The Coming Storm...

I decided to borrow the audio-book version of “The World is Flat” from the library and rip it onto my iPhone while I had it checked out. It allowed me to listen to the book easily as I walked to school, ran to and from classes, and while sitting in the sea of students during lunch. At first it seemed like a great idea to use my down time to complete a long homework assignment. Chapter two simply discussed the 10 forces that have flattened the world. Shocker. Similarly, the concept of the triple convergence was a yawner, especially from a contemporary 2009 viewpoint. However, when I got to “The Untouchables” and “The Right Stuff” I became a little uneasy. Friedman was beginning to address the issues and problems of the very institution I was walking through. His comments about our sense of entitlement as America’s youth played out in front of my eyes as I listened to students in my classes complain about the difficulty of their projects and assignments. As I continued to listen to the audio-book, I somehow missed the end of chapter seven and went on to “The Quiet Crisis”. This chapter sounded the alarm regarding the shortage of engineering majors in US universities and placed my fears about our deficiencies into panic mode. During the breaks from listening to this grim future, I would overhear my friends talk about the latest celebrity gossip or what parties they were planning for Friday night. Several times it took all the restraint I had not to exclaim “What are you guys doing?! Don’t you know that we don’t have time for fun and games anymore? We are going to be outsourced if we don’t get our act together!” After finishing the book my heart rate walking around campus has decreased about 50 bpm, but I still think we have a lot to do. America can no longer lay claim to worldwide manifest destiny, and the only way we will be successful is through taking advantage of the opportunities that are afforded us while we still can.