End of Year Reflection

How could I possibly sum up my experience with the GIP? It may be a cop out, but I will default to a speech I wrote earlier this year about the GIP and its significance.

My first GIP experience was the program’s biannual French exchange and the subsequent extension, teaching English in Saint Martin. I had travelled before, but this was the first time I really felt a part of the culture I was visiting. That is possibly the most valuable gift the GIP has given me: connection. The next year, I travelled to Senegal on another GIP trip. While there, I spent a week living in a small village on the coast. Walking around the village, it was good manners to greet everyone you passed. A walk from the beach to one of the village stores became quite the social event. And every person I spoke to would look me in the eyes, greet me back, and smile. There it was again, connection. This search for connection and understanding propelled me through junior year and into this one, when my classmate Gabi and I began our GIP project. We are working on a protocol for hosting foreign students at Poly, trying to deepen the meaning of each interaction our students have with their counterparts around the world, trying to promote connection.

The program has expanded my knowledge of the world. It has improved my ability to examine different perspectives and analyze events. But its most notable achievement is that it accomplishes these goals without requirements or mandates. Instead, it fuels students’ passion for global issues through events such as when Alepho Deng, one of Sudan’s Lost Boys, visited

this fall. During the lunch meeting, Alepho met with students from all four grades who were eager to interact with and learn from him. The program relies on an if-you-build-it-they-will-come philosophy. It has demonstrated that if students are given an opportunity to meet with someone with an expertise or a unique perspective, they will seize it. I am hoping that in the future, students will be given more time with each speaker, more time to connect, and more speakers to connect with, more perspectives to consider.

The Global Initiatives Program forged a link between me and the world around me, or rather showed me the link that was already there, that was always there. It is dear to me because I believe that we cannot get along until we understand each other. It has had such an influence on me that I may even brave a career in politics so that I could continue to interact with my world and maybe even change something for the better. But whatever I choose to do, I know that I will carry with me a commitment to connection and understanding and a yearning for knowledge and exploration that could not have existed without the Global Initiatives Program.

Beyond that, I can only offer a million thanks to those who made my experience possible. If ever you harbor doubts about the future of our world, look no further than the community of Global Scholars Poly and the GIP have worked to cultivate. The insight I have gained from GIP events and the other Global Scholars is invaluable. It has shaped my four years at Poly and will shape my life beyond. The GIP to me is that pang of empathy that tears at your heart. It is that elating moment of connection with someone who proves to be very similar to you after all. It is that glimpse of the compassion and understanding that I know will make tomorrow that much brighter than today.

Ban Ki-Moon Reflection

Wow!! Yes, that is me, 5 feet from the Secretary General of the United Nations!!! That happened!

Needless to say, I was ecstatic to have been given this incredible opportunity. In preparing for the talk, one thing was immediately evident. While I had spent four years learning about the United Nations, I had little familiarity with its commander and chief. Mr. Ban is deemed by a few a "nowhere man" and certainly does not bring the same level of charisma to the office as his predecessor Kofi Annan. Others claim that this absence from the international stage represents  Mr. Ban's stated commitment to action not talk. Rumors of corruption, hardly unusual, swirl around his head. Mr. Ban's political philosophy seems to run fairly parallel to the UN's, though it is unclear to me whether this harmony is natural or necessitated.

Mr. Ban has been attacked for lack of eloquence and reliance on platitudes. I  found neither claim to hold substantial weight. His eloquence is above question or rebuke. Perhaps he differs from other political players in favoring comprehensive detail over empty rhetoric, but I am not upset by that decision. His platitudes were quippy and rhetorically strong. My personal favorite was his comment on the need for nuclear disarmament: "There are no right hands for the wrong weapons." Pretty good. 

His speech covered everything from the refugee crisis to climate change to the status of women globally. He opted to give a broad overview of the issues facing the world from his perspective. While I must say that the ideas he expressed were not novel, his statistics were compelling and his presentation effectively simple. It was reassuring, if nothing else, to know that the leader of the international community had the right issues in mind.

Before his general speech, there was a more intimate exchange between Mr. Ban and the students present. While there was one wasted question ("What makes you get out of bed in the morning"), the majority of the questions asked were insightful and clearly reflected levels of familiarity with the subject matter in question. It was gratifying to see so many young people like myself taking an interest in international affairs.

Beyond being an excellent opportunity, the dinner reaffirmed the tacit optimism with which I view the international system. It is evident that today's leaders (Mr. Ban) have a grip on the issues at hand and tomorrow's leaders (students like me) have the passion needed to continue the struggle and keep the UN's mission alive.