We are now about to enter, for many students, the most stressful part of the semester. As we do, I wanted to offer some words of love, appreciation, and care to all of us. If you’ve been having a difficult time this semester, that’s totally normal. Consistency helps us feel stable and grounded, and this year has been anything but consistent. With constantly changing dynamics around actual physical safety, it’s been hard to stay centered. So, if you’ve been having a rough time — whether that’s a bad week or a bad year — just know it’s totally normal and you’re not alone. I hope you can be gentle with your good heart as you navigate a very challenging situation. The challenge doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you.
We are also so fortunate to have navigated this semester with minimal disruption, and I say that as someone who has borne witness to some pockets of real challenge and some very real losses and hard moments. I feel a deep sense of gratitude to this community for pulling off this year in a way that for the most part preserved an academic year for our students and kept our employees whole. If you’ve felt like you’ve been working hard to do your part in that — whether it be studying for a changed class or working overtime to keep this community functioning — you’re right! You have been working hard. And I hope you can give yourself some measure of pride for having accomplished that under some really challenging circumstances.
Finally, at a time when students are feeling the most pressure, I want to validate that it’s okay to take a break. Rest is the only thing that will help when exhaustion is the problem. I will always encourage students to use the Counseling Center, Student Support in the Dean of Students Office, and the many other wellness resources on campus or in our community. But if you’re exhausted then the only thing that will really address the exhaustion is to take time to rest. If you need to take a break — for a night or a whole semester — that’s ok. Life is not linear. It ebbs and flows, and taking time off is a perfectly acceptable option. Often students are afraid of taking time away, worried that being a semester or a year “behind” will somehow hurt them. As someone who changed his major eight times as an undergraduate and has pressed pause on his career at times, I’m here to validate that it’s okay.
This has been an incredibly challenging year, and as we get close to the end and I want you to know that you are appreciated and loved. A poem I’ve been loving this year is “Invitation to Brave Space” by Micky ScottBey Jones, a justice doula based in Nashville. In it, she has the lines “We will not be perfect. This space will not be perfect. It will not always be what we wish it to be. But. It will
be our brave space together, and we will work on it side by side.
” Those lines captured many of my feelings about this year. We are not perfect, none of us, but we are working together. And the chorus of our individual but interdependent voices, and the collected energy of our actions, has carried us through an incredibly challenging time. Thank you, bless you, and here’s to finding our way to the summer and the paths ahead.