March 17, 2020, 3:08PM EST
By now you have all packed and most of you have left the House. Whether here or away, though, all of you are sharing in constantly learning that your surroundings are not guaranteed: you may be staying at a friends because you can’t reach family or your family home is not a safe place to go to. If you’re staying you’ve now learned that you most likely will not be in the same room or House that you currently are.
You are managing trauma on a local and collective level. Please know that this is seen by many and we are doing our very best to respond to you in real time. I remain humbled and grateful for how you all have managed and continue to manage these every-changing times.
I will not insult your intelligence by trying to tell you what the next weeks or months will look like. I don’t know.
Let me say that again: I do not know.
There is an immense power in admitting you do not know.
There is an immense power in responding to someone’s reality and experience with empathy while being transparent about what you can and cannot control.
I will tell you what I do know:
You will be heard and you will receive answers..
You will not like a majority of the answers you get. But this is where we are and the only way out is through.
You will not like what is happening.
But you have faced options you didn't like or didn't want before. All of you have, trust me..
Only this may be the very first time you are learning that the entirety of your life experience is what prepares you, not only your time in Harvard classrooms.
You are the expert on what you have lived through.
Take an inventory of your life and of your Harvard career: what have you done before when faced with what felt to be an impossible question? Can that help you face this current unknown?
Let that be your guiding question in chaos. What is right in front of you that you and only you can touch? Read? Hear? Speak to? Look at?
In these times what is most helpful tends to be what is right in front of you, or below you or above. Let what comes, come.
Teach us.
Check out previous posts on Academics, Coping and Current Events. Always make time to laugh!