Lotus Fest revelation

The timing of this column is all wrong.
 
I’m writing to tell you to go to Lotus Fest. Unfortunately Lotus Fest is finished.

I’m also writing to tell you about all of the things that I think you should do before you graduate, but I’m not a senior. I am not graduating anytime soon, and this isn’t May.
But I am a junior, and I confess that I went to Lotus Fest for the first time last weekend. It was incredible. It was exciting.

It was three years too late.

The Lotus World Music and Arts Festival is one of the many incredible opportunities I had no idea about when I signed up to go to college in the middle of the Midwest. I danced to a Brazilian pop band, sang along with a group from South Africa and jumped up and down to a Mexican ska group.

It was so incredible I just couldn’t let you miss it. Even though I already did.
Lists like this always appear at the end of the school year when it is easy to regret but difficult to go out and change things. Or they come out during the first week of school when everyone is too blindsided by the prospect of all the opportunities to actually make it to some interesting event.

But now it is week five. First papers are due and midterms are looming. Whatever dedication we all had to becoming culturally aware is buried somewhere beneath a pile of homework.

The last thing that you want to hear is that you should take three hours away from your precious non-school-soiled time to attend something educational. I understand.

But I’m going to tell you anyway: Go to Lotus Fest and the Fourth Street Art Festival. Oh, and also see a concert at the Musical Arts Center.

The problem with education is that it often gets in the way of learning. In our attempt to keep our grades up, to pass our classes and to squeeze in that extra minor, we often do it at the cost of other culturally enriching opportunities.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: Education doesn’t have to come wrapped up in lecture hall with a $30,000 price tag attached to it. It happens everywhere; we just have to look up from our textbooks every once in a while to see it.

Educating happens in the middle of Fourth Street while a band shouts about the Zapatistas. It happens over dinner at Little Tibet, or during intermission of a theater department show.

Here is what you must do:

Spend an hour at the Lilly Library smelling old books. Walk through the IU Art Museum. Go see an opera at the music school, and while you are at it, see a ballet, too.

There are so many incredible things to see and do and learn that I couldn’t wait to tell you about. So get going and doing and seeing. May is an awful time to realize all the things that you missed.