Something about Nothing and Everything

I am being stretched. Ever since I set foot onto campus freshmen year, I have been pulled this way and that, feeling unnervingly like stretched, sugary brown molasses.

When I left my small town of Mukilteo, Washington, when I left behind the public school education system and flew naively across the country to Duke University, I entered a world of sharp, cold brilliance, permeated by success-crazed young adults, under pressure from families, societies and great expectations. As I’m fighting my way tooth and nail through my third year, I am struck by the lines running under each toothy grin and confident face on LinkedIn on the ‘People You May Know’ page. Incoming analyst at BlackRock. CEO/Founder of startup. Consultant at McKinsey. J.D. Candidate at Harvard Law. Software Engineer.

I’ve been pushed into this world of unimaginable wealth and privilege, of which there is no doubt I have been a willing participant. I’ve traveled on the university’s dime, living in Seattle for the summer to perform community service and studying abroad in Glasgow, examining political systems in the United Kingdom and Europe. However, sweating with the uncertainty of defining what success should be to a graduate of a top-ten private university, I’ve tried to flatten myself to cover my bases, attempting to fill every nook and cranny of knowledge; I dove simultaneously into computer science and public policy.

As a computer science major, I have been challenged technically. I’ve learned so much about the previously mysterious and abstract void that is the software and hardware world. I’ve been shown that technology can do so much for our world. We are breaking onto a new frontier, and our age will be written into history as the Digital Age. That is what we are, plain and simple. Having explored land and sea, we seek to explore further, both upwards and into intangible worlds, with technology as our new oars and compasses.

As a public policy major, my eyes have been opened to the tragedies befalling our world even now as I type and as you read. Now more than ever, we are being shown that although we have come a long way, overwhelming inequity is now overtaking our society in droves. While some of us live in content, shielded by a comfortable income and the knowledge that our loved ones are safe, others live in fear for their safety, in fear for the safety for their children and even in fear for safety from their children. In Don’t Shoot, Kennedy chronicles his stories of visiting many a city like Ferguson. One passage in particular struck me like ice-cold water:

“Joanne Jaffe is a friend and colleague. She runs the NYPD housing police and she’s working with young offenders who live in public housing in Brooklyn. Not long ago she showed me a portfolio of Facebook pages, RIP Facebook pages, RIP Facebook pages dated 2011 as I write this a few days into the new year. Yeah, I said, I know. I’ve been seeing it for years, families and friends honoring their dead. No, she said, you don’t get it. These kids are alive. They’re composing them themselves. They don’t expect to live out the year. They’re getting their affairs in order.”

Kennedy expresses his frustrations as he stands by and researches and writes, for while he tells the stories, he laments being frozen on the sidelines, not being able to do more.