Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush.

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I guess that petition I signed in Harvard Square didn’t help.

You can guess how I feel about this. Words cannot express my sadness and fear.

Maybe the government could do more to encourage us to use less oil instead of destroying everything beautiful to get more and more and more to feed us with.

I saw Hotel Rwanda last night, and it made me think about how I’m living this luxurious, fairly meaningless life while people are suffering. I don’t want to be a person who ignores the rest of the world and is content with her SUV and her TiVo. It’s actually fairly easy for me to put the blinders on and become completely absorbed in my own little life. But on a fairly regular basis, I read a book or see a movie that really makes me reevaluate my lifestyle. I think that’s real art- stuff that makes you reconsider who you are and where you’re going.

I am very comfortable and incredibly rich compared to most of the world. I’m a middle-class white girl with good SAT scores and college educated parents who value education. Not only am I going to a fancy private college next year, my sister is going to a fancy private high school. We’ll both be on financial aid, yes, but we’re not getting anything close to free rides. Because I have so much, I feel like I need to give something back to the world. I can’t just accept that I’m better off than everyone else, and ignore their pain. I can’t be one of the people standing by and not doing anything.

And that’s why I’ve decided to join the Peace Corps when I graduate from college.

This relates, but I’m having a hard time explaining why:
One of my goals is to live consciously. I don’t want to go through the motions of life. I want to perform every task, make every decision, with knowledge of the meaning and consequences of my actions. I want to do everything on purpose. I think that that’s my path to spiritual fulfillment.

I swore I was going to start updating more often, but something got in my way: weschat.

It’s the (unsponsored by the University) chatroom for Wesleyan’s class of 09. All of us prefrosh have been hanging out in there for a little over a week, getting to know each other. It’s incredibly addicting. Almost all of my internet time since it started has been spent in there. It has consumed my life, but I love it.

All those terrifying fears about showing up on campus and not knowing anyone, never making any friends? 90% gone. Every single one of us has those fears, and is eager to make friends. No one wants to be snobby or judgemental or stupid, because we’re trying to make good impressions. That makes for a very warm, welcoming atmosphere. I can already name at least five people that I would feel comfortable sitting with uninvited at meals, and that’s a wonderful feeling - and a pretty big deal for me. I don’t usually feel like that about people. It’s wonderul. And it will be even better after we all meet up at Wesfest, Wesleyan’s weekend-long party for prefrosh. The next four years are looking pretty good.

So that’s my excuse for not updating very much lately. I think it’s an excellent one.