Megan H crucial realization that justice is not purely academic

Today, although I am in the same path regarding my career, I feel like a very different person. I am still concerned with resume building, however my internship in Cape Town showed me that fighting for causes that mean something and getting job experience do not have to be mutually exclusive. I am vastly more socially conscious, and saw first hand the tangible effects social policy has on the every day lives of incredible people. Working with activists, volunteering with kids and being in a community that has seen so much turmoil to achieve democracy and equality taught me that justice is not purely academic; it is greatly emotional and personal. Unless you understand that, you don’t understand the need for justice in the first place. I am now much more aware of mindsets that are distinctly American, or western, that much of the world does not share. Not everyone in the world is primarily concerned with their career; not everyone in the world believes that it is “every man for themselves” all the time; not everyone in the world is taught to be skeptical of strangers. These things are all distinctly related to American individualism and exceptionalism, and do not constitute the worldview of a majority of humans. I realize now that I am not the “norm,” I am extremely privileged. I benefit not only from demographic aspects like being white, coming from a middle-upper class family, etc. but from living in a stable country, from having sanitary infrastructure around me, living in a country where the majority of media comes from, etc. These were things that I would never have realized had I never left the country, and gone to Cape Town specifically.

Isabel and Megan