Molly working to strike a healthy balance

As a sometimes unconfident female college student, I’ve been told quite a few times that I suffer from something called impostor’s syndrome. I’ve come to realize that I’m not the only person who doesn’t feel like they deserve the responsibilities or privileges that they have; most people haven’t exactly “earned” their position in life. I’ve been thinking about this more since coming to South Africa because I’m becoming more aware of just how many of these unearned privileges I have. These privileges have seemed to multiply by the plain fact that I’m an American college student in South Africa. At my internship, I was told that I would be put in charge of a part of a project that’s funded by the European Union and directed by a United Nations-sponsored NGO. The project involves educating refugees in South Africa about their human rights, and teaching government workers and community leaders about the proper ways to treat refugees in line with their human rights in order to improve social cohesion in the country. Many of the people involved with designing the teaching curriculum are refugees from other parts of the continent who have overcome incredible challenges to be alive in South Africa right now. Even the opportunity to just sit with them and listen to their discussions is completely humbling. It’s also been interesting to see the clash between the ideals of the human rights and the realities that keep them from being realized for many South Africans and refugees living in the country. Today, I took a tour of Parliament and found out that I have the opportunity to be a part of the Guard of Honor at the ceremony before the State of the Nation address this coming Thursday. Seeing as I’m just a college student who’s been in South Africa for a little under a month, and that there is a very low likelihood that I would have similar opportunities in my own country, this all feels a little wrong.

In our class on Thursday night, we touched on the absurdly high levels of confidence white men have had throughout history and wondered as a group where this confidence came from. We then discussed how this confidence has been exported, and how some people in foreign countries want everything American because we’ve engrained in them the idea that American = better. I’m becoming more aware of the possibility that all of these incredible opportunities I have in this country are not only due to my educational background and my wealth relative to the rest of the world. I don’t want to make any assumptions, but it’s possible that these opportunities exist for me because I’m American. With everything that the United States has done to the rest of the world, it would be more logical for all of us to have fewer opportunities in other countries because of our nationality. I still don’t fully understand the logic behind the idea that we’ve somehow exported confidence in America, but I can’t think of many other ways to explain all of the amazing opportunities I’m being offered here (other than clandestine tourism industry tactics to get me to tell other Americans about how awesome South Africa is).

With all of this in mind, I’m trying to strike a healthy balance between taking advantage of every opportunity and not taking too much unfair advantage of my undue privileges here.