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Nate O'Neill February 15 Blog
2.15.06
Whitewater rafting through a rainforest canyon. Living with people with no running water who make around a dollar a day. Feeding meals to prostitutes, street children, and alcoholics. Confronting third-world poverty firsthand, looking at the systems that create and continue it, and meeting people who are fighting it. Not exactly experiences you normally expect to have in Western Pennsylvania. These experiences, and lots more, were just a part of what I was able to experience through one of the opportunities Geneva offered me.
I’m a senior this year at Geneva. I came in a wide-eyed freshman, geared up and ready to do the “college thing”. I’m a business major (yeah, I kept the same major all 4 years) and I was sure that was what I wanted to do. The next three years kind of flew by. I got involved in different activities, had some really good classes (and of course, some I didn’t like so much) and made a whole lot of really good friends. It was a good three years, and totally confirmed the choice I’d made to come here. But it was a decision I made last year that has totally re-directed my life. I was looking at different opportunities, when I stumbled across a program called the Latin American Studies Program. After talking with the appropriate people, who convinced me it was a good idea, I went ahead and signed up, with no real idea what I was in for. Last fall was a truly life-changing experience. I realize that phrase is totally cliché, but there’s really no other way to say it. I was challenged in so many ways, and came away thinking very differently as a citizen, a business major, and especially as a Christian. But this isn’t about my trip. If you want to know more about it, you can e-mail me, or check out the webpage at http://www.bestsemester.com.
Now I’m back at Geneva, and the real challenge has begun. It’s one thing to learn about and see poverty and oppression, and a whole other thing to actually do something about it. I was pretty worried about coming back and losing the “fire” God had started in me, just sitting in business classes, and doing my normal thing. Turns out, I really didn’t need to worry. I only needed four more classes to finish up my major, and two of them right now are pretty amazing. One is a business ethics class, taught by a philosophy professor here, so it’s from a real philosophy basis, and deals with a lot of the issues that I think are really relevant to business today. The other is a political science class, legendary here at Geneva. This class is required for all students, and is important to what Geneva represents. This class deals with political thinkers, ideas, systems, and issues. The teacher doesn’t just let you be passive either. He wants a real engagement, so that students leave with a real idea of how they can, as they say here, “transform society for the Kingdom of Christ”.
Hiking through the rainforest a few times last semester also sort of got me going on a hiking kick. Me and a few of my friends have been trying to set up backpacking and camping trips lately. So far, we’ve only gone once, to Allegheny National Forest. It was pretty amazing, but real cold. We’ve got a Great Smoky Mountains backpacking trip in Tennessee on the schedule right now, so we’ll see how that turns out, and if we get any more in the meantime. Only having 12 credits this semester, and no job as of yet (working on that one), I’ve got a good bit of time to kill. Right now a combination of lots of reading, some video games, intramural volleyball (my team isn’t so good) and just a lot of hanging out with friends has been keeping me busy enough. And music. Always listening to some good music. That’s one thing you definitely have to look forward to in college, is broadening your horizons to some pretty sweet new music.
Being back at Geneva now is an interesting experience, that’s for sure. I feel a little bit like my time has passed me by. Chalk some of it up to senioritis, and the rest to being out of the country for a while. My views are pretty different than most people at Geneva now, including most of my friends. That’s one of the cool things though, you can always find people here who think like you, or maybe even more importantly, can challenge what you think. Life is good right now, I just need to figure out what to do once I graduate….
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
-Mahatma Gandhi