Category: Uncategorized

What year are you?

I’m a Junior after this semester – I actually just transferred here this semester.

Oh! Where’d you transfer from?

I transferred from Tidewater Community College in the Norfolk campus.

So what made you want to come to William & Mary?

I’m planning on double majoring in Sociology, with a concentration in Criminology, and International Relations.

Did you always know you wanted to study that, or was it something you discovered along the way?

International Relations was along the way, but I’ve been wanting to do Criminology from when I entered college.

What made you interested in Criminology?

It was a culmination of my experiences of growing up watching way too many crime shows, and starting to have questions of, why did someone do this? Or, why would someone go towards this? And then, the semester before I transferred here, I got really deep in looking into private prisons, recidivism rates, and things along those lines. I looked into the program here, and I was like, wow, this is the place for me.

How has your interest in this subject affected the way you see things today?

I feel like, yes, sometimes people do bad things or seem irredeemable, but our system is very punitive, we punish them after-the-fact, rather than helping someone beforehand who could have lived a completely different life if someone had just reached a hand out. There are some things that need to be changed, like the way we go about our juvenile system. We don’t help them, we say “you did something horrible, you’re going to prison,” and those people that go to prison end up doing the same things when they come out. It’s just a cycle. There’s the mindset of once a criminal, always a criminal – once you do one bad thing.

If you could change one thing about that today, what would it be?

I would say there needs to be more outreach programs for youth, especially, those who are in lower-income schools and neighborhoods, because those are the children that are most likely to be affected by crime and to go down the path of crime. And the one way, surely, to change someone’s life is to give them the opportunities they don’t currently have. The more opportunities you present to them, the less likely they will go down that path and perpetuate the cycle.

Have you had any personal experiences or knew of anyone who was affected by this?

One person I just barely knew; he was just some guy in my Government class in high school, and things had always gone wrong for him. The school said that as long as he attended classes he’d be fine, but he had to come to school wearing an ankle bracelet every day. Something happened one day where the fire alarm was pulled during lunch – we all had to go outside and it started turning into a riot. The person who got blamed for it turning into a riot, was him. I didn’t know him that well, but I knew that it wasn’t him. They blamed it on him because he was wearing the ankle bracelet.

Do you know what happened to him after that?

I don’t know, but I wish I could say I wish him the best, but from the way our system is, once you’re in it, it’s really hard to escape it. The school-to-prison pipeline is, you go in as a kid, you stay as an adult, you leave as an adult, you come back as an adult. The truth is, if you’re been in a prison for more than 2-5 years, that’s a good chunk of your life. If you go in as a 15/16 year old, you’re missing out on your development and your childhood. Yes, if you’re doing something really wrong, you deserve to be punished and reprimanded for it, but if we can prevent this beforehand, then what’s the point of punishing people, sending them to jail, and perpetuating the cycle?

What do you hope to accomplish, then, with your education here in Criminology? I know it’s a big question, so you can definitely think about it.

I’ve actually thought about that a lot. One of the things I want to do is delve even deeper into private prisons and how they perpetuate the cycle of recidivism and deepening their pockets. I know there’s already been a lot of research and studies on it, but I want to look into it further. There are plenty of other countries that do have their own private prisons that work without funneling a population over and over again. I want to use my International Relations major to go around the world and study how different prison systems work. I think it’s either Denmark or Norway, but they have a system of non-violent criminals living together in a condominium apartment, nicer than the home I grew up, while also having a lower recidivism rate. I want to use my Sociology major for the numbers, seeing the groups that go to prison, who is funneling them into prison, and ultimately, find a way to lower it.

That’s awesome that you know what you want to do and are so passionate about it, but how has it been pursuing that at William & Mary? Was it hard to adjust?

It was kind of hard adjusting at first, because I live off-campus. I don’t commute so I take the bus. I really love the Trolley Line, but I have an 8 am and it doesn’t start running until 9 am, so I have to make sure to catch the Red bus. One time I missed two buses, and a lady, all bundled up in layers, pulled up near me and asked if I needed a ride. I was suspicious and half-okay, but I didn’t know her. I personally have a philosophy of not getting into anyone’s car unless you know them or called for that car, because Virginia, especially Norfolk where I’m from, is the midway point between New York and Florida. There’s a lot of human-trafficking in Norfolk, because it’s the midway point, has ports, and it has military bases.

How did you find out about that?

One of my friends from TCC started talking about [human-trafficking], and the more I listened to her, I looked into it. They even had a FBI special agent come to our school and talk about. I’ve had so many people try to pick me up in Norfolk. Also, that’s why I’m sketched out by public transportation because I had to take public transportation when I was in Norfolk, and I had some stories about that. Have you ever been on a public transportation bus and have your bus drive by a drive-by shooting? That’s one that I can cross off. I used to think that the stuff that I experienced in Norfolk was the norm, but once I started talking to the people and OAs here, I realized Norfolk was pretty bad.

Wow! That’s crazy!

 

Do you hang out in the Grind a lot?

Yeah, I do come to the Grind a lot.

What’s your favorite thing about this place? Why do you come here so often?

The last manager who was here had been here for 18 years, so this place was very set in its culture when I first started coming. And a friend who graduated 2 years ago used to come here a lot, so she was the one who first had coffee with me here. And she unofficially was like, “Alright, this is gonna be your space,”. That’s how I started coming here, and then it kinda turned into this place where no matter how my day’s going, I can always come here and rely on a cup of tea and good conversation with the people who work here. Scott, the old manager, was a great dude. He was kinda crotchety and grumpy, but there was something really nice about having this space to come to and rely on Scott making me a cup of tea and a breakfast sandwich, regardless of what was else going on in my life.

Do you still work here?

I don’t work here anymore. I worked here from last June to November, and was actually saving up money to go to Copenhagen, which is where I studied abroad.

Tell me about Copenhagen.

I went abroad there spring of my junior year, and it is just an incredible city. There’s something about that culture that really speaks to me. The Danish people in general can come off as closed off from the outside but once they open their homes and their hearts to you, they are some of the most loving and welcoming people. They’ve got an incredible sense of humor and I’m still in good touch with my host parents, who are part of the reason I’m going back. It’s a really special place for me.

How do you think your time in Denmark changed the way you saw William & Mary?

It completely changed the way I saw William & Mary. I think before I went abroad I needed a break from school, which is part of the reason I went. And I feel like the majority of people who go to college generally hit a point where they need some space to reflect, and that was a huge goal of mine in Copenhagen. I was alone for most of the time in Copenhagen, so when I came back I had all the more reason to appreciate the people I have here and the community that I’ve found. I made another group of friends at the start of my senior year, which I didn’t expect, and it made me appreciate that community all the more.

You’re a senior and you’re almost on your way out. What is a piece of advice that you would give to any William & Mary student?

I think that generic advice for anyone entering college is to keep an open mind, not only to experiences that you might not be comfortable with but also with changes that you might see in yourself that you wouldn’t have expected to see. But to a William & Mary student, I think I would say that anytime you think that you know this college, there is always another corner that you can explore. If you at any point feel that you’ve gotten everything that you can out of this place, I feel like there’s usually a surprise waiting for you around the corner. That’s what I’ve found to be the defining characteristic of my time at William & Mary. Every time I think I’ve hit a dead end or I feel like I’ve found the bottom of my experience here, I’ve always been surprised. I’m trying to maintain attitude this last semester, which is a little difficult given that  I’m a bit of a cynical senior, but that’s the advice I’d give. 

Just to start, what’s your year and your major?

I’m Class of 2019, so I’m actually a super-senior and I am an Anthropology major.

What made you stay another year?

I took a semester off because I was dealing with mental health disabilities, and I wanted to take care of that before coming back to campus.

So how was that semester off, what did you do?

I thought it was amazing, because I got to know about myself. I did volunteering and explored classes outside of what I was interested in. I got a better understanding of what mental health is, it was a great experience for me. And when I came back to campus the next semester, it was a fresh start for me. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

How were you able to learn more about mental health – was that through the volunteering, classes, or experiences you had?

It not the volunteering experiences – I went to therapy; there was also Dil to Dil, a mental health platform for South Asian students where they get to share their experiences. It was amazing to hear that other girls and other students who were South Asians like me went through the same experiences I did. It’s really uplifting to hear everyone’s stories.

Is mental health viewed a certain way in South Asian culture?

I think, like in every society in the world, it is still a bit of a taboo. It’s something that is not talked a lot about and something that needs to be worked on. The fact that people at William & Mary are being more willing and open about mental health, and have a platform where they can talk about that, is wonderful. Having more awareness for mental health for everyone is very important, especially if you go to a very rigorous and academically challenging school like William & Mary.

Wow, did you think it was hard to confront those issues?

Like any disability or obstacle in life, it is always challenging to confront them, but it was a lot less scary than I thought it would be. For me, I wish I confronted them sooner. In the end, I confronted them and that’s what matters to me. I learned from my experiences that if you have any feelings, just talk about them and confront them head-on because you will only get good out of that experience.

Were there people that were super influential to you when this happened?

Absolutely – my family, especially, my parents, my brother. A few of my really close friends were super supportive and were amazing with me throughout my journey. They were patient with me when I was trying to figure out what kind of person I was – they were just the best and I’m happy I surrounded myself with a good group of people, from William & Mary, from high school, and even from my childhood. It was great to let them know I was becoming, not a different person, but my real self. I hoped they would still accept me for that, and they did.

Was your change to your real self more internally or externally?

Since it was internal, it definitely did change my external. When I say becoming my real self, it was like seeing the world not just through one emotion or through one view, but being able to process so many different emotions – which can be scary at times but also a very beautiful thing because you’re able to see the world through a completely new lens and you’re able to process emotions and relate and have empathy, sympathy, kindness, and compassion. Those come from learning from your mistakes, jealousy, anger, and suffering. I describe it as if you were engulfed in ice – you’re frozen in that state for a while, but when you go to therapy or when you find coping mechanisms, it kind of melts that and you’re able to see things from a fresh new perspective. Analogy of the day!

I’m really happy for you and I’m sure you’re not alone. From this point, is there advice you could give to anyone who might also be dealing with this?

I think my advice for anyone struggling with mental health is that while the illness does not define you, do not be afraid to accept and confront it head on and most importantly, to have faith and love in yourself. I am still working through it, and even though it’s something that I wish I didn’t have, in a way, it’s actually helped me so much. For me, it was the accepting it and not trying to push it down that really helped me. I accepted that it was part of my life and that it was part of my personality, and the things I have done to help cope and help be more understanding of other people have really changed me and that is a really beautiful thing. Someone with mental illness should not be ashamed of it or try to push it away, they should embrace it and try to be proud of it in a way, because they can help people to understand and gain empathy

Was there a specific moment or experience that really stuck with you during this process?

It’s so funny- I think the one thing that kind of stuck with me was the corny line in the first book of Harry Potter, where Dumbledore says “it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” I was dwelling on not just my dreams but also my insecurities and all those bad thoughts in my head when I wasn’t living the life I should have been when I knew I had so much more potential to be something that clearly wasn’t in my head. Living isn’t only confronting bad things, although that’s part of it, but learning something from them and learning to grow as a person and not dwelling on the things you wish you were.

So this is your last semester. How do you feel about that?

I feel very excited but it is very bittersweet. For me it’s a feeling I never thought I’d feel before. I am going to be sad once I leave here, because I have made a lot of good friends here and my experience has taught me a lot. I am also excited to not study for tests!

Is there anything you’re really looking forward to before graduating?

One thing I’m looking forward to is taking classes for my major and being a TA for ballroom dance.

Wow! How is being a TA for that?

It’s a lot of fun! It’s very weird being on the opposite side and being called a “teacher’s assistant” but I think it’s great! It also helps me get in touch with a dance form that I really like. I think if you really like something you should go for it and see how it suits you.

What year are you here?

I’m a junior.

What book were you reading?

I was reading Faces of the Bottom of the Well by Derrick Bell.

What is it about?

He talks about how systemic racism is still very much present, but he explains it in a way that kind of opens–in my opinion–my eyes to the issue as black male. So it’s really interesting. I really like it. It’s for Intro to Africana Studies; it’s Africana Studies 205. It’s a really interesting book! It’s given me a lot of different narratives.

His writing is really, kind of pointed and I think I like it that way because if you can’t be direct and straight-to-it about a certain subject, then you kind of skip around some points. And he doesn’t really do that. I’m really enjoying it.

Do you think you want to emulate that in your own life–being direct in how you communicate with others?

I think…well okay, yes. I think I am already very direct. And I’m trying to actually reverse that kind of quality in myself because sometimes being too direct intimidates people and I’ve learned, like, not to do that. [laughing] So I’m just trying to pull that back a little bit. But I do think having a more direct way of speaking to people and communicating is a great way just as a practice as a human.

What’s something you’ve already been able to reflect on while reading that? You were saying it opened your eyes to how you see your own life.

Well, for example, he was talking about — I don’t know if it was personally him or if he was telling a story of somebody — but, basically it was talking about how Martin Luther King Day is like a victory for Black people and African American people as a whole, but it doesn’t help the still current factors — low socioeconomic status and less education and things that we are still at a disposition for. So, it’s just like, wow. Yes, we celebrate and it’s great and it’s still used as a white narrative like, “we gave you this.” Like, “you guys still have the right to vote.”

