Neha, 18

The poverty and corruption that makes up India no longer fascinated Neha when she traveled to the subcontinent nearly 3 years ago. Neither the political situation, nor the economy triggered any sort of persuasion for activism during Neha’s travel. As a matter of fact, her comfortable-ness with it all made her “more apathetic,” towards the entire mess. But that impression changed significantly on her way back from that trip.

It was the hardwood, marble, and tile floors that persuaded Neha to go shopping for a pair of slippers. Exiting the store after her purchase, she notes some stones blockading off a 4 ft ditch in the middle of the road. Daring to be a bit spontaneous, Neha leaps over the rocks only to fall right into the ditch. She refrains from looking at the substance inside of the ditch, but the catastrophe that was her left leg was unavoidable. It was a moment that she would “never want to relive.” Anyways, having clearly lost her left flip flop in the mess at the bottom of the ditch, Neha decided to rid of her right one as well. She figured that new pair she just bought would be a fit replacement for the old pair. It was on her way home that her insight hit her.

Life Moral: She started to think about how a homeless, poor child might find her old flip flops and use them as though they were something miraculous. She realized that something she “trashed without hesitation,” someone else could tremendously profit off of. That was the impetus that started her activism career. It may have “inadvertently, subconsiously trigger[ed] [her] participation with WAC, which is now GEO, JSA, and other non profit organizations.” Even the fear that she had for the rest of the day that her leg might have been infected with some sort of fungus did not seem to have much significance when she realized that someone else is going through their own similar type of hurdle every day.

Kapil, 17

“He lives in you,” from the Lion King II soundtrack was playing on repeat for three hours. Kapil could barely notice though. He drifted into a “transcendental state.” He started sifting through his life memories and contemplated their significance. In those three hours, Kapil thought through his life in general, solved a physics problem and studied how it works, and then proceeded to solve Einstein’s E=MC squared. He was “in this impassioned state.” “It was truly one of my favorite times,” he said.

Life Rule: Kapil now takes an hour out of his week to just sit down and contemplate. He honestly believes that if he takes that one hour, then he knows life is good. He took that one hour on Saturday this past week.

Mahum, 16

This blog is a blog of experiences. So what better experience to start off with than one of my own:

Why You Should Never Make a Gay Joke

As a freshman, the one thing that we always strive to do is fit in with the cooler, older high school kids. But trust me on this one, making a gay joke is not the way to go about doing that. As a freshman and member of my school journalism department, I was asked to work the coat check at our school fashion show with some of the other journalism kids. Unfortunately, I was the only newspaper student there in a room filled with yearbook-ers. It was the four hour hiatus between shows during which I utterly humiliated myself. Pointing to two close guy friends of mine who were walking around the building, I said the most frowned upon phrase in the homosexual language, “That’s so gay.” Immediately all the yearbook students quit their chattering and stared at me with long faces attempting to understand what I intended to say. Catching onto the stillness, but unable to fathom the reason for it, I continued with my comment, “I mean, look at them two together, they look like such a gay couple. haha…” OK. Big mistake. The stillness continued until one friendly yearbook student said, “oh, you’re serious. I didn’t know they were gay. I thought you were just kidding.” Of course, not realizing that she was attempting to save my life, I responded by saying, “no, I am kidding. They’re just acting like that.” Needless to say, the entire coat check volunteer group left me stranded as they left to “go get some coffee.” It wasn’t until three months later, as I was heading over to Colorado for a journalism workshop, when I discovered that one of the yearbook students accompanying us was actually…gay. And not only was he just gay, he was one of the students at the coat check to whom I was making my extremely rude “joke.”

Life Lesson: NEVER AGAIN have I ever used the term “gay” unless I mean to identify a homosexual.