What I Guessed
I grew up in a house that was in the middle of a predominantly white neighborhood and was surrounded by politics. Four congressmen and three senators live in my neighborhood, and my dad is the Sergeant at Arms of the House of Representatives. While my sister works under Laura Bush, clearly, politics are a huge part of my life.
Because I live in a city with such a minor AIDS problem compared to Washington D.C., it is relevant for me to study their AIDS problem. Although, it is so hard to draw the line since Alexandria is so close to D.C. and the same people commute everyday to both places.
Washington was my second home and I felt as though I knew everything about the political world. Yet, I never knew about the REAL Washington D.C. To me, when I think of Washington, I think of the Capitol, the White House, and the Nationals Baseball team. I never knew how naïve I was.
I spent a large part of my senior year studying the affects of education on third world countries. And so, for me, AIDS became a pandemic of the uneducated and the poor. I believed that it was not a problem for our nation. In my A.P. Environmental Science class we studied how education controls not only the high pregnancy rate but also the spreading of STDs and STIs, which led me to believe that only in Africa was there really a problem with AIDS.
