Posted on: Sunday, August 29, 2004

COMMENTARY

By Molly Tafoya

"Ho, so cold up ovah deah, yeah?" was what I heard all of Christmas break.

I had just come home from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., my first time back in four months, and the withdrawals were severe. At one point during finals week, I had streaming audio of KCCN-FM 100.3 blasting Ho'onua into the hallways of my dorm, Village C West, and friends from around the world coming in to yell at me to turn it down.

Those Jersey boys just don't get it. So instead of studying for my Spanish final, I watched the snowflakes fall behind the superimposed reflection of my new self in the glass, and refocused on Hawai'i; the Hawai'i that I had consciously and anxiously left behind in search of greater opportunities.

I always hated referring to college as the quest for greater opportunities, because, by implication, that meant that Hawai'i has nothing to offer me. Honestly, though, that's exactly how I felt at graduation. It would be nothing but a relief to get out of here, and finally see the "real world."

Hawai'i as a kind of "real world" was never a tangible concept to me until I had to defend it against the East Coast attacks. "Well, you never really had to suffer, you were living in paradise. ... Welcome to the real world," my peers would say.

The condescension made me sick, and the egocentrism only solidified my roots in "paradise." Through my courses, centered mainly on political science, I discovered that most of my expertise was not in my knowledge of the abolitionist movement during the Civil War, or my analysis of the failure of Wilson's 14 points, both areas that I thought myself pretty well informed about.

Instead, I realized quite quickly that in comparison with the countless valedictorians and boarding-school alums, I am not as intelligent as I would have hoped. That's fine. I needed to be humbled, and I appreciate the experience. But I began to doubt myself.

Finally, in the context of my United States Political Systems course, your typical freshman government requirement, I connected with a topic that brought me home again. I wrote my 15-page research paper on Native Hawaiian recognition and the implications that it would have on Hawai'i.

My professor, with a doctorate in political science, had never heard of it. Here was an opportunity to use my upbringing in Hawai'i, and set myself apart from all the star students. The other students in my class, international and American alike, had a difficult time comprehending the basic issue of federal recognition.

I had found my niche, and it felt good.

I wanted to reconnect with Hawai'i, and for some reason, the month I spent researching in the darkness of the first floor at Lauinger Library made the miles disappear, and I was back home again.

Calling Sen. Daniel Akaka and Rep. Ed Case was the most daunting aspect of this process. But as soon as I heard the local accents of their staff people, I relaxed. There were Hawai'i people in D.C. with me, a quarter of the way around the world from home. I had allies!

After receiving all of the information I needed, the conversation turned inevitably to the "Who do you know?" game. In turn, I offered a link back to Hawai'i and familiarity. In short order, I gathered the priceless data needed to write a paper I could be proud of. Honestly, it was the easiest paper I have ever written, and the easiest A I've ever received.

As soon as I handed in that paper, I began to search for other opportunities to share what I knew from growing up in Hawai'i.

The "greater opportunity" that I had sought after graduation was now staring me in the face, and though it took me a year, and 8,000 miles to realize it, Hawai'i is what I know, and love, best.

And now — lucky me — I get to share it with everyone else.