On & Off Campus Blog

Ever since I was young, I have loved learning about the world around me. Starting with simple lava lamp experiments to eventually studying the science behind our brain processes, my passion for areas of STEM has grown with time. However, having grown up in a less privileged country, the opportunities that allowed youth to explore their passions faded behind the many issues my nation was facing.

The closures of restaurants, hotels, and schools in the effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus has forced farmers across the country to destroy produce they can no longer sell. At the same time, lines in food banks are longer than ever, and the national unemployment rate has skyrocketed, rendering one in five families in the United States food insecure. This disconnect between the surplus food supply and hungry families across America inspired FarmLink, a non-profit grassroots organization that connects farms with excess produce to food banks in need of produce.

Take this weird week and those cheesy Zoom sessions and use them to crystallize everything you have learned and loved from this school. Write with heart to your teachers and your friends. Look in the literal or metaphorical mirror and appreciate the person you have become.

So what can we do instead? It’s impossible to fully commit to each of the countless activist movements promoting a worthy cause. In that way, we become desensitized, and our will to take a moral stand is spread thin across every issue. My conviction is that there is opportunity for leadership in every path of life.