A recent Pew poll of 1,002 adults found that over 50 percent of people in the United States could not answer five questions correctly about local and global current events. You can take the quiz yourself to see how you fare (http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/the-news-iq-quiz/)...

I decided to take the quiz, and ended up getting nine correct, out of 12, which wasn't great, but I found myself in the upper echelon of quiz takers  -- 86th percentile to be exact. So, what does this make me? A well-informed inhabitant of the world? I don't think so. There is no reason that a person should get a question wrong on this quiz. After all, these are events that affect people around the world, and whether they directly impact us or not, they are still pertinent to our lives. Then I thought about it some more, and I've reached an entirely different conclusion.

The questions asked in the quiz are important. Certainly much more meaningful issues than what Kim Kardashian wore the other night, the semi-nude Nick Jonas photos, and certainly more important then the name of Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis' baby. Sadly, the aforementioned occurrences are what regularly make the news. And, furthermore,  relevant news pieces are tarnished with opinion of some self-proclaimed analyst or expert. The actual reporting of pertinent world and domestic issues is sub-par at best, and the mediocrity shows in low ratings. But news shouldn't be about ratings. It should be about informing the people of the United States about what is going on in the U.S. and around the world. 

Let's say we do watch the news on a regular basis. What news stations would we pick from? The big three are CNN (moderate), MSNBC (liberal), Fox News (conservative). In my opinion, it is difficult to surmise which one is worse than the other. CNN manages to report every news story with suspense or added, and unnecessary, effects and visualizations. MSNBC can't tell a story without shoving a hearty dose of liberal agenda along with it. And Fox News, which may be the worst of them all, actually takes regular events and somehow seems to tie them into being anti-American or anti-Obama. Take this coffee "debacle," for instance.

So what do we, as Americans, do? I have two solutions to the issue at hand. First, a fix that has recently worked for me has been making my browser homepage an international, unbiased news website. Even, if upon opening your internet browser, you navigate to another web page, there is still the fraction of a second in which you could see an important news headline. Something like this is enough to become more informed about the world around us.

Reputable news organizations that broadcast worldwide events through talented journalists are the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and Al-Jazeera. If you automatically linked the latter with some terrorist organization, then you can see what American media has already done, and the dire need to fix an issue that has been affecting many of us for quite some time.

Finally, on a broader scale, we as Americans must revisit what we find important in our society. There are reasons for why there are more headlines about a black man shooting a white girl, rather than a black man helping a white girl. It is not that the former happens more often than the latter, but rather that the former is just reported more often.

Things do not have to be the way they are. We, as college students, have the power to determine our future. We can decide what is really important in our lives. The few of you who read this article are obviously the few who want to work towards a better tomorrow. The way to do this is to become globally aware and resist the vanities of the world. Fight for the causes that you are passionate about and develop thoughts on issues that you can call your own.

At the end of the day, there is only so much that we can do to better the world around us. And to better the world, we must better ourselves first.