Category: Opinion

A new research update from the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard poses an instructive question on the use of A.I.: Do large language models (L.L.M.s)  promote or impede flourishing? This seemingly simple question, if taken seriously, could prove to be an effective lens in considering how these technologies are designed and produced and how they are ultimately used.  

“Flourishing Considerations for A.I.”  applies the Human Flourishing Program’s six domains of flourishing — happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial security — to five sets of considerations. Two pertain to A.I. product developers on the nature of the output provided by L.L.M.s and the specific design and packaging of particular A.I. products. The other three sets pertain to the user of A.I. products concerning decisions about the extent and nature of use, the effects of A.I. use on human knowledge, and the effects of A.I. on persons and communities.  

In identifying the players, motivations, and risks of L.L.M. technologies, the paper provides a guide, complete with guardrails and benefits, that brings us back to basics: Is our use of A.I. helping or hindering us when it comes to our ability to flourish as individuals and as a society? While the authors suggest ways to better build or use what currently exists, they do recommend eliminating one erroneous offering: the chat bot companion. They conclude that, for humans to flourish, we need to interact with other (real) humans.  

The following is an op-ed on the subject from Tyler J. VanderWeele, the lead author of the report and director of the Human Flourishing Program. The article originally appeared in Psychology Today. 

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Can We Remain Human in the Age of A.I.?

By Tyler J. VanderWeele

Artificial intelligence technologies have been rapidly rising. Their potential applications are extraordinary, from information synthesis to robotic surgery, statistical analysis, civil engineering, and more. By leveraging and re-packaging vast quantities of existing knowledge, they seem to open endless possibilities for their use, but also for abuse.

Like any tool, A.I. can be used for good or for ill. If these technologies are to enhance human flourishing, rather than impede it, then we need to consider whether the design of A.I. technologies and our engagement with them are oriented towards our own flourishing. Of particular concern is how our use of these technologies is affecting our capacities for reason, for relationship, for transcendence, which go to the heart of our human nature. Are we finding a greater fulfilment through these tools? Or do they threaten to diminish and constrict our lives?

A Flourishing Lens

In a recent paper from the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard published in the journal Information, we have put forward a set of Flourishing Considerations for A.I., discussing how a “flourishing lens” can guide decisions on the design and use of A.I. technologies related to: (i) the type of output provided; (ii) the specific A.I. product design; (iii) our engagement with those products; the effects this is having on (iv) human knowledge; and on (v) the self-realization of the human person.

Are we finding a greater fulfilment through these tools? Or do they threaten to diminish and constrict our lives?

We’ve made use of our general framework for conceptualizing and assessing human flourishing, oriented around six domains: happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial resources. We argue in our new paper that whenever an A.I. product is developed, and whenever we are deciding whether to use it, we should consider how it will affect our happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial security, among other aspects of a good life. If the effect on some of these outcomes is likely detrimental, developers should consider whether it can be redesigned to mitigate these negative effects. Whenever it is clear that our own use would have negative effects on these outcomes, we should question whether we would be better off without it.

Respecting and Fulfilling Human Nature

Of particular concern is what these technologies might be doing to our nature as human persons. For instance, there is evidence that substantial use of A.I. tools such as “large language models” (L.L.M.s) can hinder users’ cognitive abilities. If we become weaker in our reasoning, we are flourishing less, not more, as human persons.

Given that L.L.M.s also get things wrong (so-called “A.I. hallucinations”), we should not place any absolute reliance on them or their products as sources of knowledge. They might be helpful in searches or in pointing us to relevant source material. However, knowledge fundamentally requires justified true beliefs, the justifying evidence that cannot be overturned. Evaluating evidence and searching for truth are fundamentally human activities. A.I. technologies may require a yet greater (not lesser) scrutiny of evidence than before if the web of human knowledge is not to be damaged.

Perhaps of yet greater concern is the potential effect of A.I. technologies on human relationships and our capacity to love. Various studies have indicated that roughly one-third or more of American teenagers are using A.I. agents for companionship, as friends, or romantic partners. While these might sometimes temporarily alleviate loneliness, the longer-term effects on flourishing are likely detrimental. They decrease the motivation and time available for engaging in face-to-face interactions. Furthermore, because A.I. chatbots are designed to be exceedingly agreeable and supportive, they also create unrealistic expectations as to the sort of interactions, sympathy, and comfort one may hope for in a real romantic partner or a friendship. They thereby also alter the broader social environment and our capacities to engage with one another. When our capacities to engage in real relationships are weakened, we are flourishing less, not more.

