not going to say that your time here will be wasted. That would be dumb. But it will be less fulfilled and less hopeful. You can do something to change that – it’s your decision.
I leave The University of Alabama in May, and I’m proud of who I’ve become. I’m proud of the things I’ve learned, through class and otherwise, and while I’m really not sure if my presence on this campus had any sort of effect on the school as a whole, I’m not sure I mind. I care now a hell of a lot more than I did four years ago, and that’s enough for me.
Beth Lindly was the Online Editor of The Crimson White.
