In mid-September, Stockton University invited a lecturer to come in and lead a dialogue session on genocide. Being a school that prides itself on its plethora of resources on the topic of genocide, Stockton had many interested students.
It was one of the first dialogue sessions of the year, and so as expected there were many genocide studies students who expressed their interest by going up to the lecturer before he spoke to share common likes and dislikes. I, the Health Sciences major, of course had no idea where to start when it came to genocide studies. Like most others, I’d touched on the Holocaust in grammar school and have since then rarely thought of the topic.
Ignorantly so, I thought the lecture would be solely about the Holocaust, because that was the only act of genocide I knew existed. It turns out, there have been multiple attempts at mass elimination of specific populations over time. I also learned that concentration camps weren’t the only methods used to enact genocide. Most importantly, I learned that, when going to watch a scholar giving a passionate lecture, wearing running clothes is not the best choice to make. It is a small school; the lecturer will see you.
I rushed out of the room as soon as the lecture ended without congratulating the lecturer on his insightful talk, and surely without getting my participation paper signed for honors. I wish I had worn something worthier of that man’s advanced knowledge. I also wish I could tell him that he did an amazing job, and that – I’m sorry – I cannot for the life of me remember his name because all I could think about was the fact that my hooded sweatshirt stood out like a sore thumb in a sea of blazers and polos.
I highly encourage you, good readers, to attend as many holocaust-related dialogue sessions as you can, because you will learn so much more than you had already known. However, please, for your sake and the sake of your self-confidence, dress like you are at a college lecture, not like you’re going to run a marathon.