Yes, Seniors, the last year has brought you unexpected challenges during a time when you are figuring out who you are and what you want your future to look like. You are heading out into a world that has changed, but the trajectory of that change is not out of your hands. I have seen what you are capable of. I have seen your compassion and concern for others. I have seen your creativity and desire for a better future. I have seen your passion and I’ve watched you march for change.
How Will We Handle Our Next Crisis?
I’m interested in healing the wounds, a healing that can only happen if we actually learn from the past this time. I really don’t want to fear the next pandemic. I don’t want to fear the next crisis. I want to be able to trust that my fellow citizens will look out for each other and not just their own interests. I want to believe that more of us understand that we are interdependent and that this interdependence makes us stronger, not weaker. I want to believe that we are better than our social media accounts say that we are.
We Don’t Have to Fear Progress
It was a simpler time. In an era before a global pandemic that turned our lives upside down, before the […]
Our Job As Citizens Doesn’t End In the Voting Booth
We have to stop depending on our politicians to make our country better. Yes, there are big things that we individual citizens are not capable of doing on our own, but this is our country. We don’t have to wait for others to make it a better, more equitable place for all of us.
The Things I Lost in Four Years
And yet, as difficult as the last four years have been, they have also refined me. It has been painful and uncomfortable and full of loss, but I am a better person than I was four years ago. I believe that we can be a better and stronger country despite what the last four years have thrown at a lot of us. As a country we were able to ignore and deny many of the problems that have plagued us since our birth, but now we are forced to face those problems head on.
Still Holding Onto “Hope”
Through all of this, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting. For the first time in a long time I started to understand the meaning of Advent. The waiting, the hoping, the longing for something better while sitting in the darkness. I took time I didn’t have at the end of a semester to start writing an Instagram post a day for Advent, each day on a different word. It’s been the most reflection I’ve done during Advent in a long time, and it brought me back to my word for the year, “hope.”