Usefulness

I had planned on blogging on something else, but then I took a nap and woke up with no recollection of what it was. So I'm just going to talk about what's been happening to me this last week.
The BYU-I track system is such that I am still attending school. I go to two semesters per year, one in Winter and one in Spring. The track system is made of three regular portions and one smaller portion. Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer semesters. A student is assigned to two of the semesters, and that assignment is called a 'track.' You either go to school Fall and Winter semesters, Fall and Spring semesters, or Winter and Spring semesters. Every student has the opportunity of attending Summer semester, which is smaller, and in which it is highly unlikely that anyone would be able to manage as many credits as they would in a regular semester, since it's smaller and less classes are offered. A student can also choose to be on the fast track, if they can get accepted, and just attend every semester, consequently finishing with college within 3 years instead of in four, depending on the number of credits they take. IN ANY CASE, that explains why I'm still in school now. But I'm almost finished.
As I come to the close of my semester, I feel as though I've been able to leave behind a large burden. I haven't had as much to do, and I've been able to just relax a little (though, ironically, I happened to forget about much of my schoolwork and relaxed anyway. subsequently, I'll need to get up early tomorrow to finish some of it. I've learned in college that if you're not busy doing something, then you're probably doing something wrong. If you think you're finished with your schoolwork, then you've probably forgotten something). But in the end, though relaxing has been nice, and people around me have stressed the importance of getting 'recharged,' it's made me feel a little useless. When I attend school, there are often things which I think about, projects, endeavors, and the like, that I say I would do or accomplish IF ONLY I HAD MORE TIME. I've come to realize that when I do have time, those endeavors are not a thing on which I focus. I watch MacGyver, Phineas and Ferb, and other miscellaneous movies and TV shows through Netflix, and when I'm not doing that, I eat, and when I don't do those things, I sleep (it seems that sleep should be my first priority, considering the sleep debt I acquired this past semester, but it isn't. Silly me. I always focus on other, less important things).
I've been considering this over the past few days, and, in light of recent events and occurrences which will be elaborated on in the next paragraph, , I've come to what might be called a conclusion about modern, middle-class life. Let me know what you think.
I've been in a World Development class this semester and we've been learning about the living conditions of developing countries. And it's sort of awful what they have to go through. People have come up with some great, innovative ideas to improve conditions, but the people in those countries have nothing near the comforts that we have. Over the past weekend I found out that a person I know was the victim of a traumatizing crime, and it made me very angry. I wanted to mortally wound the person who had committed the crime. After a while, I simmered down and felt like the best thing to do would be to try to reason a solution to the problem; some sort of system of crime prevention. And that's what we're trying to do in developing world countries, is to try to find the root of the problem of certain conditions within their society, and find solutions to them. I feel like the comforts and conveniences we have in our lives are superfluous and not mandatory to our survival. So I wonder if we shouldn't do our best to turn those comforts into something valuable for people who have circumstances which we do not have the misfortune of living with; people who are the victims of crimes, people who do not have drinking water, people who not have suitable living conditions, or people who do not have enough to eat. If you clicked on the link above, you saw methods people have come up with to help people help themselves. And I would say that is the best way to do things, but in any case, I don't know if I feel comfortable with living with the abundance that I have while in the knowledge that other people don't even have basic hygiene, basic shelter, or basic nutrition. But at the same time, I have no idea what to do to help. Sometimes I feel that if the solution to a problem has not yet been found, then there's no way it will be in the near future. But that's a depressing thought, and obviously not true. People come up with new solutions every day.
So here's to finding solutions to the world's problems. Good luck to all of you. Make the world a better place. If you have an idea, voice it. Get some feedback. Who knows? Maybe you've come upon something brilliant. Thanks for reading.