Cynicism and Hope

I’m doing my homework!

Yep, I’m back in school. When I visited the beautiful University of Notre Dame bookstore with my mom during a recent weekend getaway, I was drawn to the section with stacks of books for classes. I lovingly gazed at the titles then sadly left the forbidden fruit behind. There was no way I could afford to go back to school.

But now I’m a graduate student in public policy at Loyola! (Just a student-at-large this term; GREs and acceptance by the department are between me and the degree track.)

The reason I can afford to go to school is ironic: I was running into potential complications with my application for health insurance on the private market, and I desperately didn’t want to delay my departure from my job and my planned return to freelancing. Then it dawned on me: if I’m a student, I can buy into the student insurance plan. I did the math:

Tuition + student insurance + $116/month = private insurance premium + monthly contribution to Health Savings Account to save toward the high deductible

So the fruit’s no longer forbidden, and I took a big bite of it tonight.

Well, actually I took a small bite and chewed on it for a very long time. Which made me realize I’m born to be a wonk. Why else would I scribble notes all over this chart of excludable versus nonexcludable and rivalrous versus nonrivalrous goods, mapping out the chaos of health care in the U.S.?

But maybe I’ll turn out to be a wonk of a different color. As interested as I am in public policy, communitarian approaches to societal challenges are just as interesting to me. So today I also contacted a member of a commune here in Chicago to learn more about their approach to health care, and I salivated when she suggested I attend upcoming meetings of the Communal Studies Association.

Also this week I sparred with some really conservative Facebook friends who want teeny tiny government because, they say, it’s the church’s job to care for people. Trouble is, of course, the church isn’t doing its job very well, and that’s not the government’s fault. Attending to the common good is not an either-or proposition to me. The common good requires action by both government and civil society—and by that very peculiar form of civil society that is the community of believers.

There’s no telling where my new education and freelance freedom will take me, but I believe there are clues in this story.