College graduations are physically and emotionally draining. The days are long – packed with official ceremonies, lists of names read slowly in alphabetical order, and dress shoes filing one by one across the stage. Relatives come to visit, nobody gets enough sleep, and there’s still so much packing to do. To top it all off, you receive a single piece of paper, your diploma, and suddenly everything seems to change. The academic bubble bursts and it’s time to leave the friends who have become like family.

A few days ago I graduated from Northwestern University, and yesterday I said goodbye to one of my best friends. The moments before he left were ordinary: we met another friend at a café; we talked about the GRE exam, subletters and summer jobs; we drove home and listened to pop songs on the radio. Then we hugged and said we’d see each other soon, and I knew we would, but I still had to fight tears as I turned to walk away.

Hours later I sat in my bedroom, resisting a cliché temptation to play Vitamin C’s graduation song as I tried to determine why these goodbyes are so hard for me, even when I know they’re not forever. I’m not sad about losing my friends because I know I won’t – we’ll make an effort to visit each other soon, wherever we end up. I’m sad about losing something greater – the community we created here at Northwestern – because we’ll never again live in the same place at once. We won’t be able to hop in the car for a weekend road trip to Michigan, head to a café for coffee, or go to someone’s apartment for a late night game of cards.

As a student I always considered college in terms of exams and GPA, but lately I’ve been thinking about it much more in terms of community. In many ways, college was the first time I really learned what a community is and why it’s so important. I grew up in a great neighborhood when I was younger, but my parents and family members were my main support network. At Northwestern I had an opportunity to live with people who were my age, had similar interests and were going through many of the same challenges. Away from my family and home, I made friends and expanded my support network – creating a new family and a new home for myself, which is what I think community means.

Northwestern’s commencement speaker this year was Stephen Colbert, an alumni and TV sensation who entertained us with stories about his own time at Northwestern. In between jokes, he slipped in a serious message about community that I found quite compelling. He spoke about his move to Chicago and the beginning of his improv career with Second City.

“Now, there are very few rules to improvisation, but one of the things I was taught early on is that you are not the most important person in the scene. Everybody else is. And if they are the most important people in the scene, you will naturally pay attention to them and serve them. But the good news is you’re in the scene, too, so hopefully to them you’re the most important person, and they will serve you. No one is leading. You’re all following the follower, serving the servant. You cannot win improv.

And life is an improvisation. You have no idea what’s going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along. And like improv, you cannot win your life – even when it might look like you’re winning. I have my own show, which I love doing, full of very talented people ready to serve me. And it’s great. But at my best, I am serving them just as hard, and together we serve a common idea – in this case the character Stephen Colbert, who it’s clear isn’t interested in serving anyone. And a sure sign that things are going well is when no one can really remember whose idea was whose, or who should get credit for what jokes (though naturally I get credit for all of them).

But if we should serve others, and together serve some common goal or idea – for any one, what is that idea and who are those people? In my experience, you will truly serve only what you love, because as the prophet says, service is love made visible. If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself, and you will have only yourself. So no more winning. Instead, try to love others and serve others, and hopefully find those who love and serve you in return.”

These past few months, I’ve been consumed with worry about finding a job and being successful in “the real world.” But now that graduation is over, as I scour the job postings and start my applications, I can only think about my friends. I’m worried about moving to a new city by myself and trying to build another support network, worried about starting over from scratch.  I still want to be successful, sure, but more than that I want to live with a close group of friends. As Colbert recommends, I want to love and serve others, to find others who love me in return.

So for now I sit in a mostly empty room and imagine moving away. I forbid myself from playing Vitamin C’s graduation song but can’t help looking through old photo albums of my friends. And I wonder why I never realize until the very end just how important a person or place has been to my life. Why is it always the night before moving day, amidst packed boxes and blank walls, that I suddenly understand what it means to have a home? Why is it in the ordinary moments before goodbye, driving in the car with pop songs on the radio, that I feel how wonderful it is to have a friend?

As a college student I became part of a community, and as a college graduate I know I’ll miss that community dearly. As I move forward into the real world I’ll try to keep my friends close, and I can only hope that I’ll remember to appreciate how much they mean to me while we’re still together.

Can art change the world?

That’s what street artist JR asked himself last year when the TED conference said it would award him a $100,000 prize to change the world. A photographer from Paris, JR has made a reputation for pasting giant photographic portraits on urban surfaces like buildings, trains, bridges and rooftops. Working mostly in poor neighborhoods such as the slums of Kenya and the favelas of Brazil, he befriends local residents and uses them as models for his public art projects, which tell stories of the downtrodden or voiceless.

