Caitlin Robinett ’10 was a top ten finalist in a contest to go on a reporting trip with New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who created the contest "to take a university student on a reporting trip to Africa, partly because I thought the student’s blogging and videos would be an effective way to reach out to other young people." Below is the transcript from Robinet’s video entry. You can also read the New York Times announcement or view Caitlin’s video entry.
Ruined for Life
By Caitlin Robinett, Santa Clara Law Class of 2010
I had a communication professor that used to say, "A fish in the water can’t describe the sea." I learned that lesson when I was 14 years old and traveling to Vietnam with my high school marching band.
We were visiting an English school that I remembering being painfully white. There were white walls, white floors. It made the few red symbols of communism on the walls seem abrasive. At first meeting, the girls didn’t seem much different than me. They were nervously clucking around in their uniforms of plaid skirts and knee-high socks.
When I was leaving, a little girl gave me a small paper crane. It wasn’t fancy or even particularly well done. But what she said was beautiful.
"It’s my one wish that this crane could fly back to America with you and see freedom."
It blew my mind.
I didn’t know who I was before then. I couldn’t have. I had no perspective of where I came from or reason to question my prescribed values. I wasn’t supposed to be there to affect lives in any way. I wasn’t there as a missionary or aids worker. I was there because I could play the piccolo solo in The Stars and Stripes Forever. But I had received a glimpse into her world and it was so different from my own, that I knew I would spend my life wanting to learn more.
It wasn’t just freedoms that I had been taking for granted, but everything around me. My daily hot showers, even my law school loans are things that young women in other countries don’t get to experience. I live in a place where I can publicly disagree with my government while there are women in the world who can’t privately disagree with their husbands at home.
As I got older, I began to desire more and more to tell people’s stories. I was an editor for my high school newspaper. In undergrad, I studied journalism, and now I am the Editor-In-Chief of the paper at my law school. In my mind, law and journalism are closely related. They are both about truth and they are both about people.
I need to go on this trip, not only for the little girl in Vietnam but for my friends back home. I’m tired of being told that my generation is apathetic, because the people I know want to help. We’re being fed reality shows and manufactured musicians, but we’re ready for truth. If you pick me to go on the trip with Nick, I won’t be the only one sharing in the experience. I will be there to be the eyes and ears of the next generation of change.
I entered journalism and the finally law because I want the tools to be a voice for the voiceless. I want to make a difference for the most people possible. But simply, much more simply than this, I want to go on a trip with Nick, because I want to tell the stories that are waiting to be heard.
As a wise man once told me, in traveling to the third world, you have your heart broken, you fall in love, and then you’re ruined for life.
I think it’s time that more from my generation were ruined. And I want to help.
