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2008-02-28, 12:02 p.m.

I'm sitting quietly now at my kitchen table. The world has stopped moving for me, at this moment. My ear is full of Saira Shaw's words, reverberating through my body, though it's been hours since I last listened to her striking voice. The violence she reports from Afghanistan is nothing new to me, but it's immensity, senselessness, and the death of 25 palestinians in the last 24 hours has made the meaning clearer. Who is to blame for all this hatred?
I went and listened to former President Bill Clinton speak yesterday night. He spoke of a world where to sick are healed, the women are free, the children are educated, and no one is left behind. He spoke of an America free of political oppression, an America once again by and for its people. He spoke of a forgiving, accommodating life full of change. And then I come home, driving to the sound of Saira's voice retelling again and again the horrors people face on a day to day basis because of a government WE installed in Afghanistan.
I come home and sit at my computer, bombarded by news of Palestinian civilians dead at the hands of indiscriminate terrorist hunters, gleefully firing bullets on an open crowd. I come home to find that on reporting from Gaza, Saira Shaw herself, a blooming optimist despite the troubles she's seen in this world, lost her best friend and coworker to the very same Israeli bullets.

I want change. I want difference, peace, harmony. I want not to be embarrassed by all the things I can hope for, and have every possibility of attaining.
I can't look at a diamond without screaming in rage. What are you wearing? You are wearing the blood of children who were born without a chance.

Who's to blame?

You cannot blame religion, you can't even blame government.

I blame individual responsibility. We move forward and leave those next to us behind. My genetics professor used to beg us, to plead with us, that if we were planning on making an A or a B in his class, do not study alone. Not for the sake of the person next to you, but for your own sake. When you empower those next to you by sharing what you have, you do not have to take care of them. Teach someone how to fish, do not hand them the fish.

I was torn on who I was going to vote for in the primaries, but I believe I will be voting for Hillary Clinton.

Yesterday, President Bill Clinton said one thing that stuck out in my mind. He mentioned that they would create opportunities for young people to pay for college by opening up more volunteering positions with organizations like Americore.
Germany is years ahead of us in that count. In fact their students are REQUIRED to serve either in the army, or in a volunteering position.

We have so much, yet we give so little. It's not money that is going to make the difference. It's time.

The main reason I chose to attend Tulane University is because the professor I am choosing to work with actually supports the research I want to do. It is my only wish in this world that I will end up able to support the kind of research I want to do. That I will be brave enough, strong enough, motivated enough to face the world around me, those that sit right next to me, and those that live thousands of miles away and that I have never met.

I only hope I will be clearheaded enough to know what is a problem, and what isn't. Poverty isn't a problem, inexplicable ostentatiousness is. Exploitation is a problem. Starvation, uncured, curable illnesses. Those are problems. Oppression, forced female servitude, absence of proper educators and educational facilities. Those are problems.

And the worst thing of all, is living life without hope. Without Pandora's last wisp, captured in the box, the last true gift to humanity.
Having no hope, no motivation to work and strive towards a better future. That is the biggest problem of all.