Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Helene Berr

Tomorrow I am going on a field study with my Criminology class. We are going to Cafe Exit, which is a cafe designed to help prisoners re-enter society. We are going to walk through the Red Light district of Copenhagen to get there. It should be an interesting experience... I really like my Criminology class and professor. I am glad that I am a class representative for that class. (Every class has 2 class reps that meet with the professor and with the academic office to discuss the course) I am also a class rep for Human Trafficking in Europe. That class is really interesting, but SUPER depressing. And now I am seeing trafficked people and traffickers everywhere I go! 


These 2 classes are really helping me decide what I want to do with my life. I'm not trying toot my own horn, but I know that I am an intelligent person. And I think that it would be horrible to waste my intelligence on getting people to buy stuff. I still love reading about consumer behavior and I will always be fascinated by it, but I think I want to do something more meaningful with my life. I am reading Helene Berr's diary (she lived in France during the Holocost and is basically the French Anne Frank) right now for a class, and something she wrote in it really spoke to me. Actually, the entire diary is a little hard for me to read, because I associate so strongly with some of the things she wrote. But what specifically stuck out to me was this. On Wednesday, October 27, 1943 she wrote:
Will there ever have been many people who, at the age of twenty-two, were aware that they could suddenly lose all their potential - I feel unembarrased saying that I feel I have immense potential, since I think of it as a gift, not as something I own - that it could all be taken away from them, and not rise up in revolt?
I really feel the same way.  Though she is talking about fighting the Nazis, I feel as if I could also fight a similar battle against all of the evil going on in the world right now. Horrible things take place everyday, right under our noses. Many people either are ignorant to the situation or choose to not care. Well, I am deciding right now that I want to do something about it. Though I am not sure how I will fight this unknown enemy in the future, I have decided recently that I will join in on the fight. I want to help the people out there who are incapable of helping themselves. I know that it will be a stressful job, but I honestly feel called to take it on.

1 comment:

  1. If anyone can take on something immensely important and nondescript, it's you.

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