It talked about more stuff about how we have these basic rights and we’re guaranteed racial equality, yet we’re still kind of fighting for them in this day and time. So he used the Martin Luther King Day example, and I was like, what, oh my God, I’m so shook right now. Like this is so crazy; he’s so right. And the fact that we have it and we celebrate it, but it still does not help the fact that there are currently black people suffering from this systemic oppression that still exists today.

One thing we get to do from listening to others and learning through other people’s experiences is we get to reflect on our own, too. So I’m glad you’re also getting this process through this reading.

Also, I really like your bracelet!

Thank you.

Did somebody make that for you?

I made it myself. So, Phi Sigma Phi is having recruitment and one of their nights was arts and crafts. And so, I started off doing a kind of twisted version and I learned that I was doing it wrong. And so, I started doing it right and then, I was just like, you know what, I’m tired of doing this. So, I just kind of, did this. But I like it’s not…I’m usually really in tune with form and symmetry. I really like symmetry. Like, my favorite number is four.

That’s my favorite number as well!

I like evenness and symmetry, and so this was a shock to me that I was like, oh my gosh, I kind of live for this. Because I like uniform.

Yeah, and it kind of makes you step outside your comfort zone.

Yeah, and it’s so crazy that something so little can go into something like that.

Do you think you’ll continue to wear it?

Oh, yes. I do think I will continue to wear it because I really like the colors that are associated with it. And it was just a little fun thing that ended up being like, okay, this is kind of personal now. Okay, I’ll keep it.

So it sounds that between your bracelet and your book you’re challenging a lot of your own values and your beliefs this year.

Yeah, and I think that’s a good part of growth. Especially within your own self. Because if you can’t grow and learn and have more knowledge, then how are you expected to survive in this environment? Just like one, as a college student. One, as a person in the world, that’s how you succeed in life basically. Learning and growing. Like, it’s so crazy that two little things far from each other are placed in the same category.

Yeah, no I just thought, “I really like where he’s going.” You challenge yourself to think outside of your own box. I really appreciate that. It’s amazing.

How do you think you do that for others? How do you challenge others or help others grow?

That’s an interesting question. Well, in my Africana Studies class, I think in terms of Black identity and things of that nature, I think alluding to and talking about the community in itself, and talking with the community and trying to understand our place as a whole is a great way to do that. And think we do do that in some ways, and so that’s good. Personally, I don’t know how I can help people grow, because I’m still growing myself and I don’t want to infringe upon anybody else’s movement. I may do subtle things that I may not realize that I can’t speak on right now. But also, I don’t know actively how I help people grow. [laughing] It’s kind of a hard question because you don’t really think about it that often, especially if you’re really focusing on yourself and trying to do things yourself. But like, maybe sharing my experience with people can also help them grow. Just different things like that.

And how would you like to see society grow? Like, in the future, what do you want for you and your family, your friends?

Definitely along the lines of race relations I do want to see more equality but also equity within race. And I think just as a society to learn we are actually all equal and we all deserve the same basic rights, but also the same treatment and the same attitude for all of us across the board. And I just want to see society grow to learn that we, as a people, need to not only be uniform, but a forward-thinking society. Because I think some people fail to realize that we are the future. And if we continue to use the same concepts that were used in the past, it’s like history repeating itself. And so it’s like, why repeat yourself when we can grow and become a better society as a whole.

What lesson have you learned from those around you? Like those people really close to you?

I learned a lot of basic things just about my identity as a whole, but also about the world. And how sometimes you can be so cut off from realizing what actually is happening in the world. I can’t really speak on that, because that’s a much more deeper, philosophical type of thing. See, I am just trying to get past everything that’s on the surface, so I’ve never really thought about that, but that’s a good question to think about from now on: how do I surround myself with people and how do I learn from them?

But I guess I do surround myself with people that I am similar to. And then being that we are similar, we can grow together and learn about each other. But, I never really thought about how I actually learn [from them].

Is there something you want other people to know about you or that you want to tell other people?

Um, I don’t know what I would want anyone to know about me other than I’m just an average college student that’s just trying to make his way through this academic environment and live his best life. I guess to people out there–to stem from all the things I’ve just said–I would take life slowly, and try to learn and try to implement different processes and thoughts and forward ways of thinking in your life and see how it changes. But also, to actively self endow. Or self-search. It’s more of my own own philosophy, I feel like you have to know yourself in order to be able to know other people. And allow yourself to be opened up and things like that. And I have had the worst time through actually getting to the point of like, oh, okay this is why I am the way I am. This is why I can’t connect with certain types of people. And this is why I work on this and that, and the other. Self-identity is so important and I feel like sometimes we don’t even have enough time to think about that. But it’s so important in the fact that it helps us connect with other people around us in the world.

I really appreciate the way you use words. It just flows very well.

That’s actually so crazy because I’ve just been trying to work on that, too. I used to think of something to say, but what I would think would not be what I said. And it kind of just like bunched everything together and didn’t make sense. So I’ve been trying to use forms of language that are not only easier to understand but still hold the same intellect and intelligence, in a way.

C: To start off, what is the happiest memory you’ve had within the past year or so?

I’m a freshman, so it’s been pretty great here. I have to say that I am very happy here. I would say that the happiest memory since I have been here at William & Mary has been getting really really close to my friends and exploring the school and getting to know people. It’s been great. I know that is very general so I do apologize

C: No its fine!! Is it a different type of culture coming here to William & Mary than it was in high school? Trying to adapt to meeting a bunch of new people and experiencing new things for the first time?

Oh definitely. I am from California so very far from here [on the East Coast]. Being *here* specifically is very different already, whether it be culturally or weather-wise. I wanted something different, something new coming to Williamsburg, and I think that I got what I wanted. It was really good for me to kinda be forced into a new situation where I am surrounded by all sorts of different people and having to live on my own for the first time ever in a totally new environment. It showed to me how much growth I have done. I am more resilient or capable than I thought I was.

C: Have you experienced or noticed any other areas of growth besides what you just mentioned over the past couple months?

I still don’t really know what’s going on. But yes, definitely. I have matured and grown as a person over the past couple months. I am much more open with people. I was very introverted and quiet during high school. And I feel like what William & Mary has done, which is another reason why I love this school, is help me feel like I can be much more open to people. I go up to people and introduce myself. I feel like I am more accepting and willing to meet people when I am new social situations. That is totally new for me.

C: Would you consider yourself more talkative?

Yeah. Because everyone I meet here is interesting and interesting in their own way. Once I meet someone and get to know them, I have recognized that everyone has something strange or interesting or quirky that makes them unique. For them, there is something that makes them really cool and can impact their perspective on the world.

C: Is that what drew you to William & Mary? That weird, strange, quirky uniqueness about people? Or was it about the academics?

I think that now that I am here, I can see that, most certainly, the weird quirkiness of the campus is what drew me here. I don’t know how to explain it, but being a History major, I love the history of the campus and being near CW. When I first visited here, I just fell in love with the campus. I could not really explain my thoughts and feelings at the time, but I definitely think that [the history and weirdness of the campus] is why I wanted to come here. I really liked everyone here and liked the environment and how people seemed very open, essentially how you described it.

C: Very different from the West Coast?

I would say so. I loved growing up in California, but at least here, there are a lot of different types of people that all try to get along. That is something pretty important on a college campus. Out in the real world, it may not be like this campus and its bubble, but at least this place is home-y.

C: What are you looking to get out of the rest of your freshman year but also your time here at William & Mary?

I would say that I want to keep that sense of wonder of being at college and at orientation for the first time all four years here. Like I said, during these first couple months, I have been so excited to meet new people and explore new avenues at William & Mary. I do not want to over the next couple of years be stuck in a rut or follow a routine and not try new things. I want to expand my horizons and social circles. Obviously, I want to get a great education, and this is a great place to get that. I want to see what’s possible for me. I do not know what I want to do career-wise when I graduate but I hope to understand myself a bit more in the upcoming years.

S: What has been your favorite moment here? It can be an extraordinary moment or it can be just a seemingly normal moment that you absolutely loved.

Oh I think I know one. I know that this is going to sound very freshman-y but I was in the process of joining a new club. Going out to get food or going on random walks around campus at night has to be a high point of my limited time here. I do remember a good time though. One time a group of friends of mine wanted to go see Matoaka super late at night. I do not know why, but we have never been there so we decided to go out in the pitch black darkness. Completely unsafe, but we walked there using only our phones and this small light map to guide us. By navigating our way using that small little map they give you during orientation, we made our way all the way around behind the business school. I am so surprised that we didn’t get lost and have to call the police or something. But we found our way there in the pitch black, and it was actually really beautiful being there at the theater in the darkness with nobody around us. It was really great, and we got to know each other pretty well. I noticed that you don’t get to do that sort of stuff during high school. You have parents watching you and making sure that you are being safe and whatnot. I am really happy that I have the liberty to do stuff like this here at William & Mary. It is a part of freshman year. There are a plethora of things that you can do. A world of possibilities. Moving forward, I hope that there is always something that I can explore or discover or try out.

S: Just one more question, what has made you smile?

Oh in one of my clubs, FASA, we are doing a play called “Culture Night,” which is our annual presentation of showcasing Filipino culture. I’m a cast member and seeing everyone put a lot of effort into making the play happen has definitely made me smile.

C: Thank you so much.

S: Yeah, thank you for talking with us.

 

How has your day been?

Pretty good.

What have you been doing?

Just got out of class. We have been talking a lot about civil liberties and civil rights. It is really funny cause I was talking about a case concerning the Texas 10 Commandment Statue at the Capitol Building. It was a 4-3 split decision saying that the historical context of the Judeo-Christian tradition was really important for this country and that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was like “that is bullshit.” Pretty much it is an infringement on civil liberties and the establishment clause since the State is not supposed to induce a religion. It was a really hilarious debate since this current Supreme Court is now more conservative than ever before. I just sat there thinking that this [debate] was going to be really interesting because even though it and other statues like these endorse every Judeo-Christian message on the face of the planet, is it likely that every religious message in this country is going to be erased or demolished or taken away? I don’t think that is a smart thing to do.

Do you like your Civil and Political liberties class?

It teaches me that one of the most important things in college is humility. I wish a lot of people including myself had more of that because I think that we go into the sake of arguing just for the sake of arguing.

Discourse for the sake of discourse?

Right. It gets us nowhere. And I just wonder since I think this country is not as broken as people make it out to be.

Are you saying this [statement] simply as an American or as a Christian or what?

Yeah. As an American and a Christian who has been living in the states for a very long time, my entire life essentially, I wonder if religious people and those who aren’t religious agree on basic global issues since we do not want to hurl insults at each other. We do not want to discount the other for the false value in our positions being hasty understood and validated.

I am a Government and Philosophy major, so my thoughts are rooted in these teachings. The thing  that keeps me sane is that I still have my friends, or I may be fooling myself into believing that I still have meaningful friendships. Maybe you are a better judge of that Campbell, but who knows. I think friendship in its most simple form is that “I understand you, and I understand our differences. And I respect those.”

It doesn’t mean that I have to agree with you.

 Yep, in fact it means that I am willing to listen with you and sit across from you and not demonize you for what you believe or for how you act. These are things that you learn in elementary school and should understand on a basic level. These things are really very basic and yet, it is so rare now. I always ask people what they get out of arguing. There is nothing that you achieve from arguing.

I think you only feel more anger from arguing.

You just get angry and pissy. You are not happy and simply feel frustration. And even for religious people of which I am, [arguing] accomplishes nothing for me. Humility and understanding people can accomplish things on this campus, but trying to act all intellectual and one up a person, whether they are the same background as you or not, is not something that I find fun or valuable. Yeah, I come on sunny days like today and sit here on the Sunken Gardens and just ponder these things. I find rest. It is absurd the amount of stuff that you have to deal with every day so I unplug this way.

In a conversation between people, do you sometimes predict whether they are trying to be argumentative or do you try to come in with an open mind?

I try my best to come into the conversation with an open mind. Here at William and Mary, coming into a conversation with an open mind is critically important, especially considering I have a disability. My disability makes me see myself as different. Different in the way that people see me and how they are going to start conversations with me. Campbell, I have lived in the hospital and at school and at home. I do not think that people understand the literalness of that statement and its weight. That time in solitude taught me to hear things out and respond less to the noise.  

What is it like living with a disability? Have you noticed how people sometimes react differently? Do they view you differently?

I think so. I think there are two ways to view that. There is the viewpoint of seeing how the [disabled] person is maturing through and over [their disability]. This person is emotionally over it and not suffering from the mental struggles it often causes. On the other hand, I have seen the other extreme of the spectrum where they expect the person to not have a normal and wide enough emotional bandwidth and thus lack an emotionally normal friendship with people. These two viewpoints are both very uncomfortable, and I know ultimately misses the point of striking up a conversation.

For both being seen living with this disability and talking with you?

Exactly. I want to be seen as normal, but with a little bit of knicks and visible scratches since nobody is perfect. I think my [disability] comes off a little bit more uneasy since it is physical and you can see it. When I slip and fall or when I am late or when I have to excuse myself from class, I notice people staring. Like I notice them looking at me in confusion. And I never really know what or how to respond. So let the awkwardness stand.

Why do you have to excuse yourself from class?

