I’m an extremely anxious lady. I get anxious about going to Val for lunch; I get anxious about giving myself five versus seven minutes to get to the bus stop every morning; I get too anxious to move from my bed to my backpack across the room to get a simple draft I could revise and send in five minutes out to work on.
Over the past few weeks, and over many conversations with professors I admire and whose politics have deeply influenced my own, as well as over conversations with close friends, I’ve tried to work through a very important question: what does it mean to have a radical education? And what does this imply for how we live and what we live for?
As you can probably tell from my articles, I believe in a pretty radical, leftist politics — not just on a theoretical level, but on the level of actual, practical activism and engagement. That is to say, I believe that studying and agreeing with leftist theory — whether it’s critical race theory, feminist theory, Marxism, etc., etc. — is hypocritical and incomplete without trying to synchronize what you study with how you live.
Hey, first years. Here’s a welcome: a belated welcome, nonetheless, but a welcome, from a jaded, opinionated senior who’s entering her final year with a strange combination of disillusionment and yet a stronger belief than ever in the power of the sort of education you can get, should you make the right choices, from your four years at this College.
