A friend of mine from college recently returned to the United States from an extended trip to Uganda where she was executing a microfinance project on behalf of a non-profit organization called Givology. That name of the project was “What would you do with $50?” and its premise was simple. She travelled to rural villages in Uganda and met with groups of children. Some were educated and others were not. Each of the children was asked to draw a picture of what he would buy if they had $50. After collecting hundreds of drawings, she returned to New York with her co-workers to organize a fundraiser in Tribeca. The illustrations that she collected were being sold for 50 dollars each, and the proceeds of the fundraiser went primarily towards providing education to children who otherwise could not afford one.

I looked forward to attending this event for many reasons which I won’t detail here, but I left the event with feelings of sadness, fear, and disgust. Seeing hundreds of photos of children alongside drawing of all the things they did not have brought me face to face with poverty in a way that I have not experienced before. Why the crayon drawings of things like ipods and banana trees seemed more serious to me than the hundreds of homeless people I see on the streets of New York everyday is still a mystery to me. However, I found myself unable to stop thinking about these children and their drawings long after the event was over.

I know that if I really wanted to, I could archive this event as my token act of goodwill for the semester and forget about the poor kids and move on. But Eben has urged us not to follow “the script” merely because it assuages our anxiety for a short amount of time, because if we follow the script, we end up cheating ourselves. So instead of forgetting about these children until the next fundraising event, I find myself waiting around for the next event with a great deal of anxiety, desperately trying to remain wary of the dangers I face as I follow my own script, letting the anger that I felt when I attended the fundraiser fade behind me.

While the aftermath of attending this fundraiser has mostly been confusion, I have since been able to accept two difficult truths, both of which have been discussed in this class, and both of which have the power to guide me towards a career that will make me feel personally fulfilled.

First, my anxiety fuels me. Eben has correctly stated that many of us will choose career paths that are not right for us because we are motivated by fear. This is true; however, I sense that there are two breeds of anxiety that I feel, and that each type pushes me towards a dramatically different career path. The first type of anxiety is fueled by financial pressure, fear of social and familial rejection, and fear of the unknown and change. It drives me to stick to the script that society has written for me without asking any questions. I can attend the fundraisers, but my time is too important to be spent running them.

The second type of anxiety, which has been largely incited through the lectures in this course, is fueled by the fear that I will realize one day that I’ve chosen the career and lifestyle that aren’t right for me. This is the anxiety that I felt after attending this fundraiser, because once I know that there is a social issue that matters to me, I know that I have found at least one career path that will allow me to remain more true to myself than spending my time working for a law firm. I also feel this anxiety because the thought of extreme poverty makes me feel uncomfortable and I don’t understand what role I am able to play in helping to fix it. This feeling is exacerbated by that fact that I don’t know where to draw the invisible line which dictates the point at which I stop doing for myself and begin doing for others.

Although both types of anxiety are prevalent, the latter type mimics the degree of force that Eben’s lectures have in the midst of our law-school-culture dominated week. It barely stands a chance against the gargantuan anxiety that I feel when I think about departing from my script and exiting the paradigm that I thought I knew in pursuit of an entirely new one.

The second truth, which is simpler though equally important, is that my legal degree will give me more power to enact change than I previously had. I have a bigger weapon than I had before entering law school, which means that two years from now, I will be responsible for the ways that I use it. I am the only person who will be accountable for the decisions that I make and the effects that my decisions have on society.

I wish I could end this essay with a neatly drawn conclusion, however, any neatly drawn conclusion that I could come up with at this point in time would be a lie. Since this is the only class where honesty seems to be the prevailing value, I have chosen to remain honest at the expense of producing a more ideally crafted essay. So, there is no conclusion because I have no conclusion; I can only say that I feel confused about what career I want to pursue and how I will move forward now that I’ve finally admitted to myself that there are in fact groups of deserving people in the world whose lives can only be bettered through acts of selflessness and philanthropy.

-- JessicaGuzik - 17 Apr 2010