I get sick more often than most people. If a virus is going around, I am the first person that will probably get it. The considerate way to act is to say that you are sorry that I am sick or that I am missing class. If you are my friend that is—I do not assume that everyone should do X or should do Y— for most people asking how I am doing and if I can get anything for you goes a long way. I think those little things are helpful to people with disabilities, people with access to this campus in the most comfortable way. I think this is true for a lot of minorities on this campus, which can extend to religious minorities, ethnic minorities and see if they deserve the same respect.

What are some things that you want this campus to change since you are a Christian and disabled?

Take time out of your life. Take active time out of your life and get interested in something that you have no natural interest in, and yet benefits someone else. Take time out literally means your time is going to be used. Your comfort zones are going to be extended. One of the things that I do is spending time with people who are of completely different ethnicities than I am.

Do you do this simply because you want to learn?

Yes. For the sake of learning and since I just do not know. I think that is so important because it is not only beneficial for yourself, but also keeps you really centered. It does for me. My religious community (Agape) keeps me centered, but also expands my own opinions since people on this campus have radically different opinions than my own. It is really valuable for me to understand that this is a very colorful world. Earth has all different kinds of people speckled across all spectrums.

Do you want any changes done on this campus from an administrative standpoint and from a community standpoint?

Yes. Totally. I wish more professors and students could be more honest about the things that they need. For the student side, if you need an extension and if you are grinding on a paper at 3 AM, you should feel comfortable to say that you need an extension. The student knows whether or not that is a moral thing to do. On the professor side, I always wonder why they assign these papers all at the same time. It is weird and for some who have a typing disability on my left hand, I am sitting there thinking that it is absurd that the professor only gave me a week to work on this paper. When I ask for an extension, they always question on many occasions whether I need the extension or not, which is totally absurd. It takes 50 percent more time for me to write a paper than the normal student so yes I do need an extension.

Have you encountered any hilarious interactions on this campus regarding your disability?

Sometimes. Professors ask why I didn’t do this assignment on time or why I didn’t ask for the extension earlier. I always question in my head whether the professors are blind and cannot notice my disability when I walk around. Like no, I do not know what more I have to say. I try to advocate the best I can say, but I treasure my professors and I do not hold this worry against them. I know them and most other people have no idea what it is like to live with a physical or mental disability. I do not count it against them. On the professor’s side, I wish that they could say that their door is not only open to academic things but for other help and how they will not come in with any preconceived notions of you. I think that is really important. When I talk to my friends, yes they are a group of friends that I am really most close to. Yet, when I go out and extend beyond that circle to a wider crowd, I do not care about your gender, sexuality, or ethnicity. I do not want to sound preachy about this, but we are all in the same boat. It does not matter what religion you believe in. It doesn’t matter what gender you are. It does not matter what political ideology you ascribe to, because the point is to understand the other that is not you. Because for so long, my disability or my depression, I have no idea which  (and this has gone on for 20 years), has inevitably made me the other and this is the uneasy comfortableness that I have to live life with. For people that are curious enough to ask about my disability and the surrounding stories, I will respectfully answer your questions and feel free to ask. Don’t feel so uncomfortable and feel the need to be so respectful that we lose our friendship, because the minute you do that, everything kinda unravels.

I remember the first time we met, one of the first questions you asked was, “What’s up with your walking?”.

I do remember that.

You had an uncomfortable look on your face when asked that.

Yeah I remember thinking “well shit. How do I ask this dude about his walking since I know that he has a disability.” And I think I just kinda went for it and asked you since I was curious that you showed up late to class pretty consistently. You were really fine with me asking that question too since it is probably a question that you have experienced a lot over your 20 some years.

It is that easy and it is okay to be blunt if you are willing to have a genuine conversation. If the person who is disabled doesn’t have a thick enough skin to answer those questions, then that person will have to understand that people have sincere questions. Some people have better ways of asking questions about your disability, but it is a matter of relative comfortableness when it comes to answering these questions. These questions are uncomfortable and they inherently have to be. And, I respect that. To the people that ask me questions, I actually applaud it. I think any disabled person should applaud it since it shows that this person has tried to bridge the gap and asks questions that are inherently uncomfortable.

To be completely honestly, I think the majority of our government class are uncomfortable to even approach you and ask about your disability and ask about everything.

My disabilities are only physical and it is undoubtedly true that they have mental and emotional repercussions. However, the disabilities themselves aren’t mental, and I hope that people understand the difference between them. It is totally fine for people to feel uncomfortable about being around me because disabilities are an uncomfortable thing to talk about. Granted it isn’t the best first impression to ask “what is wrong with you.” And I never took your question that way.

Yeah of course, coming from a background where you don’t interact with a lot of disabled individuals, first impressions are always scary. It is the first thing that you notice, yet it shouldn’t become that big of an issue. Talking to people with disabilities is uncomfortable, yet after interacting with you, I still notice your disability, yet it hasn’t become a big issue or problem.

It’s not, in fact, let me tell you a story that gives me a good laugh. I remember running into a professor late at night and asked if I was okay. I replied that I was fine since I naturally limp and stumble over myself a lot due to me not being able to control the left side of my body. She replied, “Okay good because I thought that you weren’t sober and were struggling to walk.” I politely responded that I cannot really control this “stumbling”. She turned bright red and walked away pretty embarrassed. It kinda goes back to what we were saying about how to approach people with disabilities since the first thing that you really shouldn’t ask is what their disability is or why they are struggling to walk. Yet, I knew her intent was in my interest and I was the dumb one because I didn’t know how to respond to her to absolve the obvious incoming guilt trip, but I felt like I needed to say that I have a disability.

Could you say that asking about your disability is almost comparable to the question of where you are from?

Yeah. I understand the similarities between being disabled and being a foreigner in the waspy culture of America on the East Coast. I want to see the best out of anyone I meet. If people like me ask what is the most lacking thing on this campus, it is kindness. It is really to say that I do not know anything about you. Thus, I cannot conclude every single minuscule thing about you. And frankly, I should learn everything about myself first before trying to learn more about other people on this campus. How do I figure and see the other? I hope we eventually realize that all these social, political, religious disagreements we are having are not all that worth it. The three most important things to me are kindness toward all, mercy that reconciles people’s brokenness, and a humble justice that lives to see a better world. Maybe I am a ridiculous dreamer, but I hope it is a dream worth having and ultimately sacrificing for.

What do you think is something people might not know about you from first glance?

I think that upon first glance, I can look pretty intimidating. Lots of people have told me that, but when you get to know me, I’m chill, I’m basically a large teddy bear. There’s no reason for anyone to feel threatened. I like to try and be welcoming, but that’s just really who I am. I don’t really smile excessively, only when there’s reason to. Like I definitely do, just not that much. You gotta do what you gotta do.

I decided my theme for the year, because I am a senior, is that I am over caring about the “who’s cool” stuff. So I have decided to get aggressively weirder and weirder as the year goes on. Just really let myself be who I am regardless of social pressure. So I just bought an Irish tin whistle and I’m learning how to play it.

What inspired you to get into the Irish tin whistle?

Let’s see, why did I get one? I was kind of just online fooling around. I’ve been interested in Irish folk music these days.  Not for any reason, I just randomly got into it. Like I studied abroad, but I studied abroad in Scotland, so it’s not the same. My ancestors were largely Irish, and we have a family farm there but there’s a huge generational disconnect. So I’ve been listening to this music, and I played to a lot of music as a kid, and I thought, “Hey why not try the Irish tin whistle?” So I bought an Irish tin whistle.

What is something else that you find yourself embracing this year?

The tin whistle thing is pretty interesting. I decided to go vegetarian and/or vegan, doing Meatless Mondays and taking steps towards that. I think it’s good for the environment, but I’m pretty relaxed about that. I am doing modern dance, which is fun, because I think it’s something I would not normally be into. I am doing it for a requirement actually, but I probably would have taken it anyway because I don’t have a lot of academic classes I need to do. I would  graduate early but there’s a rule that you need to do the last certain amount of credits at William & Mary, but I’m in no rush So I am just hanging around and I want to get more involved, like with the whole Mechanical Mondays thing. I was a volunteer bike mechanic when I was studying abroad in Scotland.

There was this random Scottish dude who would come and help fix bikes. He’s like a fairly old guy, probably 60 something. Apparently he was a grade school teacher for 45 years, woke up one day and said, “I hate this job,” then quit it and became a bike mechanic. But his shop is in the back of a hair salon. So you have to walk your bike through the hair salon to get there. it’s hilarious, and it gives me a lot of perspective on certain things.

I don’t know if I told you this, but I am a computer scientist. I went to the eye doctor recently to get my glasses fixed. They dilated my eyes, and I went home. I wanted to write some code and I couldn’t see and thus couldn’t code, and I was like, “holy shit, if you can’t see you can’t write code.” I mean I’m sure there are ways, but my specialty is machine learning and artificial intelligence, so I am currently working on an artificially intelligent assistant that could write code for you. You’d be able to speak key words and write code by speaking it rather than typing it. That’s another thing I am doing this semester.

Was that inspired by not being able to see?

Yeah it was that one time I went to the eye doctor.

I also do random projects, like creating Tinder for trees. it’s exactly Tinder but you use pictures of trees instead of yourself. I figure I should probably do projects that actually help people, but that sounded like fun.

When was the last time you did something you felt like you weren’t obligated to do?

My sister is applying to college right now. And not out of obligation, but out of sisterly love, I’ve been trying to pull together resources for her in terms of preparing for college and deciding which colleges to go to. When she was starting high school, I made her this high school handbook, different chapters about different things I knew she would encounter while in high school. Now I’m doing the same thing for when she starts college. So I have a chapter about living with another person, and a chapter about going to sports games, and coping with academic stress, and going out.

That’s really sweet. How many years apart are you guys?

We’re four years apart. So she’ll start as I graduate.

You feel like you have a lot of wisdom to pass on to her?

I guess as we’ve grown up, I’ve always been the person that she looks up to, instead of my parents. My parents complain about this a lot. If my parents ask her to do something, she won’t do it, but if I tell her to do something, she’ll do it. Our relationship has really grown stronger since coming to college, and I don’t want to go through four years of college without having something to give her that she can look to when I’m not available on the phone. She can think, “Yasmin did these things, so I can too.”

What do you think is the most helpful piece of advice for her?

She’s a really smart student. She’s very, very academically successful, and I feel like this is something that happens a lot for William and Mary students is where you do well in high school, and then you comes to college, and it’s kind of shocking how hard you have to work to do well in class. I’m trying to talk to her a lot this, this year. She’s the kind of person that doesn’t have to study or when she does it’s really easy for her. I want to tell her to put in the time and effort into her work, but at the same time, I don’t want her to put too much weight on it. She needs to focus on learning things in school, internalizing the information, not internalizing the grade. The county that I went to high school in and the county she goes to high school in is very competitive and grade-focused – “Where are you going to college? What are you going to do with your life? How are you going to be successful? That kind of thing.” – It’s good in sense that it focuses you on trying to work hard, but it has a negative effect because it puts you into this mindset where your self-worth is based on what your grades are. I want her to understand that she has a lot more to offer than her brain. She’s a very loving person, she’s a very funny person. I want her to find things in college that help develop her personality. I obviously want her to do well academically, but I don’t want her to focus on that. I want her to find herself and find what she is passionate about and continue the things she was doing in high school and blossom in a more holistic sense than just academics.

Was that transition hard for you, coming to college?

A little bit because throughout high school I was surrounded by that competitive atmosphere. I very much had that, “I must do better than my classmates or at least as well as my friends, otherwise I can’t talk to anyone about what I’m going through.” So coming to William and Mary, it was hard to adjust to how much work I had to do to succeed in my classes. Everyone around me seemed to be right where they needed to be, and everyone seemed to have the grades that they wanted, so I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about school. If I talked to people I would talk about how much fun I was having, all the things I was doing outside of class because I didn’t want people to know that I was really struggling in Economics. I couldn’t say, “I have a C in a class right now.” As I started to form friendships with people and get to know people in my class, I realized everyone was in the same boat. I don’t know anyone who at some point didn’t feel that William and Mary wasn’t the place for them. We think of this school as very prestigious. It’s the “smart people school.” When you tell people that you’re going to William and Mary, they’re like, “Oh, good for you.” There’s so much pressure from people inside and outside the college to do well, and again, similarly to what I want my sister to experience and what I’ve worked to instill in myself, I’m more than just the grades that I get. Yes, it is important to well. It is important to work hard, but there are other things that I can pour myself into. And once I found non-academic things to be excited about because I was happy with my extracurriculars, I wanted my academics to be on the same level.

My freshman year I joined the African Culture Society. My parents immigrated from West Africa and the West African aspects of my heritage are really important to me, so joining that club, and joining a dance team, and being able to be surrounded by other people of African descent and other people with interests in Africa allowed me to have a creative outlet, and allowed me to separate things. Living on campus, things are constantly, school, school, school, school, school, and when you find things that aren’t school it allows your brain to compartmentalize in a good way.

Yeah, for sure. Are you and your sister pretty close?

Yeah, and it sounds cliché, but she really is my best friend. My sister is one of my absolute favorite people and I’m so thankful to have her in my life. I’m really glad with how we get along. I was really worried coming to college because before college, we lived together obviously and would see each other every day. I was afraid coming to college that the connection would falter, but I feel like going away was the best thing that could’ve happened for us. She calls me all the time. She harasses me constantly, but it’s a good thing.