JR in Action - From Ted.com

Of course, JR is not your typical community do-gooder. The photographer – who only goes by his initials because his work often involves criminal trespassing – got his start as a 15-year-old graffiti artist, writing his name on Parisian rooftops with a few good friends. After finding a cheap camera on the subway, he decided to document their graffiti adventures – taking photos, making photocopies and plastering them on building walls. “The city was the best canvas I could imagine,” he told audience members during his TED talk in March.

Eventually, JR turned his artistic focus outward and began to document other people.  In the past few years he has plastered colossal portraits of Parisian thugs in bourgeois French neighborhoods; juxtaposed images of Palestinian and Israeli faces on security fences in the Middle East; and showcased photographs of dignified women in areas of conflict, places where females are often targets of violence.

Today his work is spreading, and with funds from his TED prize, JR is getting more people involved. Through his Inside Out Project, he invites people to send him their own photographic portraits so he can enlarge them and mail them back. In Tunisia, participants pasted portraits on billboards that used to boast images of their former dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.  In Brooklyn, photographs of 11 immigrant shopkeepers are displayed on uneven steps in Parks Slope, protesting a nearby development project that is forcing them out of business.

Before I Die - from candychang.com

Brooklyn’s Inside Out installation is just one of many interesting public art projects in the United States right now. In Boston, artist Tim Devin hangs posters on phone poles and other public fixtures to feature poetry, demographic data (like income level by neighborhood), or community-driven questions (“Do you identify with where you live?”). In New Orleans, artist Candy Chang transformed an old abandoned house into a giant chalkboard on which locals can write what they hope to achieve in their lifetimes. Called “Before I Die,” her art project has drawn a wide variety of response – like “I want to live in another country,” “go 200 mph,” “finish school,” or “tell my mother I love her” – helping people see what matters most to their neighbors.  (Visit Chang’s website to see her other art projects, including the Hypothetical Development project I blogged about a few months ago).

So from oversized portraits to posters and chalkboard houses, can art change the world? Can it change our communities? “Art is not supposed to change the world [or] change practical things,” said JR in his TED talk. But, he added, “It changes perceptions.” Posted on rooftops, stairs and walls, his enlarged photographs force local residents to confront uncomfortable questions about gentrification, discriminations and poverty, and they create a powerful statement about the community’s identity for passing visitors. They also give people with little money or power an opportunity to attain their own creative agency – not just viewing the art, but making it themselves.

Whatever form it takes, I think public art can give us a better understanding of the communities we inhabit, the people we share them with, and our potential to connect with one another. “What we see changes who we are,” said JR. “And when we act together, the whole thing is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Samantha Michaels is a senior at Northwestern University with a double major in journalism and international studies. A Chicago native, she hopes to become a foreign correspondent or travel writer someday, and during college has tried to see as many new places as possible.

You can read her posts on State of the Re:Union’s website every other Wednesday.

Gedun Gyatso is a college student just like me, but he can’t go home during his school vacations. A 22-year-old Tibetan with spiky black hair, he has lived in Delhi, India for the past year, studying English at a local university. But his home is far away – across the Indian border in Tibet, where his family lives in a small nomadic village. “I have seven family members, and I’m the youngest one,” he told me. “I was alone on my way to refuge in India. I came here by myself.”

This Monday marked the 60th anniversary of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, an important day for Gedun and more than 100,000 Tibetans who have become refugees in India since then. After the Chinese government took control of their homeland 60 years ago, many of them left for cultural and religious freedom – fleeing as Chinese officials burned down Buddhist monasteries, captured Buddhist monks and began imprisoning people for even possessing a portrait of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader.

I met Gedun last summer when a friend and I went to India with a grant from our university. We were there as journalists, documenting how Tibetan students throughout the country are using education to preserve their culture in exile, and we spoke with more than 50 Tibetan refugees. Many said they had attended Chinese schools back in Tibet, with Chinese teachers who never talked about Tibetan history or culture. “If somebody asked me, ‘What is Tibet? Why are you saying, ‘Free Tibet’?’ I’m sure that I wouldn’t have had an answer or an explanation,” Gedun remembered.

Risking everything for a better education, some students left Tibet as young children and came to India without their families. Others said they were born in exile as second or third generation refugees, so they have never even had an opportunity to visit their homeland. Yet despite their different backgrounds, many of these students grew up together in small Tibetan villages scattered around India, receiving free housing and an education thanks to a nonprofit organization called Tibetan Children’s Villages. Living like brothers and sisters, they finally learned about the Tibetan language, Buddhism and their native culture.

