The bad side of grad school

I'm sitting here at midnight and friends have asked me out for drinks and I'm trapped here under a (so far) 6 hour analysis of a policy-turned-law 10 years ago in the US.

I'm intrigued with the makings of the law, the complex coalition that was grown out of a truly disturbing personal goal of one man. I've read at least 12 different sources that have analyzed the history and outcomes of this law and its process.

I can see with my eyes that I am bigger than the small icons on my laptop. I am a monster in comparison to them. I could eat each little icon as a peanut.

Yet, I am so insignificant in the world. I am a spec on a grain of sand in a millennium of time. I can research this piece of foreign policy and can understand the humanity behind it, the assumptions that made it. But I'm frozen when it comes to the section wherein I'm supposed to make recommendations to change it or improve it or demolish it or convert it. I'm a blip in voices who think they could make a difference. Who do I think I am to recommend anything? As if a year and half of school should give ME the wisdom to make any difference.

The more I learn, the more I know I know nothing.

What recommendations would make any difference? It's one small policy in a world of complexities. It's one 3 billion dollar line item in a budget that can give trillions away to the auto industry. It's one policing policy in a thousand passed over the last 8 years.

I am frozen when it comes to the next step. I could give a 100-page dissertation on how to make things better, to rectify what damage has been done... but I am still coming from my own interpretations, my own background, my own beliefs, my own ideas of what is "better" or my own vision of the future. What good does that do? I am no Gandhi. I am no MLK. I am no Mother Teresa. I am a tiny ant living at the top of a small hill in the marsh of a microscoped country in an itty-bitty continent on a cell of a planet. What strength has my little voice? What change can my Times New Roman font make into the pool of chaos? What's the point? Even if I were to publish the papers on which I write - into one of a million journals - who would care?

I'm finding it interesting to read and understand these policies that we so rarely hear about. That our (US) tax dollars pay for. But I don't even hope to work for the US government. So, who cares? What is the point of all this? Who cares when the more things change the more they stay the same?

Sigh.

..... we now resume with our regularly scheduled programming......