Who would have thought that I would have spent a month of my life, needless to say during the summer, in the state of Iowa? Aside from joking around with the children of the corn, what else was I to do, go cow-tipping?
Yes, embarrassingly enough, this was my poor perception of the fine state Iowa prior to my engagement in the Hubbard Law Fellows Program at the University Of Iowa College Of Law. While there, I had the opportunity to take classes at the superb institution, visit a highly reputable law firm, go canoeing and most importantly, get to know fellow students from across the United States.
One simple incident during this month is the actual motivation for this blog. After class one day, I met with a friend and was challenged to play this online game: http://www.sporcle.com/games/world.php . “Can you name the countries of the world?”: 15 minutes, a map and the pressure to name all 196 countries of the world. Confident in myself, I took the challenge and dashed through the first five minutes moving from countries in North America to Latin America to Europe to Asia to Africa and to wherever else came to mind. Of course, the inevitable came around the sixth or seventh minute and I struggled to reach the 50th country. I was stuck at 50/196. Once my fifteen minutes ran out, I made a pledge to my friend that I would excel at this game and have the ability to recognize all 196 countries by the end of the summer. The truth is, I still haven’t been able to master the game, playing it every so often, though I have improved to an unexceptional 120/196.
Aside from revealing my ignorance, this country game had me thinking. Was my view of the world really that narrow and limited? I have always had a special interest in Latin America, frequently reading current events regarding South and Central America but I realized that even this knowledge wasn’t enough. It didn’t strike me ‘till then that I had a duty to expand my intellectual and geographic knowledge. As a college student, I’m constantly preoccupied with different obligations on campus and I place myself in this bubble. If my plans in life were to remain in California for the rest of my life, I suppose it would be fine to block out the rest of the world and only preoccupy myself with local issues. The truth is, I plan on traveling and working abroad so I can’t allow this ignorance to build up at such a young age. There is so much going on in the world that it would be foolish to attempt to keep up with everything but I realize I can do so much and I have already taken a step in the right direction this semester. I have committed myself to perfecting my Spanish speaking, reading and writing skills so I have enrolled in a Spanish course at USC. In addition to this, I plan on learning Portuguese sometime in the near future (I might just invest in Rosetta Stone). Meanwhile though, I’ll continue reading articles from http://www.cnn.com/ , http://www.ap.org/ and other sources as I attempt to understand the global community.
This blog will provide coverage on interesting incidents happening around the world.
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