Raising Awareness... of what?

During a particularly stressful semester in college my roommates and I picked up a habit of hoarding large amounts of candy and marathoning episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It was a very effective way to become a sobbing mess almost instantly, thus making upcoming midterms feel petty and insignificant.

We also had to deal with the stress of living in a triple
overcrowd. Wouldn't trade it for the world!

Sometimes we would self-parody those little reality checks by saying the saddest thing we could ever think of - KIDS WITH CANCER! It is truly the most devastating idea in the world to imagine children in massive amounts of pain for *months* without the certainty of achieving milestones like awkwardly dancing at middle school formals, graduating from high school, learning to drive, and falling in love.

So when I saw commercials for St. Jude on TV or people wearing ribbons to raise awareness I was sort of confident that I was part of the choir they were preaching to. Sure, I was anti-cancer. I definitely had strong positive feelings for cancer charities and if I were not a poor starving college student I would inevitably do something to contribute... when I got around to it.