how my major helps keep me real....and sane

this time around, in my last semester at lums mashAllah, i have such diverse courses. maybe i have had such diversity earlier too but this time i can feel the eclectic-ness, if thats a word.
there is one intro level course...hist100...into to historical studies. skipping , rather reserving my comments about the instructor, its nice, fun, typical methodology is being used. evolution is taught, flood becomes a myth, hazrat Nooh (as) 's age becomes controversial, creationism is denied a place and terms of its own. so much so for the preliminaries. i liked the grading scheme though. its also the only course that i dont have cp points in, yet have strong temptations to give my very weighty two cents: evolution as a theory has a huge question mark in contemporary science. i think the instructor needs to share this vital info with the class too.
and then there is agriculture ad food policy. there is not one class that goes and i dont miss farmville or think about it at least. there are tractors, subsidies, red winter wheat, cotton, bt cotton also, tube-wells and farmer's problems, landlords' oppression. all that is interesting for me.
law and economics is dry, initially started well; maybe it will end on a great note too. but for now its a drag. sir loves cars and gadgets, and it shows on him.
i have one literature course in which we do poetry, poems, rhythms, beats, tones, voices, narrator, author, characters, details and descriptions, women, romanticism... all that takes me on a flight to imagination, to another world. escapism maybe an appropriate insert here. you are supposed to let go of your reality, of the stereotypes, generalisations and also sanity, if you wish.
now thats where i have a problem. it sounds fun, and attractive, but that just stays first only during the weekends, then only as long as the class is, and then not even in the class. the duration of its attraction has shrunk for me progressively over time. i like a bit of escapism. but this much? really diff to digest. its always good to imagine , but we are also imagining in one particular direction too here.
my major (econ pol) with personal inclination to pol, lets me remember that while i may want to imagine and escape and watch Honey I Shrunk x y and z Again, there are people dying a few miles away from my beloved city. dying of what? not obesity or heart attacks or heartaches as bollywood would like to reason out, but because they cannot find the friggin' clean water to drink. while we discuss in class that we should read for the sake of reading, for deriving "pleasure" out of reading, i am disgusted at the term "pleasure"...it seems a slap in the face of relief workers and army soldiers rescuing people trapped and almost drowned in the floods.
i also have politics of international terrorism as a course, and while the instructor, or any instructor in the world, may not do justice to a subject matter like this, i like it because we study about hamas, about plo, about israel's insecurity complex, about hezbollah, about taliban, and then relate it with nato, u.n, isi, cia, swat, KP, peshawar, osama bin laden, al-qaeda, and then also with aafia siddiqui, with guantanamo, with mullah omer et al, and all the people who are far from imaginary, and events that are the worst of nightmares.
while i plan to read flannery o'connor's piece, i have a feeling of munafaqat, of hypocrisy and deceit, that i am doing. to myself? no. to a higher Cause, a higher Being, who has created reality and put me in the midst or margin of it to deal with it...while i am too posh to get my hands dirty in the field and do something substantially material for my brothers and sisters whose blood is being shed, whos name is dishonoured, whose religion and cause is snubbed, i can at least read on them. i can atleast remember them, which i cannot while i think conjecture about the neolithic revolution or about a good man who is hard to find.