Have you always gotten along?

No, oh no. We used to fight, and we still fight, but not nearly as much as we used to. We used to argue about everything. We’re both very in-charge, take-charge people, so she thinks that I’m too bossy, and I think that she doesn’t listen to be enough. Those are things that we fight about, but as we’ve gotten older, I feel like there’s more we can talk about and I don’t feel like I have to shield her from things. This has been really cool because we’ve been able to have some important conversations, and she’s been able to talk to me about things she wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable talking to my parents about, or things that I didn’t get to talk to my parents about enough, so I want to make sure that she’s able to ask all the questions she has. We’ve definitely, definitely gotten closer since I’ve come to college.

That’s kinda cool. Sometimes there’s this worry that the distance is going to make it a lot harder.

Yeah, that’s true, but FaceTime and phone calls have made it pretty easy. I have friends that will tell me they call their parents once a week, and that’s a lot for them. For me, literally every single day one of my family members calls me, and it’s usually my mom or my sister. My dad knows that I’m trying to get work done here, so he’ll call me about three times a week, but my mom and sister will call or text me every day. It’s really nice because my family was really close before I left, and I’m very glad we’ve been able to maintain that family dynamic. We’re also checking up to see how we’re doing. There was never really a question about whether or not I’d maintain that relationship. For some people, coming to college means, not in a bad way, that you lose contact with people because you’re not used to consistently talking to people, but that hasn’t been an issue for me. I rely on my parents in terms of stress relief. If I’m stressed those are the people I call.

Do you have anything you would like to say to the William and Mary community?

It’s not related to what we’ve been talking about, but there’s a lot going on in our country right now, and there’s a lot of tension and a lot of issues. I feel like on this campus we have a divergence of interests represented. We have a lot of different kind of people with a lot of different kinds of ideas, and beliefs on campus. If we can work to facilitate conversations with one another about politics and about what is politically correct, if we stop being afraid of having these conversations, if we stop trying to have them with people we know think the same way as us who we know we will agree with, if we can work to show people these conversations are possible, it will help us with leaving campus and going home and having these same conversations with our families and our friends.

I’ve been looking on social media at the things people say and the arguments people have, and this sounds so, “Everyone come together and get along!” and obviously that is very difficult to sit down and talk to a person who is saying things that are abjectly against the things that you believe and abjectly against the kind of things that you emphasize as important to yourself. This is something that I really do have to keep reminding myself because especially during the election time because people were supporting a candidate that I abjectly did not like. I figured, if you vote for him, you’re against me. I don’t know how to articulate this, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. My dad always reminds me that we need to focus on listening to one another – listening, but not diminishing the voices of people who have something that needs to be said. What happens on this campus a lot is that there are people who speak up, but they end up speaking on behalf of people who have their own voice, who have their own things to say. I think we need to work on not just creating safe spaces, but creating conversational spaces where people can say, “This is something that you believe in. I don’t understand why you believe this. Explain it to me.” And then being able to say, “Okay, so these are the issues I have with that. What are the issues you have with me?”

I am tired of everything turning into a debate, everything turning into an argument. If you some to someone, and you are prepared to debate with them, you’re not going to have a constructive conversation, and both of you are going to walk away angrier and if anything, more polarized than you were before.

Anger is a motivating emotion. It’s an emotion that can get you to act on the things you believe and act on the things that are important to you, but it needs to be anger that is channeled that’s not towards people, but it towards ideas. People and ideas are intertwined, and that’s an understanding factors, but when we have these conversations then it becomes more of a, “you, you, you” and less of a, “concept, concept, concept.” It becomes difficult to interact with people.

Do you have friends who you find it difficult to talk about things like this with?

It’s not that I feel difficult talking to them about it. I just don’t know who to approach the concepts without making them feel like I’m attacking them. I know that I have friends who I would disagree with on a number of things, and I want to be able to have these conversations because we’re in college and we’re adults, and we should be able to articulate our feelings and our beliefs without there being an issue. I don’t know. It’s one thing when it’s a stranger and you have no intention of interacting with them again, and you can say your piece and be done with it, but when it’s a friend, there’s a personal aspect to it because part of you is feeling disappointed that if you and a friend are on different sides of an argument, It can feel as though, not that they’re personally against you, they’re against things that are very personal to you. They’re against things that are very integral to what you believe. It can be difficult having conversations with those people because they’re still your friends, and you want to maintain that relationship, but you want it to evolve, and you don’t know how to go about doing that because you don’t want them to feel like you hate them, which is unfair. It’s so sad that we’ve reached this point where you have to be afraid to say things because you don’t want people to think that you’re speaking against them. There are issues in the world that you should be able to articulate without people taking it personally, but that’s just kind of where we’re at right now.

Say you want to do racism, and racism is a very complex concept, but there a lot of base things about racism and the way it works in the world that people don’t understand, and they see racism as an action, and there are many cases in which people act out on racism, but racism can be a very internalized and latent thing in people’s natures and in people’s minds. They don’t realize the way they think about something or act on something is racist in nature. It’s those kind of conversations that are difficult because those are the people who feel like they are on your side, who feel like they are living life the way they should be. When they think of racist, they think of a bad person. Yes, racism is bad, but there are good people who have racist ideals. It’s interacting with those people that I feel is difficult because I don’t want them to as though me saying something that they’ve done or the way they think is problematic makes their whole activism in society rendered obsolete. It’s just that the way that you think is based in a racist ideal.

I think a good example of this is the taking a knee thing. People have been saying a lot in the news that the athletes are ungrateful by taking a knee. Ungrateful to whom? About what? What is it that Black Athletes should be grateful for? Who do they owe this gratitude to? You can unpack this, and people are saying that Black athletes don’t have a place in politics and this is not the time for a political gesture, but saying that Black athletes should stick to athletics conveys people’s belief that they are worth nothing more in society than entertainers. That doesn’t make sense. They live in this society, they are affected by the politics, and why shouldn’t they be able to make a political statement about it? People say it’s unpatriotic for them to take a knee during the National Anthem, but there really is no sensible correlation between athletics and the anthem. It’s fine, but no one ever said they had to be tied together. People keep saying that the men and women who are fighting on behalf of this country are dying to protect the flag. That’s not true. They’re dying to protect the people in this country, they’re dying to protect the constitutional rights of the people in this country. One of those rights is to protest peacefully. It’s interesting to see how people were faster to argue on behalf of the White Supremacists and Nazis and their march in Charlottesville on their beliefs, however abjectly problematic they are, than to let these athletes take a knee during the National Anthem. I saw a tweet that said, “If people were as upset about a knee in Freddie Gray’s back as they were about the knees that these athletes were taking during the National Anthem, we wouldn’t have a problem.” I feel like people like to focus on the wrong things, and blow those out of proportion, instead of focusing on things that really matter. Like the way that this whole debate has evolved in the past few days. They’re not taking a knee because they don’t like that Trump is president. This is something Colin Kaepernick started doing while Obama was still president. It’s about the loss of Black lives at the hands of people who are supposed to be protecting them. It’s about social equality for Black people. It’s frustrating how it starts as one movement and people who are against it, take it and construe it, and that’s what gets blasted out in social media, and that’s what the media runs with. They keep talking about how this is a protest against the anthem, how it’s a protest against Trump, and the true narrative of what this protest is about has been lost. Yes, Trump contributes to the protest, but he’s not what it’s about.

It’s interesting to compare freshman year to now and the conversations that are being had. Not to say that I’m afraid, but now you walk around, and you look at people, and you wonder, “Would we agree about these things? What conversations would be have if we had a chance to talk about things?” It’s getting to the point now that people are so set in their mindsets and the way they want to think about things that I don’t know how to go about initiating these conversations in a way that leaves us open to a change in thought.

I want to be a person that people feel comfortable coming to ask questions when they don’t understand an issue that they think might be relevant to me. I don’t want people to be afraid to talk to me about these things because they worry I might combat them. They should know that I am firm in my beliefs, and I will have conversations with people how are acting in a way that I don’t think is right, but I want people to know that I am a resource and I can have constructive conversations with.

At the end of the day, sometimes it’s important that you feel convicted because it’s with conviction that comes change, but I don’t want to be known as “The Convicter.” I want people to say, “I can talk to Yasmin. She might call me out, but she’ll do it in a way that is meaningful.” That’s what I want. And I also want to be someone who can change her mind about things. I just want to talk to people. I’m tired of just stewing in my feelings by myself. I want to have conversations about them with people I don’t agree with.

I was at a family party a couple weeks ago, and my uncle invited a man who started talking about immigration and many politically hot topics, and he was covering them all in a way that was problematic to me. It was the first time I had to articulate these things to someone who was not going to believe what I had to say. It was an amazing experience. My sister was also there, and it made me so proud because my 17-year-old sister was not afraid to talk about what she believed in with a 45-year-old man. It was also really important for me again, because it is so easy to talk about these kinds of things with someone that you know agrees with you. When you have to articulate them in a way that expresses what you’re saying to someone who isn’t thinking about things in the same way, it forces you to construct your ideas in a way that makes your argument understandable. Now I know that I can have these conversations with people. I was really proud of myself. I was able to listen to the things he was saying, and he was able to listen to the things I was saying.

Abner: Ah, I’m getting wrecked by mosquitoes, I knew this was gonna happen. They always go for my calf muscles, where I can’t defend myself.

Katie: See, this is why I come hang out with you.

Do you always come over here [fence of the Crim Dell] to sketch/draw?

A: I just kinda go generally around campus. I kinda got bored and I was like I need to waste an hour of time before I go play basketball. That’s all there is to that story.

Being on William and Mary’s campus, I feel like the Crim Dell is such a common image, have you sketched it before?

A: Nope, this is the first time. And it will probably be the last time because these mosquito bites are really starting to add up and it’s getting kind of annoying. The scene itself is pretty nice.

Is it charcoal that you’re using?

A: Yes, pressed charcoal to be specific.

Why do you use charcoal?

A: I like charcoal because I’ve drawn in grayscale for the past 6 months or so. And as an extension, I like using charcoal because it can be both very minimalist in the sense that you only have really black and white to work with, but you have such a wide variety of possible textures that can still be very expressive. And because it’s in black and white, you really have to know how to express your idea because otherwise it will come out very flat.

Have you been an artist for a long time?

A: (in a mimicking, elderly voice) I’ve been an artist ever since…

(Katie laughing)

Ok, then how did you figure out you have a talent for these things?

A: I’ve always drawn ever since I was a kid. Except when I was a kid, I didn’t know what I was doing. Of course, I experimented with stick figures and stuff like that, then my dad would make fun of me and I would stop. But, I think what really got me into drawing was watching cartoons, because I was so enamored by seeing the simple acts of a cartoon acting like a person and them being a person, and seeing them go through these amazing things. I think seeing all those things as a kid has translated into me wanting to draw those kind of things myself.

Are you just his friend? You just come and hang out with him while he sketches?

K: Sometimes, when I can find him. He pops up all over campus.

How do you guys know each other?

K: We met through meditation club. They have a club and we both attended.

A: Advertise the meditation club while we’re at it.

Yeah, tell me about the meditation club then!

K: Shameless self plug.

A: Katie will have to do that because I’m technically not part of it anymore.

Are you a leader of meditation club?

K: I am. Yeah, I helped the original, unofficial founders start it last year. It wasn’t official technically until this summer. But we made it into a club together and we wanted to bring a service to the campus, because meditation has so many benefits. I mean I know it’s changed my life, so we felt inspired to create a club that literally brought people together through meditation and gave them a chance to get away from reality, and stress, and anxiety because so many people here have that.

Can I ask how meditation has changed your life?

K: Yeah of course.

A: You may go first, I have an answer for this one as well.

K: Oh no, you should go first.

A: Me? Ok. So, I believe meditation has helped me in the sense that it’s helped me connect to my environment. Because once I became meditative – actually, I don’t wanna say became, because it’s not something you become, it’s more of a journey than a destination, and that’s very important actually. No one’s spiritual journey is actually complete. Anyways, with that tangent out of the way, I think the meditation has helped me, like I said, connect to the world around me. Even what I’m doing right now is a form of meditation, I think, because I am encapturing this entire scene into this two-dimensional world, but I must still convey the energy of the environment, and the way the world feels realistically when they see it. So that must explain why I get so tired after drawing these, but it’s like the new form of meditation I’ve discovered. The idea of what most people have of meditation is some person sitting near incense, doing like some sort of pose, and being like “Ummmm…” But no, it doesn’t have to be that at all. It’s very unique to the person I think.

K: No, but that’s true. It’s not about sitting in a circle and chanting.

A: That sounds more like a cult actually.

K: That does sound like a cult. We are not a cult.

A: Are you sure about that?

K: No, I’m very sure. Abner, thank you, you’ve turned this into a bad advertisement. No, but I feel like meditation is self-serving, in a way. It’s like finding your flow, finding your peace. I mean, for me, meditation was about in some ways finding answers. For me personally, it was realizing that the external world really can’t do anything for me, in the sense that all the answers, all the validation, all the truth is within me. Finding out all that I am is good enough and all that I am is fine. And the external world really can’t do that. But meditation for everyone just holds so many benefits. Yes, it can provide answers but it also just helps you relax and recenter yourself. And also, meditation has a lot of scientifically-proven benefits, like calming you down, helping you regulate your nervous system, increasing blood flow, all these different scientific benefits. But like Abner said, there’s also spiritual benefits and mental benefits and emotional benefits.

