what are the things worth talking about?
My 102 class has to pair up and lead a class discussion, including an assigned reading, in a topic important to them — and of their choice. We were brainstorming topics today, and something caused me to reflect on the topics I would have listed in the Spring of 1992, when I was a second semester freshman…
A lot of them were the same: abortion, gay rights (although not to the degree of marriage — I don’t think things had progressed enough to even open a dialogue about gay marriage, especially in Colorado), a national election (which happened in ‘93 and I saw Hilary Clinton speak on behalf of her husband and even shook her hand, although that’s not enough to get me to vote for her), lowering the drinking age, should some drugs be legal, etc. But our first Gulf War was mostly over and positive, as far as we knew. The first Bush was in office and he seemed ineffectual but harmless. Heroin was the big new thing, and several of my friends OD’d — one who died. Suicide as well, I knew one who was lost to it. And feminism, always feminism.
Mostly the issues were the same, the names (of the drugs and the people) slightly different. Is that a bad thing? Shouldn’t things have impressed further at this point?