You come from your own personal greatness

22 Sep 2009, Posted by Gloria Ahn in Backpages, 0 Comments

So this is the beginning of my first ever video column. The best part about it is that it’s going to be an awesome adventure to get to know more about you all.

We are surrounded by greatness. We have friends who do so many amazing things that it almost becomes disgusting. In this plethora of greatness, I sometimes find myself wondering what I’m doing with my life. With this student researching the cure for HIV, and another student backpacking through South-East Asia while teaching little kids how to speak English, my own dreams and accomplishments may start to sound a bit petty. For you grad students, and even me as a sophomore, we may see our younger brothers and sisters, and we wonder how they do it. Thus, we measure ourselves by another’s accomplishments.

Didn’t we learn in elementary school that we can’t compare oranges to apples or whatever that saying was? Then why do we live in such an accomplishment/busy-body driven environment where how busy, how little sleep, how all-the-things-I-did-better-sound-longer-and-more-awesome than yours dictates our worth? I don’t know about you, but I want to disentangle myself from this sticky status quo of a web, and define myself by my own standards. That’s why we came to Duke right? So that we could become the best versions of ourselves, so that we could learn about this scintillating universe we live in, so that we can show the world the potential for good we all have, so that we can make someone’s life better not only by someone else’s achievements, but also by yours.

We come from our own personal greatness. We do amazing things–we come from amazing things–and we’re destined for amazing things. However, that’s only if you believe in that yourself.

Video: NYT columnist Kristof speaks at Duke about oppression of women

18 Sep 2009, Posted by Zachary Tracer in Breaking News, National Politics, News, student life, video, 1 Comments

Video produced by Lawson Kurtz and Chase Olivieri/The Chronicle.

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof told a packed Page Auditorium that women’s rights is the issue of the 21st century Sept. 17. His visit to the University was the first stop on his tour to promote his new book “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.”

Unequal access to health care, food and education has crippled developing countries and left the world short of about 100 million women, Kristof said.

Telling stories of sex trafficking, physical abuse and mental neglect, Kristof illustrated his emotional and often disturbing anecdotes with photographs of the women of whom he spoke.

Kristof followed his lecture with a question and answer session and a book signing. The first 200 audience members to arrive received free copies of his book, and more were available for purchase.