I think it’s funny because it seems like so many people are intimidated by the idea of meditation, because it seems like something unattainable for a lot of people. They just can’t imagine themselves sitting and thinking and breathing and that’s it. And it’s kinda sad that people are less open to it. I think it’s because we’re obsessed with doing things, so we can’t just do nothing.

K: And that’s why it’s so fun. You just get to be, nothing more than you, nothing less than you are. You can just be. And that is intimidatingly powerful. I understand that.

A: That’s a good point you’ve brought up. Sorry to interrupt, but if I did…

K: You did, Abner. (laughs)

Yeah, no interruptions allowed.

A: Oh, I’ve done it now. She’s gonna like fire a beam of energy at me, killing me. (laughs)

K: Yeah, that would be very meditative of me.

A: I think one of the few things I like about Legend of Korra, is that Tenzin had this one quote, because Korra was complaining that she wasn’t meditating right, and then Tenzin’s like, “There’s nothing to do, just let your mind and spirit be free.” (Katie mmmhmms) And I think that describes it very well in a very quick nutshell.

Can I ask you what you’re listening to?

A: Various jazz right now. I just put it on Autoplay, I started out on Chet Baker. Right now, I’m on Miles Davis, Milestones, a great piece.

And so like do you just walk around campus, and stumble upon him?

K: Pretty much, he’s like a leprechaun or something. I’ll just be like “Oh, there’s Abner,” he’ll just be like popping up.

Where have you found him?

K: I found him in Swem one day. That was like the first time I saw you. You were in the coffee shop.

A: Oh, I remember now, I was drawing Swemromas.

K: I found you outside Sadler. That’s the last time I saw you. You were sketching, and then Sophie came over, and the we all started watching cartoons.

A: Yeah, that was fun, I enjoyed when that happened.

Hey, look, those people are crossing right now!

A: Uhhh, stay still for a few more minutes. There, it’s fine, I got their shapes down. See, stick figures are actually useful, because once you get far enough, humans just don’t really look humanlike.

Katie, are you an artist at all?

(Katie laughs)

A: Oh man, that was a good answer.

K: I mean, a little bit. I sketch but it’s not really what I do. I like playing music, I like playing piano. I walk around Abner, and I’m like “I am inferior.” (laughs)

A: If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think the opposite. When I walk around you, I think, “Cool, budding talent,” not “Oh, she’s so inferior to me.” Cause everyone has to start from somewhere. Before John Coltrane was playing wherever, he had to learn the scales. No one just starts off a genius. Everyone needs some sort of coaching some way or another.

K: That’s true, and I’m a life coach.

You are? How did you get into that?

K: So, I wanna go into counseling anyway, and I had a friend who was developing a program, and I was like, you know that would be something I’d be really interested in doing. So, life coaching is basically like therapy without calling it therapy. It’s encouraging people and guiding them to change their own lives and I think that’s amazing. I love doing it. I feel like in some ways I just do it on a daily basis anyway.

What do you think is the most common advice that you give to people? What do you find yourself saying to people?

K: Honestly, I think the thing I yell at people the most is “You are amazing.” I don’t think people hear often enough that you are fantastic just as you are.

A: I don’t believe you. Haha, I was just poking fun…

K: You are fantastic just as you are Abner, thank you very much. But no, I think in this world, you’re always supposed to be more, you’re always supposed to be better, and I think it’s important for people to stop and realize, you’re fine. You are enough, right here, right now. I think that’s such an important thing to hear and to know, so that’s probably what I say the most. Another thing I say is that your past doesn’t make you.

What years are you guys?

K: We’re both seniors.

(Abner groans)

Well then how do you guys feel about being seniors then?

A: To be honest, I’m very tired of this college and I want to be out of here as soon as possible.

Like you’re ready to be in the real world?

A: I guess, for lack of a better word. But like whenever anyone says ‘real world,’ I’m like “well what,” because like technically everywhere we go is the real world.

Ok, fair point.

A: But, anyways, because of various experiences I had in junior year, I just don’t wanna be here anymore. The energy just feels too closely associated with the really bad experiences I had junior year, so I’d like to be gone, away from this place, so I can actually have proper healing take place. Because all this is nice, but I feel like all it’s doing is putting a bandage on what is a very deep wound. But that was a sad answer, so Katie you might want to say something else.

K: Wow, that’s a lot of pressure on me. For me, I don’t have quite as deep an answer. I’m happy that I’m graduating, I feel ready to graduate in a lot of ways. I mean, now and then, there’s this moment, “oh yeah, I’m graduating and some of these people I will probably never see again.”

A: Ah, yes, the never seeing again. Sorry, yeah, that hit home.

K: It does feel like it’s a happy chapter coming to a close for me. Maybe a very different perspective than Abner. I feel excited for the next step. I like change, I think change is so natural in the world. Rather than fight it and resist, it’s better to embrace it.

A: The only consistency is inconsistency.

K: The only constant thing in life is change.

What is the most exciting thing about not being a college student?

A: No cockroaches, first of all.

(Katie laughs.)

A: Aside from the horrendously gigantic insects…I mean, to go off on this brief tangent, those things are terrifying. I didn’t have to deal with them until I came here.

K: It’s not like they go out of their way to scare you, Abner.

They’re just trying to live their lives.

K: Exactly, they’re just existing. And you just happen to be an observer.

A: Ok, to be fair, I don’t think humans are meant to be in Williamsburg to begin with, so they have dominion of this place, as far as I’m concerned. They can have the swamp all to themselves. Anyways, the thing I’m looking forward to most after this is all done, is actually finally making a name for myself. Because I perform a lot and I feel like I could, with of course luck but mostly a lot of work in the right setting, I could become someone like Chet Baker and Miles Davis and John Coltrane, because I think I’ve set myself up with the right set of skills and I have the knowledge of the genre to do that. And in order to be a successful jazz artist, you really need a city and not a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, now we’re shading.

A: The further away the objects get, the less defined and more blurry they become, which is what I needed to do to bring out those effects. So now, it’s actually starting to look like how it’s shaded.

Wow, that completely transformed it.

A: Mmhmm. It’s always fun to watch, because no matter how many sketches I do, I never get tired of watching that.

K: Because you never quite know how it’s gonna turn out.

A: That’s what I love about charcoal. No two sketches ever turn out the same, no matter how much I refine my technique. And how the little figures in the distance are hard to see, which is great, because they were hard to see.

K: That’s probably my favorite sketch of yours.

A: I just completed one earlier today that someone playing instruments.

K: Oh my god, the water, Abner.

A: I unintentionally made this look like nighttime. Oops, I accidentally messed up this spot, but that’s ok, I can just fill it in.

See, that’s why I can’t be an artist because I’m too much of a perfectionist. I’m not spontaneous enough,.

A: Plot twist, I’m actually a perfectionist as well. Working with charcoal has helped me give that up, because you’re never gonna get anything perfect with charcoal, it’s a a bit of an unpredictable medium. So, you just have to learn to work with the imperfections. Something that also helped, is a stopped throwing away pictures that I messed up. There are roughly 35 or so sketches, and one of them I did so poorly, but I decided to muscle my way through it and actually learn something from it. The fact that I finished it and looked at it to see what did work and didn’t work, I learned more from it. And looking at that picture actually helped me with this one, because these branches in front were the type of thing I messed up in the first one because I couldn’t figure out how to make them pop.

What would you say to a William and Mary student? What’s one thing that you think everyone on this campus should know?

A: Invest in yourself and your won’t be disappointed. Far too much of this campus is very much doing all these things for 30 other people and sending out your resume to all these businesses that will ignore you. But, just take yourself out to dinner, read a book, climb a tree, invest in yourself. People do not do that enough, myself included until this year. And then, if you do that, the people that do end up in your life will be attracted to that energy and they’ll be more likely be much more solid friends because of that.
K: I can back off of that. Just reminding yourself that you matter. We’re called a tribe but you are a very important member. I am a firm believer that everyone has meaning. You make the world a better place just by being in it. I love this quote that I shared with a friend: “The force that created the mountains and the oceans and seas, also created you.” You have as much significance as the most important thing that you value. You’re powerful and you’re amazing and you should carry that with you. You are enough. I could say that to everyone. Because they are. Everyone’s so amazing, and they need to know that.

This interview was done by two of our members. Their questions are denoted by E or G.

E: What do you do at the hospital?

I’m a surgical assistant.

E: What brought you to that occupation?

It’s a longer story than you probably have time for. I got my Masters at William & Mary in Education, did that for twenty years, and then had a mid-life review of what I wanted to do. I decided that I wanted to go into medicine.

G: When did you make that transition?

I went to EVMS (Eastern Virginia Medical School) two and a half years ago, and I’ve been doing this job for a year now.

G: Are you glad that you made the decision to change occupations?

Definitely – it’s been an interesting career change. I didn’t know as much about the medical community as I do now, and the people I work with are fabulous. We work really well together to ensure that people that come in for surgery are well taken care of.

E: What’s one of the most difficult things about the job?

Seeing the patients come in because a lot of the times they are really sick and you can’t help but feel really bad for them. If it was your family or your loved one…you would never want anyone to go through that. Both of my parents passed away and they had so many medical issues before then, so when I see some older folks, especially because there’s a lot of elderly people in this community, it brings me back to my parents.

G: Has there been a specific instance in your medical career so far that has reassured you that it has been the right career choice for you?

I’ve helped with C-sections, and I’ve really enjoyed that. Seeing babies come out healthy and seeing the moms with them, it’s incredible. The neat thing I discovered is that every baby has a unique voice. Some people think that crying all sounds the same, but it doesn’t. Every baby sounds different.

I try to come here and walk before I go to work because it’s always so beautiful and there’s always neat things to see. Every season it’s different.

G: Do you have to work really long hours?

I’m 11 am to 7 pm today. Depending on the day, I’ll be on call, so tonight I am on call 11 pm to 7 am. On the weekends, we share shifts, so I’ll be on call for 24 hours on the weekend, either a Saturday or a Sunday. Sometimes you don’t get called in, and sometimes you work all night long. The last time I pulled all nighters was when I was your age, but now I’m doing them again! I did one a couple weeks ago, which was doable, but the next morning I was really tired.

G: Do you ever feel like your career gets in the way of other things that you want to pursue?

Yeah, because I’m at the age now where I want to travel more and exercise, but I do enjoy my work.

E: It’s so nice to see someone who gives up themselves for others, it’s just a really nice occupation.

Thank you. It’s been really neat because everyone I work with – the nurses, the surgeons, everyone – they’re wonderful.

G: Could you speak more to what made you want to change your career?

I worked for twenty years as a wildlife biologist and then an environmental educator. I really liked that job and enjoyed working with kids, but after my parents died, I started to reevaluate where I was and what I wanted to do. I had always been interested in medicine, so I just figured that it was time to try something different. I do miss working with kids though. I would take middle school kids to Florida to learn about habitats down there and we would go snorkeling and see dolphins, turtles, and alligators, so it was really fun. But this career is completely different and I’ve done a lot of really cool things through it. It’s just different.

My dad was always into education and constantly taking classes no matter what age he was, so I think he would approve that I decided to go back to school in my fifties and start over.

Throughout my life, I was a zookeeper, a wildlife biologist, an environmental educator, and now I’m in medicine. And I might change again! I’ve got plenty of time left – there’s so much out there.

What’s your favorite smell? And why?

Oooh, yeah, great question. So my dad loves to put things in his pockets, he’s notoriously known for just putting things in his pockets. That also means food. Sometimes he’ll pull out a cashew from his pocket, and we’ll all just be like “oh, yeah, that makes sense, he took it with him.” Sometimes he will take bacon with him, which happened one time when I was in middle school. It was turkey bacon – my family likes turkey bacon, we don’t do real bacon, we just don’t like the flavor. So Dad put this bacon in his pocket, went out to do yard work, forgot about the bacon stack, and then put his clothes in the laundry. His clothes eventually made it into the dryer, where my gym clothes were. So for all of middle school, I smelled like a baked ham. The bacon smell just filled up the dryer and all of our clothes smelled him bacon. We’d be in gym class and all the kids would whisper “where is that smell coming from?” and I would be like “that’s weird, I don’t know.” And it was always me. Somehow it’s a really comforting smell and it makes me laugh, too. Not a lot of comforting things can also make you laugh, but this is both of those things – the smell of turkey bacon in gym class.

Did you ever attract unwanted attention?

So like from dogs or people?

Yeah.

Definitely kids. But I was popular enough in middle school that I could be looking around with everyone else and be like “yeah, someone does smell like a honey-baked ham, that’s so bizzare.” Someone should have deduced at some point that it was me, because no matter where I went, it smelled like bacon, and it never came off. We would wash our clothes multiple times and it just never left.

That’s really impressive.

Thank you. Yeah, it kinda just stayed.

I think it’s a cool thing to ask because I don’t think people always think about things like that.

I started asking friends what’s their favorite sound. I think that’s a cool one too. I like smell though, because we don’t often pay attention to smells.