Although I returned from India many months ago, the 60th anniversary has brought on a flood of memories, and I can’t stop thinking about these Tibetan students. Just weeks from my own college graduation, I can relate to them in some ways, but I can’t imagine how hard it would be to say goodbye to my family and my country forever, coming of age in a community in exile.

I tend to think about community as a fixed geographic location – perhaps a neighborhood or even an entire nation, a region we can pinpoint on a map. But the Tibetan situation forces me to consider a wider definition of community, not only as a geographic location but also as a social phenomenon – a collection of people with a shared language, religion and history. Is it possible for a community to survive without both elements, lacking either a land or culture of its own?

The geographical aspect of community clearly matters, and when Tibetans spoke about the Chinese occupation, I could sense a deep note of sadness and longing in their voices. Yet as I traveled throughout India, I saw that they have somehow managed to stick together and preserve a very unique culture thousands of miles from home. In fact, I believe their status as refugees in a foreign land has forced them to create even stronger communal ties.

In Delhi, for example, Gedun says the Tibetan students at his youth hostel have become like a makeshift family of brothers and sisters. Since he’s the only Tibetan at his university, he looks forward to returning to them every night after class. Still, he thinks often of his biological family and his Tibetan homeland.  “I really want to go back to Tibet, but it’s dangerous,” he says.  Instead, he plans to give back to his people by getting a law degree in India. “I want to fight for the justice,” he said.

Growing up in exile, it seems, has given him the means and the drive to help a community that transcends national borders. “There’s a big hope from my own society, that this generation will do something,” he told me. “We cannot let these hopes and these wishes wash away.”

This post includes excerpts from a forthcoming article that Samantha and her reporting partner, Ashley Lau, hope to publish about Tibetan youth and education in India.

Samantha Michaels is a senior at Northwestern University with a double major in journalism and international studies. A Chicago native, she hopes to become a foreign correspondent or travel writer someday, and during college has tried to see as many new places as possible.

You can read her posts on State of the Re:Union’s website every other Wednesday.

The Bicycle: A Building Block for Communities?

In the Chongwe District of Zambia, Fred used to spend a lot of time on foot. A volunteer caregiver for HIV/AIDS patients in rural communities, he lacked access to a car but needed to visit his patients two to three times a week, and they often lived about 20 kilometers apart.  Life changed dramatically when he received a bicycle from a non-profit called World Bicycle Relief; with the power of his new wheels, Fred could make his rounds much faster, visiting twice as many patients in a given week.

For many Americans, the bicycle is a choice, and we ride for different reasons: to exercise, to reduce our carbon footprint, or simply to get from point A to point B. But last night I watched a documentary called “With My Own Two Wheels” that helped me see how bikes can actually mean so much more – for people like Fred in developing countries, but also for our own communities in the United States.

Source: Ekabhishek from Wikimedia Commons

First shown at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival this February, the documentary weaves together stories of five people, including Fred, who have used bicycles to unlock their potential and give back to their communities. In Ghana, a paralyzed woman named Mirriam escaped the stigma of her disability when she learned to repair bikes in her neighborhood – a valuable skill that allowed her to become self-sufficient and serve as an empowered role model for other Ghanaian women.  In India, a young girl named Bharati needed a bike to continue her education, since her school was too far away and it was dangerous for a girl to walk such long distances without an escort. In Guatemala, a farmer named Carlos founded Maya Pedal and decided to create bike-powered, eco-friendly tools that help rural farmers reduce their footprint on the environment. And in California, a young man named Sharkey escaped gang activity on the streets when he decided to volunteer for an organization called Bici Centro that teaches people how to repair their bikes.

In many ways, the bicycle is a basic tool for development, providing access to jobs, schools and health care facilities for people who otherwise couldn’t get there. It can mean the difference between work and unemployment or between education and illiteracy in developing countries, but as Sharkey’s narrative shows, it can also improve our neighborhoods here in the United States. Although the documentary focuses on bikes, it inspired me to think about transportation on a greater scale, and how it affects the character of our neighborhoods. We don’t all have access to cars, and many of us need good subways, buses or bicycles to get to school or work. Reliable transportation promotes education and employment, but it also allows us to give back to our communities; without access to school, for example, children can’t gain the tools they need to contribute to society someday as doctors or teachers. Reliable transportation connects us to important resources, and it also connects us to each other. In what other ways is a bike not just a bike, but a building block for our communities?

We want to know:

• Would more bike paths or better public transportation improve your community?

• How often do you ride your bike?