It’s Friday! You are thinking about your plans for the night and how many times you are going to Dairy Queen with your friends. Suddenly you walk into Mr. Gilbert’s class, and bam, you forgot that there was a current events quiz. This was me every week of first semester last year. No matter how big I wrote it in my agenda, I just couldn’t convince myself to stay on track with knowing the happenings of the world. I would frantically dig through the news app on my phone, desperately trying to find something besides what Jennifer Lawrence ate for dinner. Why was world news so irrelevant to me? Was it that news from the Middle East had gotten dull or that I could not understand why Britain leaving the European Union mattered so much? Or was it simply because I did not care?

I decided my view of the world had to change. I could no longer afford to ignore the grievances of other nations (neither could my grade). This decision occurred around the time of the presidential election because I was honestly fascinated by the rhetoric and strategies of both sides. With so many opinions inundating the U.S. news, I had to expand my intentional research of the world. Sources like BBC News and Reddit helped fuel my drive to understand even just the surface of what media could tell me.

This shift in attitude has stuck with me through the summer till now, though Mr. Gilbert is currently not my teacher. I am proud to say that I am no longer completely ignorant of the rest of the Earth. Sometimes it is hard to imagine the billions of other lives that exist, but by watching current events I have felt my sympathy grow so much greater for those people I will never know. The news kept me updated on terror attacks in Europe, tensions between North Korea and Trump, and hurricanes Irma and Maria. Through the simple task of even glancing at a headline, I am showing interest in someone’s life besides my own. I have now realized just how important that is. I can not thank Gilby enough for strictly grading my quizzes a couple of times to wake me up to the reality that life is so much greater than any one person.