What is your favorite sound?

Bare feet on anything. I have so much time before being a mom, but I love little kid feet especially. It’s a really fun sound. When little kids are first learning to walk, they don’t wear shoes or socks, usually. You hear these feet just trying. That also means that I love bare feet on anything. Grassy surfaces has a distinct sound, and hardwood floors and tile floors. It sounds like family, it sounds like comfort, and it sounds like natural love.

That’s really cool! I’m trying to think about how to word this question, but what would you say is your sense of family? What would you consider your family?

To me, family are the people you want to run to in the highest of highs and the lowest of lows and everything in between. People say “yeah, they’re always there for me” and they list things like “when I was stranded” or “really sad” and things like that which are these lows. I love to be like “oh, yeah, they’re my family and I love them because…” basically anything really mundane. Family should be people you can be around and want to be around all the time. But that’s hard. Because sometimes you love people so much and there’s different people for different situations and different feelings. So I know not to go to certain family – and when I say family I’m including friends because there is no distinction between true friends and family. There are people I’ll go to if I need emotional support, or if I need to build a bonfire on a beach, or if I need to pick a lock, or if I need a good, strong hug. They’re all different people. It’s tricky because within a family, you’re supposed to have the role of parent and sibling. Usually when we talk about family, we are talking about sibling-like family. We say things like “he’s like my family because we’re best friends. He’s basically a brother.” Nobody says “he’s my family because he’s basically a parent.” That’s not a pretty normal thing. I think the parent role is tricky and it’s really fluid and there’s something really beautiful about families where you get to play the parent role for your parents. That can come sooner or later, but hopefully it happens. Hopefully you live long enough to get to see your parents the way that they see you. Where you and your parents switch roles. I hope everyone gets to play the parent role in their family for their parents at some point. I think that’s really important to me and something I’ve had to learn this year, where I’ve had t make medical decisions for my mom and I’ve had to stay up rubbing her back with her and I sing the songs to her that she sung to me and I’m a lot more tone deaf than she is so it’s not great. It’s been – it feels like a good end to our relationship, to know what it feels like to be a parent to your own parent. Yeah? Okay We  did it! We got through eventually.  I don’t know if there was a point in any of that.

No there’s always a point. That’s the point of Humans!

Oh, that’s true. You’re right.

It’s interesting though because earlier you were talking about how we have different people for different things, and I was talking about this to one of my friends earlier this semester. For example, when we pick someone to be our significant other, suddenly we expect that person –

To be everything?

Yeah!

Oh, I talk about this all the time! Yeah, and it’s unfair to people! That’s why I’ve always said this – the distinction between my significant other and best friend, or friends, is nothing. I think that’s weird to some people. I treat my “Sig-Off” exactly the same as I treat any friend. People expect your boyfriend to be the listening ear, the good hug, the shoulder to cry on, the celebration guy, and I think that’s unfair and weird. You shouldn’t strip your friends of all their other roles and put it on someone new. When I date someone, I’m going to be like “yeah, I love you, but your hugs are literally not as good as Danny Rosenberg’s hugs. They’re never going to be better than his hugs!” And I think that sometimes the “Sig-Off” can get nervous because of that. Because when you love someone you want to be everything to them and I think one of the biggest parts about learning to love someone well is recognizing that you can’t be everything for them. You have to share that with their best friends and family and…just anyone.

Yeah,, because I feel like it ends up putting too much strain on the relationship, honestly, if you start trying to expect them to do everything. So I know you like to ask other people this question, but when in your life have you felt most free?

Hm..this is hard because I don’t tend to feel constrained a lot. I really want to give you different answers. We’re going to start with one. This past summer, the guy who I think of as a second dad to me – he was my dance teacher for a bit. I formally danced for a bit when I was little, but I actually danced in high school, so he was my teacher and coach. He’s one of my favorite people and an alum of William and Mary – he graduated fifteen years ago. So he met his boyfriend here even though his boyfriend didn’t go here – there’s a really cute story about how they met. They dated for two years of college and then graduated. They had been together for a while by the time Palmer proposed to Chad, and that was when I was working at Starfish – so two summers ago. This past summer, they were like “we’re getting married in Massachusetts. This is a very loose term, but Provincetown, MA is kind of the gay center of the world. It was the most fun thing for me because they asked me to be their flower girl. I had just turned twenty-one and I thought “am I too old for this?” but I wasn’t. So I did it and it was really freeing. Everyone was just so excited for their wedding and you would just walk around this small town where half the people are drag queen performers or drag kings and the other half are just people who are really compassionate and accepting. They’re there because they want inclusivity, because you don’t go there if you hold a chip on your shoulder at all. As I was walking around the town and down the aisle tossing petals it just felt like a very supportive community. It was really magical. It was wonderful to be there at a place where everyone went for inclusivity because they care a lot. You felt like you were in this small town where everyone was friends with each other and no one had to hide parts of themselves, which was really special and beautiful.

My other freest time involves my best friends, Danny – Boy Danny – and Alexis, my roommate of all four years whom I met here. Today is actually the anniversary of the day I accepted her proposal to be roommates. We texted each other at the same time about it, which was great! It was real tender. The three of us have this tradition where at some point between Blowout and leaving for the semester, we go to the beach at night, which you’re probably not supposed to do, and build a bonfire, which you’re also definitely not supposed to do. It’s funny because Danny is like a Boy Scout but he’s also a little kooky. So sometimes he’ll say something like “I didn’t bring any fire-starters, guess we’ll just have to figure something out!” He definitely does it intentionally, because it’s a challenge, in a way. I remember stripping headphones in the dark and touching the wires to a battery until we got a spark and putting tissue paper there, which was how we built a fire. They’re people who inspire me to do dangerous things but  I also know they’ve got my back on it. I feel very fearless when I’m around my best friends. Sometimes we skinny dip and the water is weirdly cold because we also do this during Fall Blowout. But we still go in the water, sometimes it’s just me, usually it’s me and Boy Danny, Alexis is like “you guys go ahead, I’m going to hold your wallets.” When I’m with them I feel so free. Usually Danny brings his ukulele, he’s a musical genius, so he’ll be like “Name a song! Oh sure, I can probably play that” and just strums it out on his uke while we sing along, very badly. That’s a very William and Mary experience that I don’t think I would’ve found anywhere else and will find anywhere else. There’s a freedom that comes from the deep trust and adventure with best friends.

Wow, that’s so cool. I really want to build a bonfire!

Yeah, he’s literally like “okay, your tools are the items in my car, and – go!” So in my free time I basically just google how to start fires. I feel like I should learn how to do those better because during the battery stuff, I really thought we were going to die. I was like “we’re going to get electrocuted. This is how it ends!” Danny’s also a brilliant photographer so he has his flash, so I was like “can we try the flash on something and see if fire starts, you know if it’s really intense?” It’s cool.

I love creating things. I think that’s another freedom.  It’s the fact that the human mind is capable of infinite thought. When you have a creative idea or a creative outlet, you are at your most free. Eduardo Galeano, who is my favorite poet/writer/speaker has a poem about prisoners of war in Uruguay. He has this line that’s like “the only thing keeping them alive is the fact that they can scratch on the wall and know that someone can try to picture what they’re doing.” You know what I mean? Just because of the sound and knowing that there is another human there. He also says that “the walls are the publishers of the poor.” I love street art and grafitti. I love creating, any sort of act of creating, like holy fuck, sorry, but that is just freeing, the freest thing a human can do.

What would you say is your favorite kind of creating, right now?

This is a very loose term of creativity. So Boy Danny and I, sometimes we play games with egg. We buy eggs – it’s okay because we donate to food pantries later to compensate for wasting food, I still feel really guilty about it a lot. We get these eggs and I’ll just get a text from him that’s like “meet me outside in ten minutes, you don’t have to wear shoes.” We’ll then go to Matoaka or a field and we will play egg tag, where the rules are made up in the moment and you can’t see where you’re throwing so you just have to blindly alternate throws. It’s really fun. We’ve been crafting “beggsball”, which is baseball but with eggs. We’re going to do it before the year ends. And you get so messy. The way we start each game, no matter what game it is, is by facing your opponent. Then you take an egg and you put it right on top of their head and count to three and smash it. The egg drips over you and you go to your respective sides and then the game begins. I love creating things that are unconventional and messy, because I think we fear messes too much in life. It’s the same thing with summer rain. Summer rain isn’t something I create. But why do people run indoors when it rains in the summer? You’re not going to get hurt, you’re not in danger, it’s a little uncomfortable, but it’s nourishing when you sit out in it. So I love creating things with eggs; all the games we play with our eggs.  We always come home and are disgusting. And of course, it doesn’t end right there. We have to have deep life chats while we look at the stars. So then by the time I go home the egg is crusty and it just flakes off. I want to believe it’s good for your hair but that’s just what I tell myself. I’m like “oh, it’s a treatment.” So his car has a lot of egg in it now. So I love creating things that are messy.

I’m also a big believer in the creative spirit behind movement. I get all my feathers ruffled when someone says they can’t dance because that’s inherently not true. I’m the Ratatouille of dancing, where he’s like “anyone can cook!” I think anyone can dance and that’s a true fact. As long as there is something that you’re in control of moving, it is dance. So when I worked at Starfish, I did a lot of dance therapy. It was basically  asking them to show me how they felt in a movement. It takes people a while to warm up to it, because they throw their hands up and they’re like “I can’t do it.” And I respond “that! That was a movement!” Then we expand on it, and it becomes something else. It’s really fun to interact that way. Probably one of the most consistent lifelong creative things for me that is still true today is creating movement, because it’s just the most inherent way in which a person can express themselves. Even if you look at babies, when they don’t know how  to speak yet, they move and they indicate how they feel. When you’re in a tantrum, you don’t think “okay, I’m going to place my right arm here and my left arm here!” You do it.  So I wish that everyone considered themselves choreographers or movement creators. I wish that people actually took the time out of every day to summarize how they’re feeling after the whole day in a 3-count movement. I think it’s very therapeutic and it gives you something you’re proud of when you feel like you’ve been able to express yourself.

That’s really cool! I’ve never heard someone refer to dance as creating movement before and that’s such a cool idea.

I think it’s kind of funny because in philosophy we have a term for God, “The Unmoved Mover.” It’s basically that no one can move Him but He can move the rest of us. I didn’t grow up in a house that does theology so I don’t have religion. I don’t really know these things in my core. But I think it’s funny because I want to believe that “The Unmoved Mover,” just because it’s such an ancient idea, was meant to create movers who can move. Just inherently, at our core, I think we’re meant to move, we’re not meant to be still. This is why I get so frustrated in class – I can’t sit still. I have to take a lap. You can usually find me running a lap around Blair in the middle of class because I think movement helps to process things.

So not just from yesterday (One Last Thing) but from conversations I’ve had with you before, I know there was a period in your life where you were really struggling with your physical self. How did that affect your relationship with dance and your ability to create movement?

Oh, that’s a lot. That’s a big journey. We’re going to try to encompass it. So there was a lot happening in terms of the shell that houses my spirit. That’s what I refer to my body as. It was a lot weaker than my spirit. As a result, I was like “well, fuck, my spirit is weaker.” So I would do movement for the sake of impressing or the sake of competing because I was a competitive dancer, in my freshman year as well. I loved it. My coach, Palmer, would always say “if this isn’t healthy for you, you shouldn’t do it.” But I told myself I could do it and that everything was fine. I knew I needed something that I wasn’t getting and I tried therapy. A therapist told me once,  “this is never going to work for you, because you can see through the bullshit.” And I was all like “how can you say therapy is bullshit, I’m trying!” And she just responded by saying it can be bullshit and it’s all about how you interpret it. Sometimes it’s telling yourself a really nice lie until you get to a place where you  can form a new truth. So she basically just told me therapy wasn’t going to work for me. So then I was like “where do I go now?” So that was when I turned to people and storytelling. I decided that I wanted to live more outside my head because inside my head was rough. I thought that if I could live outside my head, I could collect new ideas and feel new things. Eventually, that would have to fill up all the space and push out some of the bad. That was when I started working in a hospital. I would pick up these weird hours like 2am because that’s when people are most lonely and need someone to hear their story. Or I would go to train stations on cold nights and bring coffee for the homeless people. I’d sit and just ask for their truths. Because a lot of times people get written off if they are perceived as not being grounded in reality. But just because what they’re saying isn’t grounded in reality doesn’t make it any less true to them. Imagine a world where people walk by you not hearing your truths. Imagine how empty would that leave you. I heard some wacky stories about purple penguins and some were more fun. But at the hospital, one night a guy came in and he had broken his hip. His daughter had dropped him off because he was around ninety. He just wanted to talk to someone because his wife had passed. So I was sitting with him and eventually he told me this cool story about his best friend, who was also his wife. It was all about how you need to go on a road trips and adventures with your best friends and you need to not bring your phone. If you do bring your phone, you can only respond to people who reach out to you. Don’t initiate, don’t try to be in a place different from where you are. You can answer people to tell them that you’re safe, but don’t ask them “hey, how’s it going?” Don’t reach out, let people reach to you. He said that all you need to pack is a swimsuit, something you don’t mind getting dirty, and something you feel so stunning in. Take those three things, pack them in a car, and go anywhere. My best friend, who’s going into the army as a field artillery officer, and I did that a few times. She is remarkable in every way. She’s the most tender-hearted badass woman. She is my person for that, and so is Boy Danny. Eventually, I just accumulated all these stories and all these thoughts that there wasn’t room anymore to hold onto these really stubborn, hateful things that I felt about myself. It’s unconventional, but I think people and stories are a form of therapy.  Through people’s stories, I was able to realize that I had so much more to experience that I needed to stop lowkey killing myself. Not in a hopeful or inspirational way, because I heard a lot of heartbreak. But I still wanted it. I still wanted to feel it all. I think the goal to life is intensity in any form on the spectrum. I hope people feel intense heartbreak and then learn empathy from it. I just hope it doesn’t break people; that’s always my fear. I think people should experience these deep, intense emotions in any way. Then that’s a full life. That’s a life well-lived. Then, when I came to Starfish and I started doing dance therapy, I would ask someone “why aren’t you moving? Why aren’t you trying?” And he’d be like “oh, I don’t like my body, it doesn’t move like this.” And then I would have all these reasons why that wasn’t real. So then I was like “shit, why am I not saying this to myself?” Because if you hear something enough you start to believe it which is a lot of how I believe mental illness perpetuates, especially in abusive and trauma situations. So we always tried to replace the bad perpetuating thoughts with good ones. My kids would eventually turn to each other and say things like, “hey, your body is beautiful because it’s trying!” and stuff like that where I would be amazed that my words were on someone else. I was around it enough that it felt naturally to allow myself to hit a reset button.

