Teacher: So, to get continuing credit for your education, please let the class know what you did in your “gap year” – we had two students in our school take this break, so Sven, you first.
Sven: well, me and a group of friends left Sweden and hitchhiked all though Northern Europe and partied in many cities even hitting the Oktoberfest in Munich for an amazing time. Went to Rome to check out museums / historical sites, came back through France for gambling at Monte Carlo and partying at topless beaches. Caught a flight to Greece to stay in cousin’s pad on the Isles and chilled there for a couple months before drifting back home and hanging out until school began again.
Teacher: Interesting and sounds like a fun experience, educational in a real-world way. How about you Greta?
Greta: Well, the climate change group I founded, Fridays for Future, attracted enough attention to get me invited to some global events. The hard part was getting to the Americas for a New York City United Nations event and then the Global Climate summit scheduled to be held in Santiago, Chile. I don’t fly so I was offered a ride on a racing yacht and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in August as a passenger/crew member, visited Washington, D.C. and chastised USA congress members, went to New York and gave a short speech to the United Nations that went viral and also inspired pop-music & death-metal song versions.
I next travelled across Canada & the USA protesting every Friday in various cities and, oh yeah, the Friday protests I led on Sept. 20 & 27 in DC & New York attracted 7 million or so world-wide participants and was the first protest ever to have events on all the continents of the world (even Antarctica!). I travelled in an electric Tesla that was provided by the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and that was pretty cool. I had a most interesting tour of America by stopping at charging stations in out of the way locations and strolling about, meeting local folks.
I visited an Indian Reservations with Native American friends I met along the way, I was granted a Lakota honorary name, Maphiyata Echiyatan Hin Win, which translates as “woman who came from the heavens” in a cool ceremony. I was honored by a number of other awards and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize but didn’t win that and didn’t accept a few others.
I travelled to California when I found out the Climate Summit in Chile had been moved to Madrid, Spain so after meeting a few Hollywood stars and hanging out a bit, I took a train back across the USA to catch a ride on another sailboat with some You Tube stars and sailed back across the Atlantic Ocean in November. I made it to Spain just after the conference had begun and laid in to world leaders again for their apathy about climate change action.
I was named Time magazine “Person of the Year” which caught me by surprise but I’ve become accustomed to rolling with press attention so I did just that. I finally came back to Sweden to chill with my dogs and family until after the holidays and inadvertently started an argument about over-crowded train travel because of a cancelled connecting train that forced me to sit on the floor for a small portion of my journey. The press kind of exaggerated and made a fight where one didn’t exist but I just rolled with it. Nice to see more people on trains anyway.
As the New Year began, I celebrated my 17th birthday with my family and, as Jan. 3 was on a Friday, I protested again with my sign back in Stockholm. Got a lot more press attention this time – I think my sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and speaking in New York at the Unite Nations may have been more of a publicity boon than I expected. I was invited to speak in Davos at the World Economic Forum for the second time and, due to my new-found celebrity, attracted quite a bit more attention this time when I addressed the rich and famous world leaders in attendance. I rather upset more of these leaders by again pointing out their inaction but for some reason they enjoy being chastised by me. I guess speaking truth to power about the climate crisis is finally generating enough publicity and motivating more folk world-wide to take action so I feel a glimmer of hope after all.
Teacher: Uh, yeah. Full credit for your gap year… (Jaw drop)