By Nour Majdalani | Staff Writer
It’s 8 in the morning and you’re stuck in traffic. The anxiety of being late to your class surpasses that of emptying your “half-a-salary’s worth” gas tank on stolen time. Your phone’s battery – uncharged and quickly depleting as a result of the frequent outages – buzzes and at this point, you’re not surprised about seeing yet another notification signaling the rise of the dollar rate. All the while, you’re trying to ignore the stress of possibly having to drop out of college next semester since you won’t be able to afford the elevated tuition fees anymore. Is this fair? Is this pressure too much for a university student? The sad truth is that this is the tragic reality of being a Lebanese student amid an economic crisis.
There are two types of Lebanese students: those who have moved abroad for better opportunities, and those who have watched their friends move abroad for better opportunities. It’s hard to believe that one is living in a situation like this, especially students at such a stage in their lives. The stage in which a person attends college is often considered as their golden days, their prime time, their peak, and not a period of high anxiety and struggle to make ends meet before outside forces, which lie completely out of your control or reach, force you out of the system.
Thus, this is not living! It’s hard enough to hear your parents rant about how Lebanon is a black hole or a leech that sucks every last bit of potential and ambition out of you. It’s hard to see the people who have tried their hardest and walked through hell multiple times in order to build a bearable future for their kids feel like they haven’t done enough, as if they’ve come short and let you down when in reality, ending up in such a situation is rather inevitable. It’s even harder when you genuinely want to stay, but everything here is driving you away. The worst part of it all is that motivation is pretty much out of the picture. We’ve all seen how employees are getting treated here and how little their salary has become. It’s depressing to see a person with a college degree from the most prestigious university in Lebanon get paid the same amount of money as a person being paid less than the minimum wage in other countries – for example, the minimum wage of a few hours worked in the US equates a full month’s salary here. That being said, a “well-paid” employee here would never be able to make it in the outside world at this rate, that is, their current possessions would only support a few of their basic needs. All things considered, when will this endless cycle of hardships end?
As I’m typing this on my laptop with no electricity at home, hovering over the battery icon every five minutes to make sure it lasts until I’m done writing, I’ve realized that this piece may sound rather pessimistic to the average reader. But the truth is that this is in fact the reality of a Lebanese student. There is no way to sugarcoat this situation as the silver lining has also turned grey. It is okay to look at the facts and feel overwhelmed, it is okay to feel sad about a situation you cannot control. We cannot keep shoving “be positive, spread positivity” in everyone’s face all the time. It is okay to mourn, it is healthy. At the end of the day, all one can do now is hope for a better tomorrow and try to keep their head up for as long as they can.