So now, with the way you are and where you are in life, would you say that you’re content with the way things are or do you feel like there is so much more that is uncertain?

I’m really scared all the time that I’m going to lose my deep empathy for people, because I think that’s one of  the core characteristics of who I am. And I’ve seen it from working with my kids. Trauma can really tear down your empathy. That’s probably my biggest fear. Especially because my mom is in her last stage of cancer. I’m very, very, very scared that when she passes I’m going to be so frustrated with people who are having fun and are happy that I’m going to be the Grinch and my heart will shrink seven sizes or whatever and I’ll lose my ability to empathize. I’m at peace with the fact that I think I’ve learned a lot about how to care for people and how to say “I love you” in different ways. If I were to die tomorrow, I feel like my last breath would still be one where I could say “yeah, I did it.” That’s a really great feeling. But I think that as people we’re so fluid and ever-changing that I would never want to be in a place of full contentment. I want to be uncomfortable all the time because that means there’s still something else to do. I want to feel like there’s still someone else that I have to talk to and something more to do, like I have to tell them this or that. I want some sense of future urgency and longing and discomfort. I’m not content, but I am grateful for the journey. One of my life’s purposes is to find the best ways to care for people and I think I’ve done that up until now, but tomorrow there’s going to be a new opportunity to find another way. So it’s this bit of unrest with knowing that we’re fluid and ever-changing and anticipating the fear. I think we can’t let fear drive the bus – Erik Garrison has this great quote where he says “don’t let fear drive the bus, you drive the bus but strap fear in” or something like that. I’m sure that’s completely wrong but I think fear needs to come along with you on the journey because it forces you to constantly be thinking and feeling. With my mom, I’m so afraid of losing my empathy, but my fear is sitting there and constantly reminding me to express my feelings, call my friends, go to the hospital to check on her which ensures that the empathy is still present, to make sure that it doesn’t diminish and gradually fizzle out. So I think we should never be wholly content. We should always have a little fear in our hearts all the time. I think that it drives us to – not improve because I hate that word since people picture success conventionally, but to dive in deeper into the things that we care about.

It’s cool to hear someone say that because there’s such a negative outlook that people have about fear. That it’s always something that brings you down or holds you back. It’s really interesting to hear someone put it as a motivator.

Yeah, my mom always used to say “feel the fear and do it anyways.” If you’re not doing something that is even a little motivated by fear, you’re not doing it from your heart.

A lot of times, when you’re feeling most vulnerable is also when you’re having your greatest growth. I guess that’s the whole idea of stepping outside of your comfort zone.

I try to never stay in my comfort zone. I’m not sure if I have one. Which can be tricky, because you crave comfort, as people. Recently, I made a friend who I just met but we fell fast into a feeling of kindred spirit-ship. We love living outside our comfort zones. He took a year off to work in Vietnam from the ground up. He didn’t have any social support, did not know the language, he didn’t have an institution that was helping him teach – just a set of classrooms which were really just like campsites. So yeah, cool guy. Recently, he was like “it’s raining. Meet me outside at our corner in five minutes.” And I was like “great, I can do that.” So he comes in the rain, he’s smiling, and he’s just holding these mugs of hot coffee. We brought hammocks and blankets. We set up these hammocks on the beach. It was cold rain. We cuddled up in our blankets and just talked for hours. He was like “the goal is that one of us is going to tap out before we get hypothermia.” He tapped out first. We were out there for at least two hours and it was so cold and so uncomfortable but there was so much more to that interaction than comfort. I actually think the discomfort contributed to how vulnerable we were willing to be. I don’t think anyone’s comfort zone is naturally being cold and wet,  but I think you should find a way to blend something that comforts you, like a good, good friend, with these scarier, fear-based things outside your comfort zone.

So, tell me about the children’s book.

So I was looking for a job last spring, and I went on “Williamsburg Families” which is where my big had told me that she had gotten a job many years back and I emailed two of the people who were on there. One of the people was somebody who needed an ongoing babysitter and another woman was somebody who was making a children’s dictionary and she wanted people to illustrate pictures for her dictionary. So I emailed both of them and I was kinda like, you know, just whatever works out. I was saving up to get a kitten and so this was leading to that. And so, the woman with the babysitting job ended up contacting me first, and so I still babysit the 6 year old kid. She’s the sweetest; I love her a lot. But then a few weeks after I had started babysitting, this lady with the dictionary emailed me back and she said, “Hey, so sorry it took me awhile to get back to you. I actually had somebody for the dictionary already, but I was wondering if from your background you might be interested in helping me with another project that I am doing, which is writing a children’s book about a little girl who has a grandmother in two different countries.”

Oh, wow.

And I think that, you know, she didn’t say it super explicitly, but she sort of hinted at the fact that like, “Oh, I could tell your name was Indian.” And so I was like, “Okay, tell me a little bit more about the book and I can talk to you about that a little bit.” And she told me that her husband was Indian and her daughter had one grandmother in India and one in Maryland. And so she really wanted her daughter to have a book that she could relate to and she hadn’t really seen any of that for her kid personally. So, she said that this was kind of more of a personal project for her and her daughter, but she really wanted to see how far it could go. She told me she was a member of some Facebook groups with cross-cultural families and that she had received a really positive response there when talking about possibly doing a book like this. So, I said, “Okay, cool!” And she sent me the text to her book and it was really cute she had little phrases in Hindi. She had just picked up those phrases after visiting the country and coming back and from her husband and from movies, she told me. A few of them were a little misplaced but I didn’t say anything about it. Luckily, she asked me about them later and ended up switching them to more common ones which was good.

Laughing

I mean I was surprised. I was like, “I’ve never heard of that word before myself, but okay.”

So have you illustrated stuff before?

I hadn’t illustrated a book before. I also really like art. It’s always been something I enjoyed a lot. It’s not something I’ve made a lot of time for myself for. So, I was excited by the job prospect. I wasn’t sure how I was going to take it just because all my life my mom’s been like, “Oh you should go into something creative where you do art and stuff.” And I’d always said “no, I don’t think I would like doing art if it was something that I was mandated to do.” And I will say it, first this was really fun, but, you know, by the time you are doing 32 pages of this, it gets a little bit monotonous. It was still really fun and I enjoyed it a lot, but I spent so much time researching other children’s book illustrators to try and figure out what my children’s book illustration style was going to be, and sort of finding that for myself.

And what was the style?

I can show you some pictures, actually, if you want! I should have brought my copy of the book. I gave it to the girl that I babysit.  She was my number 1 fan so I gave it to her. I could not keep that from her.

This is so cool.

Yeah, it’s very cute. I have the whole thing in PDF here somewhere. I’ll find it and just continue talking. The book ends up being about this little girl named Seema. And it starts off with, “Hi I’m Seema and this is my family,” and it’s a picture of her and her mom and dad having a picnic. And then they kinda go on to say, “I have a grandma that lives close by and a grandma that lives far away.” And then she talks about the different ways she has her transportation to get there. So she’ll drive to one grandma’s house, but fly overnight to another grandma’s house.  And the author drew some really neat parallels between what she does with each grandma. So, while with her grandma here in Maryland, she bakes cookies. With her grandma in India, she makes these things called rotis, which are kind of like flatbreads, on the stove. So she introduces little vocab words there which was cool. It sort of wraps up with her saying that one grandma, after we wash up and get ready for bed, she tucks me in and kisses me goodnight. And it’s the same thing for the other grandma except she writes it in Hindi. So it’s a lot of back and forth. My favorite page ended up being this floating market page. I’ve never been to a floating market myself – her family is from a different part of India than I’ve ever visited. I think I have some relatives there, but I’ve never seen this place. So, the way that they get their groceries is the coolest thing. They go in these canoe-like things and all the people who grow their food have their own larger canoe boats, and all their produce is laid across them and they’re called floating markets. So, you row your boat to the market and you go get all your food and load it into your boat and take it home!

*Laughing* Woah!

Yeah, so that was really cool for me to draw a picture of. That ended up being the best, and it was very cute. She was like, “My grandma always makes sure I get lotus flowers on the way. So we got to pull some out of the stream there…” I’m sorry I’m just struggling to multi-task.

*Laughing* It’s fine. I’m excited to see it.

Yeah, hold on, let’s see. If nothing else there’s gotta be an old draft in one of these.  There we go .. I think this is — no that’s just a couple pages.  Let me open it up on here so I can actually have it.

Okay, okay .. yeah that sounds so cool.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun.  

Yeah.

It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. *laughing*

So is it being published?

Yeah it’s published on Amazon. You can buy it if you want.

Yeah, what is it called?

It’s called, “Grandma, Dadi, and Me.” So Dadi is D-A-D-I, which is the Hindi word for “paternal grandmother.”

Okay.

Yeah, I can show it to you on Amazon if you want.

Yeah, this is amazing.

Yeah, it’s very cute. The girl I babysit was extremely excited about it. She was talking about it for months leading up to it and was always saying, “When is your book coming out?”

Your #1 fan.

She really is. And what ended up happening was before it was actually ready, I printed a black and white copy for her because she couldn’t wait and she carried it around for two weeks before I gave her the real one.  

Wait, that’s so cute! Can we look inside?

I don’t know if it shows any of the pages.  But I can pull up the real book for you, too.

Wow, these are beautiful.

Thank you.

Yeah, I ended up learning a lot about digital picture editing. I checked out a tablet for a couple months from Swem. They were very accommodating.

And that’s so cool your name is on it… your name is on the front cover. That’s awesome.

I put it there.

Laughing. Wow. That’s awesome.

So it’s a very sweet story. I thought it was very sweet that this woman also wanted to make a book just for her daughter.

Best gift ever.

Yeah, so her daughter was three when I met her – I don’t know if she’s a little bit older now, but she was so smart. She was playing little vocab games on her mom’s phone. But she was very chatty and I don’t think she completely understood the concept of this book, but I think she’ll grow to really appreciate it.

So how do you do it? Do you draw this on a piece of paper and then somehow transfer it to a computer?

I have no experience with this, which I disclosed fully, but she still wanted me to do it. I watercolor painted all of them first and then I scanned them and I traced over the outlines because my lines weren’t really dark enough when I scanned them. And then I erased all the backgrounds and I filled them in with solid colors so it would be smoother and less grainy. But it’s mostly watercolor that you see there.

This is amazing.  It’s just so beautiful.  

I had a lot of fun with it. I never realized before that when you illustrate a children’s book, the illustrations are actually the main point of the book.  

Because they don’t know how to read yet.  

Usually somebody else is reading to them. The girl I babysit is always taking picture walks through her books before she’s allowed to read them where they just flip through and look at all the pictures first. So I know I played a very important role for kids who read this. Yeah, I’m going to find it for real now.

Campbell:  How did you start painting and when did you start?

I’m not sure when I got into it, but I’ve done it all my life. I’ve always had little side projects and painting things. I like sculpting a lot. For a lot of my elementary and middle school life. I like having a little project going and I didn’t have one going in college. There wasn’t that much room for supplies here. At home I have drawers and shelves of art supplies, so everything is within reach. And this gave me a reason to have something going on. It was a lot of fun.

Yeah, a good break from your neuroscience, right?

Exactly, I got to take one art class here which I made sure I worked in. I was glad there was a GER6 because, I could justify it to myself, “I have to do this.” But it was nice that it was like taking an art class but doing whatever I wanted.

Yeah, not having the structure or the deadlines of an art class.

When I took an art class they made me only paint with a palette knife the entire semester until the final. I wasn’t really a huge fan of that. He kept saying, “You’re not ready for bushes yet,” to the whole class. I was like, “Are you sure?”

What, how can you not be ready for brushes?

