From Seniors to Citizens: Do something

Senior spring to social security. On the hill to over the hill. Graduation to... grandchildren? Here’s what seniors have to say before all is said and done. 

Ilana Goldberg, a senior majoring in international relations and Arabic, refuses to take the future for granted. In the short term, that means canvassing for Democratic candidates and attending the GIM for the Sunrise Movement at Tufts. 

“The only job I’m interviewing for is an environmental advocacy fellowship ... We know that we’re headed toward climate disaster, and I have an instinct to drop everything and change that," Goldberg said.

She would love to envision a world in which Tufts University wines and dines her for her 50th reunion: a world in which a holographic Jumbo statue awaits her triumphant return. At the same time, she recognizes that things must change if that is to happen.

"If we’re going to get there, the world is going to have to look fundamentally different than it does right now,” Goldberg said.  

With the fate of our planet at stake, Goldberg feels compelled, quite simply, to “do something.” Goldberg says that she will never pursue medicine. She recognizes that she lacks the proper credentials, but she sounds a lot like a triage doctor when she says, “What do I think is good? What do I think needs doing? In this world, that’s a lot of things.”

Environmental concerns and immigration law top her current list of issues to address, which is why she will probably move onto law school after wrangling over climate change with stubborn politicians for a few years. 

Although Goldberg allows herself to imagine a distant future in which she can dote on an environmentally-sustainable number of grandchildren, she expresses serious reluctance to look past the next decade.

“If you wedge yourself [in]to a future, it’s making plans and waiting for God to laugh at you,” Goldberg said.

Still, she dreams of graduating debt-free from a good law school so that she can enter the impecunious industry of public-interest law. She can foresee herself working for the local or state government at some point, and she definitely doesn’t anticipate making a boatload of money. A job application recently asked her to write about herself as if the year were 2045 and she were featured in her college’s alumni magazine, and she found herself cynically amused by the prompt.

“If I lead my life the way I want to, [I won’t be] making enough money for Tufts to notice me,” Goldberg said. 

To be clear, the year is not yet 2045. Goldberg is not yet “Old Lady Goldberg,” the spirited woman who will still have “something to say.” Goldberg is not even a Tufts alumna.

Here at her soon-to-be alma mater, Goldberg relishes “walking down a street or being in Tower Café or the Rez and people walking by” whom she knows and likes.

Goldberg intends to capitalize on the fact she “go[es] to a university that has a lot of money and that [she’s] still paying money [for]” over the next few months. 

“I’m in no great hurry to leave Tufts, and I’m certainly in no great hurry to leave my friends,” Goldberg said.

When she graduates, she will most assuredly do something meaningful. For now, she still has most of a semester with her friends by her side.