Okay, yes, I enjoy a long shower and a big meal and I sometimes (okay…often) get aggravated over a spilt drink or a hole in my shoe or a virus on my computer.

But the same thing calms me down every time: I just remind myself that I have water and a pair of shoes… and yes, even a computer.

Then I remind myself that I’m in college. And what the hell could be better than that?

We get lost sometimes in our little worlds here at the University, and I think we are all long overdue for a reality check.

If you don’t think you are, forgive me.

If you never take more food than you can eat or don’t buy a new pair of shoes every year or don’t get a little frustrated when you’ve been standing in line at Burger Studio or Hawk’s Nest for a half hour, then you win – this doesn’t apply to you.

Let’s face it: we joke around saying “first world problems” but not actually considering how offensive our daily actions can be to some people around the world.

If everyone lived the way Americans did, we would need five Earths to provide for the world’s population. The U.S. makes up five percent of the world’s population but uses 30 percent of its resources.

I mean it’s not entirely our fault. We’ve grown up in a world where things have been handed to us and so we take these things for granted and keep asking for more.

I’m not saying phones and computers and cars have been handed to us – I know that a lot of us had to work “hard” to acquire these amenities for ourselves. But these aren’t the essentials.

I’m talking about water and shoes. No matter what stage of life you were at, no matter what financial situation your family was in, I can guarantee that you had access to water and shoes if you are in college right now.

Reality check: Over 300 million children around the world don’t have shoes. That’s the population of our entire country. Imagine our entire country without shoes.

Reality check: 783 million people in the world don’t have access to clean water. So all those times you’ve refilled your cup at Commons and then only drank half of it… well, you get my point.

I think maybe, just maybe, it’s time we reevaluate our daily routine.

Things that we do on a regular basis are seen as extravagant to the majority of the world’s population.

One of my professors told me that when her friend from India first came to the United States and walked into a grocery store, she had to rush out of the store immediately because she was so overwhelmed. She had never come close to seeing so much food in one place before.

It’s not just food and water we take advantage of. Here we are, sitting around in a library full of books, complaining about this paper due at the end of this week or this test we have tomorrow.

I’m sure a twenty-year-old in India or China or Brazil would be overjoyed at having just one book in front of him or her.

I know damn well that if he or she could read and write, he or she would not be complaining about it.

And he probably wouldn’t waste the time he could be spending on his education watching TV or scanning Facebook.

I consider myself appreciative of my education, but I would be the first to admit that I frequently complain about how much work I have certain weeks throughout the semester.

So my counterpart from India or China or Brazil who has not been as fortunate as I probably wouldn’t want to be my friend because he would be ashamed by how ungrateful, selfish, entitled and lazy I am. That makes me so, so, so unbelievably sad.

I’m trying to change. It’s hard to change for the better in a world that keeps inventing technologies that make us worse.

It’s hard to be grateful some days when it seems like nothing is going your way.

But every time I stub my toe or have a headache or get mad at someone for talking in the library, I’m a little less mad than last time.

Try to remind yourself of this: “simple” for us might refer to a flip phone or dial-up internet while “simple” for other people is a cup of water a day and a pair of shoes to last ten years.

We are in college. What more could we ask for?