Miami Student

Issue date: 3/7/08 Section: OpEd Page

We had bought ourselves seats in coach and the next 26 hours on the way to and from Virginia was probably the most stimulating and instructive experience I've had since coming to the upper-middle class mecca of Miami University. At the beginning of the trip, two men on their way to New York City laughed hilariously and rudely for 30 minutes. I guess I wasn't sleeping at 4 a.m. Later, we were hustled into the lunch car by the large black women who really ran the train, seated across from a gentle old couple from West Virginia on their way to visit their daughter in Baltimore. Seeing my sweatshirt, they asked how close my dorm was to the beach.

On the way home, a thin man with a long gray ponytail got on with a battered suitcase. He sat in the seat across the aisle, occasionally getting up to chat with the woman in front of us, who spoke only Spanish. At one point, she leaned over and asked us something about Cincinnati, but six years of French left me speechless. The aging hippy then struck up a conversation with my boyfriend and me, awkwardly-if not touchingly-telling us the story of his own journey. He lived in Arizona, but his father was dying in West Virginia. He was on his way home now, to get some more "dough," and then he planned the ride the rails back out east. It was, he said, the only way to travel. At one point, my boyfriend said something that touched the man as immensely profound. He pulled out a napkin and scribbled incoherently for a few seconds, telling us that his wife was a writer and that he didn't want to forget to tell her.

Thinking back on this trip, clearly lacking the glamour and sex appeal of school sponsored enculturation, I think that maybe the Miami mentality is moving in the wrong direction. A Global Miami Plan? You don't have to "go global" to get the real world under your fingernails. It's out there-in all its stinking, uncomfortable, profound glory-and no one should feel guilty if they can't afford a trip to Istanbul in order to find it.

Like Jude, I felt an acute agony at being shut out from my dreams because of money. It's a feeling that leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth, and it hardens you. However, I am not ashamed of where I come from, and am proud of where I have been. The strange people I met on that train-real people-were all the 'worldly' experience I need.

And now, I know that I too have understanding as well as you-my peers who have "seen" the world. I am not inferior, nor has my education been lacking in perspective. Because, in all reality, you may have seen the Eiffel Tower but do you know of the aging hippy who scribbles quotes on napkins? Do you know of such things as these?

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