March 1, 2016
Read time : 5 min

Thinking back to the time that I joined this competition, I can honestly say that my views on the significance of the national debt and its impact on our generation have been greatly intensified. When I first joined, I was in the same boat as many other college students my age, even business or economics majors – I knew about the national debt and how it has been discussed extensively in the news, but I did not know specifically how massive it was or how quickly it has risen to current levels, and continues to rise.

Around the start of this competition during the fall semester, I was not very involved in my team’s efforts to promote this campaign. I attended meetings and listened to the input of my teammates, but I didn’t feel that the competition was something that I needed to focus my time and energy on. I thought that I could just say that I was a member of this team and that I helped organize events for the competition while not considering how many students I was reaching nor the impression I was trying to leave on them, and that would be enough. I realized quickly on the day of My Two Cents Day (MTCD) that I was mistaken, and I in fact needed to contribute more than I had already, a lot more.

MTCD was a great success for our campus in many ways. Not only did we reach out to more than 1,500 students passing by in the atrium of the business school, but we also had several members of the team and even fellow members of our Net Impact chapter visit a few classes across campus that each had more than 100 students (at least one class had more than 500). I had a brief overview of statistics concerning the national debt in the morning and early afternoon of MTCD, but as I learned more and witnessed firsthand how many students were curious about the message we were trying to convey, I became more convinced of the reality of that message myself. It was truly inspiring to hear from several professors and even a Penn State alum who was just visiting campus that day and discovered that she had been visiting on MTCD. This knowledge further convinced me of how this information is of interest to people of every demographic and age category.

As we wind down this competition, I remember how I used to think about the national debt and how it seemed impossible to resolve, but I also know that increasing awareness of the gravity of this issue is paramount. As Nelson Mandela stated, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” If we want to inspire a new generation of thoughtful and creative leaders, then we must first increase their knowledge of various issues (like this one) and allow them to pursue a path to resolving those issues in whatever way they see fit. That is how we will provoke new ways of thinking and creating an overall plan which will turn this economy around and lead us toward the stability and security that we seek.