I don't know everything**. I don't even know most things. And I am definitely not one to know all aspects of every issue going on in our country. But I am informed. I check a couple of news outlets during the day, I get AP/CNBC/Bloomberg updates on my phone, and I follow a handful of news related Twitter's. And really, I do not feel as if I make an effort to stay informed, it seems more natural to me at this point, I feel I could do so much more to be on top of the issues, read more articles, do more fact checking etc etc. However, over the past few weeks I have realized that I am much more on top of the events in the world/country than many people around me.
Last night my parents, myself, and two of my parents friends went to dinner. The election was on near the bar (Fox News and CNN, now that was an interesting side by side real time account of the events) and I would check it quite often. Towards the end of the night, the place had died down, and I was sitting at the bar, with one other couple and could not help but listen to their conversation. Neither of them really had a clue of how the electoral college worked, and the girl could not grasp the concept. And when I say girl, I mean women over 50, easily. She kept saying "wait...whhhhatttt???" and could not figure out why the vote numbers were so low (aren't there more than 400 people voting?), and then a couple of minuets later, why there was more than 50 (because of course their are 50 states so there should be 50 votes, right?).
The man did a decent job of trying to explain it, well as decent as he could do when he started every sentence with "I don't really know how it works." He didn't know how many votes our state had, and didn't know why some states had more than others. Eventually they asked, I knew. I also knew that we had the most electoral votes, I knew how the number of electoral votes were decided, and I knew that it was not in connection to the Senate.
The they preceded to give me a hard time for "being a nerd" and learning it all in school. I am sorry, what? I think you should have a general idea of how the election works, and how many votes your state has.
Do not be that dumb girl. It is not attractive. Have you heard of Google? Go search something, anything, you are interested in! I am not saying you need to know everything, but have a general idea of what is going on* and form an opinion. I don't really care what your opinion is, but make it an educated one. We live in a time where all of the information you could possible want is at your finger tips, and always with you (I am sure I am not the only one who always has their phone). You may have to read more than one source if you want the full picture, but it is not that hard, or even time consuming.
Being smart is cool. Being educated and aware will make your life so much better. Stop letting it seem cool to be a dumb girl. Just stop. #endrant.
*on a side note: yesterday in the office someone asked what my Thanksgiving plans were, I told them I was going to New York. She said "oh my gosh have you heard about the storm last week? Isn't it awful?" (it took every muscle I had to not let my mouth drop in shock). Um yes, I have heard about it, I did follow it. I have seen almost every photo, kept in contact with everyone I know out there, and have helped as much as I can. She later told me she hadn't heard about it til almost two days after the storm hit the New York/New Jersey area, she hadn't watched any TV for a while. Right, because it wasn't all over everything (including the TV monitors we have in our elevators at the office) and they didn't talk about it before it happened. I just don't get it.
**PS :: I have slight dyslexia, so while I do my best with spelling (thank you again Google!) there are somethings that just slip by.
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