I’m going to take a leap here and guess that you, like me, want to change the world, right? Humans seem to have an innate calling toward social justice and improvement. We seek a purpose and believe that if we could only bring the rest of humanity closer to this hypothetical improvement, we would be fulfilled. Many of us want to align our behaviors with our Feminist values and we hope to spread positivity and encourage women and intersectionally marginalized people worldwide. As college students, with tiny budgets and tight schedules, it can feel limiting and hopeless to be a Feminist. How can I enact change and advocate for the Feminist movement from my dorm room? I’m going to share a radically simple way to eliminate this fear of inactivity.
Feminism centralizes the importance of providing equal opportunities for all people. In order to implement these opportunities for marginalized groups of people, we have to first acknowledge and accept our privileged opportunity to receive a college education. Feminist poet Adrienne Rich’s essay, “Claiming an Education,” outlines this idea of taking responsibility for your education as a political statement. Specifically, this concept distinguishes between passively “receiving” an education and actively “claiming” an education.
The act of claiming your education is as simple as you make it. Claiming your education means maximizing your learning experience. It takes hard work and opening yourself up to failure. You can no longer bask in the ease of passivity. You must find passion in learning and seek answers to questions that no one has ever asked before. It was not so long ago that American women were prohibited from partaking in an education and in many parts of the world women and minorities are still persecuted in the pursuit of learning. The true history of oppression against women, various religions, indigenous peoples, and members of the LGBTQ+ community are still hidden from many curriculums. We can no longer sit ignorantly, complaining about our homework and skipping the classes that we have worked so hard to be welcomed into. We need to turn our own educations into foundations for opening up the classroom to those still on the margins. We must take responsibility for our own lives if we have any intention of improving the lives of those around us and those to come after us.
Claiming your education means enrolling in classes that challenge you, not merely by the level of their academic rigor, but by the conflicts they pose against your ignorance, your laziness, your passivity. Take these classes and read these books about race, religion, women’s history, gender and queer theory and more. Furthermore, encourage your friends, the ones who shudder at the word “Feminism” to take these classes. True global change will be born out of the masses finally realizing that history has a much more complex narrative than the single-story we are born into.
Claiming your education means implementing a feature of curiosity in all aspects of our life. It means reading books, exploring nature, and questioning humanity and our place in this world, in this universe on a rudimentary level. As Rich puts it, “Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions – predigested books and ideas, weekend encounters guaranteed to change your life, taking “gut” courses instead of ones you know will challenge you, bluffing at school and life instead of doing solid work, marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation.”
Take your education seriously, and the education system will take you seriously. You will not change the world while you are still a prisoner to your fear of failure. You will not change the world while you are still walking meekly in the shadows of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Simone de Beauvoir, Bell Hooks, and all the Feminists, past and present, who have fought for your education. You will never change the world if you believe that there is nothing new to learn, or that you are not responsible for learning it.