One of those days...

This weekend, after watching Comic Relief, I had this 1st world guilt where I questioned my chosen life path. What's the point of doing a PhD in order to teach posh kids about communications when babies are dying of malaria in Africa every damn day? Why am I not down there right now doing something to help? What good am I doing?

I really don't have any answers for this.

I just donated money, because I couldn't think of anything else to do.

To be honest, most people aren't doing anything either. The Peace Corps currently has 8,655 volunteers serving--which means about 306,997,895 Americans are not in the Peace Corps (obviously there could be people in other organisations, but you can get my point). Most of the time, people are just too damn busy to pay attention to the problems of the world. Day to day demands on their attention, their finances, their sanity, etc. keep them from doing something charitable.

What does this have to do with my PhD? Not much. My research has nothing to do with the plight of developing countries. It's all about privileged kids becoming more privileged through government-funded higher education travel opportunities. There are so many more important things for the government to be spending its money on. A year's tuition for a kid in Kenya is $260. A Fulbright grantee's tuition & living expenses here at Leeds is about 160 times that ($42,000). How disgusting.

I hate myself for researching this now. Thanks a lot, Comic Relief...you've made me disillusioned with my entire project.