Decide what to do and write a paragraph explaining what you’ll be doing. If you’re going to volunteer your time somewhere, be sure to have taken the steps you need to take in order to volunteer. …If you plan to do something off campus, submit a field trip release form with your proposal. …If you plan to write a letter to one of your representatives in government, you’ll need to include an additional paragraph outlining the argument you’ll present. So, what will you do? Ask yourself, how would you like to maintain or reinterpret some world (or some aspect of some world) you inhabit? How are you uniquely suited to contribute? …Don’t know? Experiment.
Try things out. But DO something! Engage! Share something with others. In turn you will become more familiar with your own authentic self. Take ownership of this assignment! Do something you believe in – or at least experiment with doing something you think you might believe in. But engage! Engage in a world bigger than your personal world. Engage in a world bigger than your family world. Engage as a member of the world of your neighborhood, or city, or state, nation, or globe. Again, those “smaller” worlds closer to your personal world are easier to impact. It’s easy to see results in those worlds closest to us. In those wider worlds – of your neighborhood and beyond – results are not at all immediate. And we usually must align our efforts with others to bring about results that we together wish to realize. This takes time. The wider the world, the further into the future must your sight be focused, and the further into the past must your awareness be rooted. You have to be well informed to effect change in our shared worlds – well informed about history, the past, how things got the way they are in the first place, how the cards you were dealt were dealt, etc. So, think of some way you’d like to improve your community (at some level), or think of some problem you encounter (or have heard of) in your community (at some level) to try to resolve. Find those that might help you (or that you might help) make the improvement or resolve the problem, and reach out. Get involved – e.g., attend a meeting and have a conversation, write a letter, make a phone call, volunteer your time, etc. Here are some suggestions, but if you’d like to engage with your world in some other way, develop a proposal and get my approval. You might engage by… .fighting global climate change (by supporting or combating some legislation, e.g.) .promoting environmental justice (fighting the polluting of poor and/or minority communities) .addressing the problems of mass incarceration in the U.S. (as a consequence of structural racism, perhaps, which splits up families, perpetuating generational hopelessness, etc.) .addressing displacement due to the gentrification of neighborhoods (when businesses and families are “priced out” of their neighborhoods from rising rents linked to development)
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