 "Photo: Contributed Photo")
Living at the beach has been a booze soaked, memory saturated, sleep walk along the Point. Ironically, I have found myself at a loss for words.
FUSA has never been more efficient in the four years I have been a student here, probably because they are putting student interest ahead of their own personal agendas. I no longer see Public Safety anymore, which means I still have my natural rights. And nobody has brought a gun onto Fairfield campus, so all seems to be quiet on the forefront.
Maybe I'm going soft, but I signed up for a New Orleans service trip in January as part of Fairfield's Green Campus Initiative (GCI). I feel compelled to admit that I do not recycle and I constantly flick cigarette butts wherever there is ground.
Why did I sign up? At first, I was not quite sure.
Was it the mix of helping the people of New Orleans while also plundering my body in the French Quarter? That played a small role. It certainly wasn't a strong sense of Jesuit values; I couldn't afford one of those trips. In reality, this trip offers me the opportunity to make others happy. I had a subconscious sense that giving back to people less fortunate would offer me a perspective that The Grape and the Beamers of Fairfield could never.
This is certainly not an indictment of people who do not go on service trips, nor am I attempting to make anyone feel guilty about the many opportunities to help which are available. Everyone expresses their concern and their care in vastly different ways. However, I sometimes tend to forget how much I have; this feeling is only magnified in light of this service trip.
In the beginning, I was flushed with self-righteous sentiment; I felt like it was an accomplishment that I even signed up for the trip. Then, I had some doubts based on the time commitment. The only gig I haven't quit outside of writing is cigarettes. I've watched sports, which I was not very good at anyway, fall by the wayside, along with clarinet, and even, to a degree, journalism. This trip is not going to give me the answer to life; it's going to show me what real, tainted, mortal life actually looks like.
I've seen faces of disbelief in response to my decision to participate in a service trip to New Orleans in January. It really is an atypical decision for someone who generally writes about the rights of Fairfield students in response to an overbearing, underhanded, clique riddled University. However, this life of self-indulgence has whittled me down to the core; don't I stand for more than a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and an unwavering, Fairfield smile?
This might sound like a spiritual deal, but it is not. That would be such a cliché if I signed up for a New Orleans service trip in search of my faith.
I'm participating in this trip so, when I look back at my senior year, I'll have another recollection outside of a muddled, monotonous story about the bar.
Two years ago, I never would have seen myself in this position. I was solely concerned with living the college life to its fullest, which is certainly a beautifully ugly place.
There's still one more semester left, but that does not mean that it can be spoken of yet. Senior year is still ongoing.
Am I plugging the GCI New Orleans trip? I do not have to. The people who are participating in this trip are making a sacrifice few would make. They're donating some of their winter break, which is especially necessary after the hardest semester of college to date. And they're not doing it for the adulation of their peers or because it looks good on their resume.
They're doing it for themselves.
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