Recent Musings About India, Senegal, and College Life Coming to an End

It’s my last semester at TCU. In exactly 59 days, I’ll be leaving Fort Worth and not come back until graduation in May 2015. No, I’m not graduating early, just taking a May class and then off to India and Senegal for Summer and Fall. Why India and Senegal, you ask?

India: Going on a Critical Language Scholarship from the State Department to Chandigarh (north India) to study Punjabi. Yes, it’s very random, yes it’s also free. Here, I can learn a random language, well it’s the 10^th most spoken language in the world… and study human trafficking and have lots of adventurous, courtesy of all of the taxpayers in America. I just decided to apply and then somehow wound up getting this. So, I’ll be in India June 10-August 10.

Some fun facts (considering I spend too much time reading about it): The Dakah border with Pakistan is 2 hours away from Chandigarh and has a changing of the guard- type ceremony every night. Chandigarh is in the foothills of the Himalayas and really beautiful. It’s 3-4 hours north of New Delhi and is the cleanest, safest, richest city in India and has approximately 1 million people. My personal favorite picture I found, (looks like something off of pinterest) J

Senegal: I’m going to Senegal with CIEE, a partner program of TCU. Here I will take classes and study French. It’s kind of a stepping stone, first India, more developed, people speak English, then Senegal- not very many people speak English and less developed. More fun facts coming later.

In the upcoming blogs, I’ll talk about some small epiphanies I’ve had in the last 3 years of being in college.

- When I first came to TCU, I thought it was going to be radically different from high school. In some ways it was, in the culture and environment, it wasn’t (isn’t)

- Yes, many (most) of my favorite college memories have taken place outside of TCU, and I will never exactly consider Fort Worth a home. And yes, I’m okay with that.

-  No, I have not exactly had a “typical” college life, if there is such a thing, but getting to spend time on the cross country team, in DC, Haiti, India, Senegal, and only 2.5 years at TCU and working with professors is something I would never change.

The People You Meet on Planes

My dad likes to say he would not like sitting by me on planes. We don’t share a common gene of loving to meet strangers.

Last weekend I was flying back from DC to Dallas. It was a bright and early 6:30 am and I was quite sleep deprived, which I think makes me even more talkative. I sat down on Row 25 Seat F- by the window, my favorite. Sitting in the middle was a nice man in his 30s, who began talking to me. Of course, I was excited to make new friends. Then another girl in her late twenties sat down on the aisle seat and we all began chatting. He was a dad of 5 kids, only 31 years old, who got married at 19 while he was at the University of Arizona. He’s a hedge fund college endowment investor who is relocating his family from DC to Dallas and we gave him advice on which suburbs he should live in. The girl was a SMU grad who is in residency at a Children’s hospital in DC.

What ensued was a lovely conversation about trafficking and awareness within hospital staff and international development and our upbringings. We came from different backgrounds, had different lifestyles, but valued what we had to offer and learn from other another.

3 weeks ago, I was traveling to DC (excessive trips, I know) and I met a girl on a plane when I found out I was a Truman finalist. On Friday morning, she tweeted at me Good Luck, when I had literally said nothing about when my interview was on twitter.

This conversation and that simple, kind gesture made me think, What if we treated all strangers this way? What makes someone you meet on a plane different than the person who looks differently than you on the street? What if we valued what every person has to offer?

As you continue your week, instead of complaining about someone else, think about why they are doing what bothers you, and invest in their life.