Do the little you can,

For anyone you can,

At any time you can.

Inasmuch as you can,

Convince your conscience,

That you have done,

The little you can.

That’s a creed of goodwill I learned from one of my teachers in grade school. I can’t say I remember which teacher or year it was, or who the composer might have been, but I know it made a big impression on me. I left Nigeria in 1997, traveling across the world to the land of opportunity and ended up here at Iowa State, all wide-eyed and bushy tailed.

Well, to make a long story short, that’s all over and done with now – the eyes are droopy and tired and the tail is muddied and matted. Which is somewhat understandable – I knew from the start it’d be unlikely that four and a half years of college would come and go without a trace. But I never would have thought that these years would take the kind of toll that they have on my vaunted optimism. Nevertheless, somehow I was so sure that the positive thinking that had previously survived 15-plus years of life in the third world would surely survive a few years in an American college. No matter how difficult things were, there always remained a part of me that saw the proverbial silver lining.

Then came college. And with all the books, papers and assignments came a whole new world of experiences. New people, new ideas, new activities – everything that could not seem more exciting for a 17-year old kid who happens to be an ocean away from Mom and Dad. When I got to Ames, I had just spent the summer in Brooklyn, not exactly the hospitality capital of the modern world. So getting here seemed great – Iowa, where people are still basically good, where everyone smiles and says “please” and “thank you”. It couldn’t possibly get any better; finally my faith in humanity would be vindicated.

As time has gone by, I can’t say that I have seen, as the erudite Mr. Presley might say, a whole lot of vindication going on. I guess I always thought this generation – my generation – would rise to the challenge of making the world a little better. Yeah, I know it sounds sappy and cliched, but I guess that was my optimism thinking for me.

I have now come to the conclusion that one of two things was the case at that point:

1. I was very naive.

2. I was an idiot.

I’m leaning quite heavily toward the latter, especially since my thinking never had anything to do with my inability to see that the world could often be a cold, hard place. I guess I was just stupid enough to believe it didn’t have to be, that most people could, and would, do their little bit. So now here’s what I see – wars that no longer start by official declarations, but by suicide bombings and crashing planes into buildings. Segregation and discrimination are legally no more, but every time I get that strange uneasy glance or hear that uncomfortable nervous laugh, I can be assured some things never change.

And when an ATM completes my withdrawal in every aspect except the part where I get cash, I can feel safe in my knowledge that the credit union will surely tell me that the transaction has been completed, and as far as my $80 is concerned I’m just pretty much SOL. As time goes by, I will see further erosion of my optimism, until it finally goes the way of the dinosaur, disco music and Bruce Willis’ hairline.

Life sucks, and then you die. In the meantime you get sneered at, get bitten by mosquitoes, stung by bees, get the flu, and if you’re one of the lucky ones, someone in some alley will conk you upside the head with a piece of rubber hose and take your wallet. And of course, you get to pay your taxes. But who knows, maybe someday we’ll all hold hands and run through a meadow into the sunset, as white doves fly overhead . yeah, right.

And so I herby adopt a new philosophy to keep my sanity in what a good friend of mine once described as “society with a capital `S'”:

Do everything you can,

To dupe everybody you can,

All the times that you can.

Inasmuch as you can,

Convince your baser instincts,

That you have done,

The most self-serving, sleazy, conniving,

Two-faced debauchery you can.

Emeka Anyanwu is a senior in electrical engineering from Ames.