And admittedly he showed us one really cool painting that he made with a palette knife only.  And it was nice; I get that that’s your style. That’s understandable, but I don’t know. And then mixing paints was a whole big thing for him – which I think it has to be in an intro art class I guess. We did the circle where you make a color wheel. And we did ten squares from white to blue and white to red and white to yellow. He had a thing about not giving out 100% because nobody’s could be perfect. But I got a 99% on that, so…

Laughing. You were pretty close.

I got his 100. So I was pretty proud that day.

Emily: Did you tell him about the book?

I didn’t. I don’t know if he’s still here. He might be. Dave Campbell? It was his first semester when I took his class. So, anyway his palette knife paintings were great. We only painted wooden balls on a piece on a table. So, this was a little more fulfilling to me.

Yeah, you could be a little more creative with this for sure.

Yeah, this was a little more up my alley … okay it’s downloading now.

So did she give you an idea of what she wanted or was it really just up to you?

She told me when she hired me she wanted me to do it because I had the experience to get the colors right. So, really she let me do whatever I wanted. I sent her an outline of what I was thinking for each page and she was like, “Okay great!” So she gave me a lot of freedom.

Oh, that’s nice.

I really just drew whatever felt right.  *Shows book*  So there it is.  You can zoom in or out as is convenient.

Emily:  Have you gotten feedback from anybody?

I told some people who have young children about it. And a lot of them told me that it was their child’s favorite book for that favorite book phase. They kinda had their favorites for the week. Mallory, the girl I babysit, still totes hers around and when we draw pictures she usually wants these characters so we do that a lot. But I haven’t heard personally from too many people. I don’t think I personally know the right audience for this book.

Emily: I think if I were a kid, I would bring this book around with me too, I really like this

Thank you. It took me a really long time to decide how to color it and how to draw it.

Campbell:  I think the like the watercolor kinda just helps, especially I’m not a neuroscience person .. You can almost like tie in your neuroscience of how watercolor appeases the brain or something like that.  

I like it.

Campbell: I really think the watercolor just helps though, the child focus and sees like a .. I don’t know the word.

With watercolor you’re not just getting one color when you put it on the page. Even though I didn’t do anything too realistic here, it looks more real. When you look at a leaf, it’s not just one green. And I think watercolor really brings that out.

Wow, this is so detailed. This is amazing. Look at this page.

Thank you. I’m glad you like it.

Wow. So cool.

Campbell: Exactly how long did this take you?

So I think I started around Spring Break last year and then I worked on it pretty intermittently.  And I had all the pages done at the beginning of June and then there was a lot of back and forth and just formatting it to the right PDF format. So I don’t remember exactly when this came out, but it was pretty early in the summer.

Really?

Yeah. I know my drawing part of it didn’t go very deep into the summer at all.

Campbell:  There’s like the drawing and painting stage, so did your painting just take a while?

I drew all of them because painting was more fun, so I drew all of them first just to get it out of the way and then I started filling them in. So the drawing and the painting actually was done by the beginning of summer. And then I spent a little of the beginning of summer just devoting myself to transferring this into a computer and tracing it and editing it, which was not my favorite part. The painting was a lot of fun though.

So is this something you might want to do again? Continue?

I don’t know if she’s going to be writing more books. If she does I would be down to help her out with it. I think I’d prefer shorter books in the future.

Laughing.  Yeah, this was actually a lot longer than I thought it would be.

Right? It seems short when you read the text on one page, but once you start drawing a whole one or two pages for each sentence, it ends up a little bit hefty.

So how many pages is this? It says 32.

I think it’s 32 if you count the covers.

Wow, that’s so cool.

But I was really happy that I developed my own little cartoon style.

Yeah, yeah and this is something you can show off to friends forever.  You, know?

When I get another copy of the book.

Laughing. Oh, yeah.

I need to buy one again, first.

Laughing.  Wow, this is so cool. I can’t get over it – I’m in shock.

Thank you.

You said in class that your generation failed us. What did you mean by that?

Just in terms of the nature of the rhetoric, that is a clear regression. I tried to be as clear as I could in the classroom context with the students. I’m not suggesting that things were going back to the (not so) “good ole days,” not pollyannaish at all or romanticizing the past. I was taken by surprise when President Obama was elected, pleasantly surprised, of course. I thought this meant something. At the time it was mainly symbolic when you consider things like mass incarceration and growing wealth inequality, but then I had a daughter who went to kindergarten around that time. I remembered going in and seeing the pictures on the walls and being struck by them myself. Seeing those crayons and the brown faces, I realized I wasn’t doing it a service by saying it’s “just” symbolic. Symbolism is powerful, and you wonder if there might be some kind of backlash [to the progress we’ve witnessed], but you are still fairly hopeful. Recently, this kind of visceral reaction was clearly at least a couple steps back after one step forward, in terms of the public discourse. I don’t want to overstate; we’ll see what happens.

I thought we just set the completely wrong example. Whatever people’s political leanings are, they are entitled to the grievances on both sides. On the Republican side, Mr. Trump was tapping into something real. But the message we are sending to you, to say it in the capacity of a citizen, the sheer vulgarity on display at times, just left you stunned. I saw your faces in class, silenced and stunned, wondering what in the world is going on.

There’s a vacuum of leadership from my generation. In that sense, we didn’t offer you the psychic protections that you see all over the place we should have. You see it on the community level, where the impoverished children often grew up with some protection. Their parents shield them from things and they don’t realize how dire the circumstances are until they’ve built up some resilience when they get older. The feeling I had was that, at the national level, we didn’t shield you from some of those things that my generation, and certainly previous generations, endured. As bad as things sometimes could be, I certainly did not feel like bearing the brunt of being told that you’re not valued or wanted in the way that is happening to some of our population; particularly minorities, and to an extent women as well. If you reward someone for this behavior by electing him President, then you are sending a clear message to the people he’s offending. That’s what I was trying to imply as appropriately as I could in a classroom setting. I felt like we really let you down in the sense that we didn’t set a good example and protect those folk. Of course, those of us trying to do that should be supported, but overall, we have to take the blame for not doing generationally what we should be doing.

I’m just hoping it’s a wakeup call. I hope you realize that part of the lesson—this might seem kind of cynical—is that you cannot wait for us. I’m hoping young folk realize that you have to find ways to take the reins, because the adults sometimes either don’t get it or won’t get it, out of willed ignorance or whatever the case is. You have to lead. Most progressive changes come about through youth leadership. In the case of the Civil Rights Movement, we forget how young Martin Luther King was at the time he was killed. He was a very young man. Youth energy, youth vision and perspective are critical.

For young people to take the lead on progressive change, how should they address a large portion of this country who feels left out? How do we talk to them?

Unfortunately, that’s too good a question. A lot of us are struggling with that. Even what I suggested at the end of the class—to talk to people who you disagree with—is too simplistic. Sometimes it’s a matter of timing. Now emotions are still high and raw, so those conversations are fraught and charged.

I worked on the Race project for the American Anthropological Association. The fundamental assumption with that project is that we have to engage in open and honest conversations, and we have to work from a shared framework and database of knowledge. Race is one big example, the one I’m most familiar with. We came up with a model that incorporated science, history, and contemporary lived experience. From that, we have the basis for talking about race and racism, and human variation. Everyone may not agree, but as a starting point for discussion, that’s the most comprehensive one I’m aware of. There has to be some assumption that we have some shared goals. We need to figure out what those are and work backwards from those goals as opposed to either assuming that we don’t have shared goals or failing to lay out transparently what those goals are. That’s where we tend to get lost. To address the issue or problem of race, racism, and human variation, we have to acknowledge first that this is how we got here. But that’s not what we have done, certainly not at a big enough scale.

I say that you have to assume leadership, but there are certain things that have to be put in place. You can’t do it with us sitting on top of you. I think there have to be structural commitments, and then the task becomes for you to go out and spread your tentacles where those structures become impediments as opposed to enablers of these conversations. The fact is, we are here and we are all here to stay. Similar to the Civil Rights Movement, people recognize and realize that we are not going anywhere, so we have to figure this thing out.

Some people think conversation sounds watered down, especially when you hear it so often—conversation on this, conversation on that. But if those conversations consist of discussions on the real issues of power and inequality, and the barriers to justice and peace, then I think they are worth having. You are just primed and ready to have those conversations in a way that many folk my age and older simply aren’t comfortable with having.

If you look at what the millennial voters’ position was in this election, no one can deny that it would have been a progressive move if we had elected a woman president—that represents the belief of 80% of our young people. That fortifies my position that you all are ready. The challenge for you is to figure out how to get us out of the way. That’s something I’m not quite sure of. We can have those conversations amongst ourselves, but I think you also need to push and prod where necessary. That’s just how history has worked. Youth and young adult movements have been the main engine of social change everywhere you look.

As an anthropologist, what do you think are some of the elements in that shared knowledge base that are not established between “us” and “them”? What are the impediments to conversation?

I wonder about this. As anthropologists, we look at the historical evolution of different racial identities, including whiteness. I don’t want to reduce various political camps down to racial identities, but I want to use that as an example. Often one of the challenges is how to present this notion that we all have these identities, that we are all multifaceted and multidimensional. It’s easy for us on this side of the political divide to stereotype Trump supporters, to reduce them to racists, sexists, you name it. But there has to be some acknowledgement that that’s not the only driving force even as those forces clearly are at play. People on our either side have to acknowledge the viewpoint of those on the other side. We have to find a way to acknowledge the multidimensional aspects of all of our identities and to allow the other side to be as uncompromising in their critiques as we are. That’s a challenge. You see this across all sorts of divides. A group can be leveling some blistering critique and yet be somewhat blind to the critiques of others.

Alliance-building across this political divide, to be honest, has to address this perceived loss of power. We are coming on the heels of two terms of our first African-American president, faced with the prospect with a woman president. If we are honest, for some people it was just too much. You do get this backlash. For others, there are other issues. It comes down to allowing people to be human, as we allow ourselves to be—here’s where it gets tricky, since it’s too easy to give false equivalence—yet doing that while acknowledging historically entrenched power and inequalities. We may all have legitimate grievances, but me hurling some words at someone doesn’t have the social and historical force as other groups do. Historically, even minor changes have elicited huge backlash responses from the majority white population.

I’m sorry I don’t have concrete suggestions or answers as I would like. At this point, we’re still processing a lot of this. I do see this as hopefully some last vestiges of pushing back against what really is inevitable change, demographic and otherwise. A lot of the people who supported Hillary Clinton, and the political pundits, underestimated the force of that backlash and that feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness. You put all of that within the broader context of economic change, for which people are looking for answers and scapegoats as to why circumstances are what they are, and you’ve got the situation that we have today.

But there is hope.

Absolutely. In my position, one thing I want to say to the students is that, while it’s important to let people know that you are hurt, it’s at least as important to address the real issues, including the physical vulnerability of some people, and at the same time not feeding too much into a sense of despair. Again, I’m not romanticizing the past, but we’ve been here before, in some cases tougher spots. Many circumstances have been overcome in the past. We just have to have that sustained commitment that takes us beyond episodes [of effort]. Another point of the Race project was to give people access to this type of information and have the conversations when they are not charged. Don’t wait till an incident. Here’s information you can pore over about the lived experiences of people across all sorts of political and racial divides. Talk about this stuff not simply when there is a police shooting, so that when those things happen, you have a framework to put them in. I hope a shared structural commitment can come out of this to sustain dialog that will then lay a new foundation for behavior when the next inevitable thing happens. Optimism can rise and wane from time to time, but there’s never an excuse for hopelessness.

Regardless of your political persuasion, seeing the first woman president would have been another huge milestone in this nation’s history. In that sense, I can only see it as a setback. But when you look at the full arc, you are reminded that this experiment of America, this notion of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and pluralistic society, has never really been accomplished or even attempted. To have a society in which everyone is supposedly able to come in and feel welcomed as free and equal citizens—that experiment just hasn’t happened before. The newness and youth of our nation in that sense—several hundred years is still a drop in the bucket—should give us pause so that we don’t become too cynical or hopeless. The balancing act for me is always to keep that in mind while realizing that progress, as we have seen, can be taken away. So you are always pushing and hopefully there’s creative tension between how far we’ve come and how far we’ve got to go. If there’s any silver lining, I’m hoping that this becomes both a clarion call for younger folk to stay engaged in creating the world they want to see and also opening up opportunities for some hard dialogues across differences.

We focus so much on structural change, with good reason. Also, some of this has to come from conversations that people are not always willing to have. In the case here, if you look at students feeling threatened, Muslims, racial minority students, those are conversations that need to happen across and within groups. I think about my white faculty colleagues and sometimes conversations can be qualitatively different along racial lines. I would hope that they will have some hard conversations with their colleagues across political lines —conversations that I’m less likely to have—to do what it takes to bring about the change and make sure everyone feels valued on this campus. The first thing has to be making sure everyone feels safe. Then we can work towards those dialogues.

For my part, I’ll be in touch with people who are willing to have those sustained dialogues and make those structural commitments on the part of departments and the entire college. I see that as our role and responsibility. If we can do that, then we don’t have a fertile environment in which these flare-ups can happen. That’s the foundational change we have to work towards. Students play a role there as well. Students can support such initiatives and the faculty behind them, to keep the demand on those types of programs in their own interest and in the interest of the institution. Nations and institutions have a right to decide what they are going to be, but they also have the ability to change, and so you do have some power and some say in what kind of society you want.