So the election is finally over. And a lot of the people in Florida who voted for Nader instead of being scared into voting for Gore are probably thinking twice. For a lot of people the prospect of another Bush in the White House is a scary one. I voted for Nader. No, I don't agree with many of Bush's ideas but maybe another Bush in the White House would be good for us. The optimist in me is predicting that a scary president that does scary things will scare people into getting off of their butts and taking responsibility for expressing their voice instead of allowing their voice to be misrepresented by scary politicians.

You have to do more than vote and follow the law to be a responsible citizen.

Voting is one way to influence laws and policies but what's wrong with the world is not going to be solved by laws and policies alone. Solving giant government-sized problems, like how to deal with abortion, poverty, hunger, environmental degradation, war, disease, and the general inhumanity that seems to be taking over isn't just the job of the politician and the specialist that informs the politician with her/his research and statistics. Saving the world is also the job of every one of us.

In too many of the classes I have taken at St. Olaf I have felt that the opposite was being taught. I have taken many classes where I have studied the major problems of the world from a global perspective. In so many of these classes I have felt like something was missing. We talked about what this institution and that corporation and that organization and that group of people should do but we rarely talked about individuals or our personal contributions to the problem. And if we did, it was a short detour from the syllabus. We studied things from a global perspective, looking at things from the top down, while for the most part ignoring the personal perspective and looking at things from the bottom up. I have found that both views are equally vital to my understanding of the world and myself.

When talking about international relations, globalization, world hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, disease, and other injustices, we need to simultaneously be talking about the ways that our personal practices, such as the way we spend our time and money, effect these injustices. Until we do that, we're not learning about responsibility or problem solving or healing wounds‹we're learning about how to apply a band-aid.

The design of conventional education discourages students from making the connection between personal practices and societal injustices. If a student is going to make that connection, it must be done on his/her own time. But who has time to put in the personal reflection needed to make that connection? College students are too busy "learning" and recovering from the stress of learning. When the design of education doesn't take into account the personal perspective as much as it does the global perspective, the design teaches disconnection.

Some might argue that making that connection between the personal and the global should be the responsibility of the student. Some may argue that it's a connection that the educational institution can't financially afford to make. But is it a connection that the world can afford for us not to make?

So here I am, a senior at St. Olaf College, reflecting on my time here and what I've learned and realizing how important that connection between my personal practices and their effects on the world is to my understanding of myself and the world. In my experience here at St. Olaf I give most of the credit for that to an exceptionally innovative, integrative and unconventional institution that once thrived within the greater institution of St. Olaf called the Paracollege. Ya' heard of it?

Katie Schmitz

Paracollege Class of 2001