Certainly, there are cases in which A.I. chatbot applications can be helpful, from user-tailored educational opportunities (perhaps replacing Massive Open Online Courses – MOOCs) to skill-building programs for autistic children, to civil discourse training for college students. However, in each of these cases, the technologies should ultimately point us back to real human relationships. A human teacher, for example, not only helps in acquiring knowledge, but also in forming the whole person, in modeling the integration of knowledge into life and emotion, and in developing capacities for mutual understanding.

Such considerations as to the effects of A.I. technologies on human fulfillment also pertain to our artistic pursuits, our experience of beauty, and our search for meaning and purpose in life. Ultimately, we cannot outsource our meaning and our joy in relationships, our freedom and our responsibility, our reasoning and our understanding, our appreciation of beauty and our capacity for awe and wonder, or, in total, our flourishing, to technology. These things are a part of what it means to be human.

Practical Next Steps

Navigating all of this can undoubtedly be challenging. To help address these matters, we have recently launched a Flourishing and A.I. Initiative. We need to develop practical wisdom to determine which uses are beneficial and which are not. We should work together as individuals, as parents, and as communities, to develop the discipline needed to choose not to make use of these technologies when they are going to impede our flourishing. When we use A.I. technologies, we should ask ourselves how we might carry out such tasks better ourselves, to enhance our minds, not weaken them. We should limit use to ensure sufficient time to be with other people and in communities. We should continually question, with each use, whether it is enhancing or inhibiting our capacities as human persons.

These flourishing considerations also have implications for developers. Developers of A.I. technologies using chatbot interfaces should ensure they provide regular reminders that they are not human; that their outputs might be wrong; and that users might want to consider alternative activities or in-person human interactions. This could all be implemented immediately, with all A.I. chatbot products, and could considerably improve users’ decision-making.

Moreover, as noted above, while some chatbot products may indeed be beneficial, we believe developers should entirely discontinue the development of relational chatbots given the negative long-term effects these likely will have on human relationships. The detrimental effects of social media on youth flourishing may be only the tip of the iceberg if A.I. companions replace real relationships. Developers should ultimately spend their effort on designing products that will more likely have unambiguously beneficial or neutral effects on flourishing, and prioritize those over products that might be more mixed or detrimental, even if profitable. The development and promotion of these products carry with them moral commitments and responsibilities. We should hold developers morally and legally accountable for the foreseeable harms their products bring to users and society.

While any new technology comes with new opportunities and new challenges, including those that may affect possibilities for human fulfillment, the potential for A.I. technologies to severely alter, damage, and replace relationships is arguably unprecedented. We need to take these matters seriously if we are to flourish. The use of a flourishing lens in evaluating A.I. technologies is essential.

You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

More than 60 percent of college students meet the criteria for at least one mental health problem, according to the national Healthy Minds Study. Yet only about 12 percent receive care through campus counseling centers.

That gap tells us something important.

When students are struggling, they are not always walking into counseling offices. Research shows they are far more likely to turn to family, friends, or peers first. They also confide in professors, advisors, coaches, mentors, and resident assistants, people they see regularly and trust.

This raises a simple question: Are our campuses set up to meet students where they are?

Too often, they are not.

At many institutions, student mental health is still treated as the responsibility of counseling centers. These centers are essential, but they were never meant to carry this work alone, especially as the world students are navigating has grown more complex and the ways they seek support have evolved.

As a psychiatrist and senior medical director at The Steve Fund, I have spent much of my career focused on improving mental health care for young people, particularly those from underserved and under-resourced communities. Through The Steve Fund’s Excellence in Mental Health on Campus initiative (E.M.H.C.), we have worked with colleges and universities across the country to better understand what it takes to create campuses where students can thrive.

What we have learned is both encouraging and instructive: When institutions treat mental health as a shared responsibility across the campus community, meaningful change becomes possible. Since 2016, The Steve Fund has partnered with 66 colleges and universities across 23 states, reaching more than one million students. Across these campuses, mental health has gradually shifted from being seen as a clinical issue to a broader institutional priority. 

That shift shows up in practical ways, as campuses implement strategies to strengthen awareness of mental health resources and integrate student wellbeing into the broader campus environment.

Some campuses embedded mental health resources directly into course syllabi, so students encounter support information within their academic environments. Others incorporated counseling center information into the institution’s Simple Syllabus template and added counseling resources under the “Student Resources” section of the campus website, making support easier for students to find. Institutions expanded outreach efforts to increase awareness and trust in counseling center services. Examples included featuring counseling center staff on the student radio station, creating a “What to Expect from the Counseling Center” video in partnership with the marketing department, and placing counselors in academic buildings rather than solely in separate health centers.

When students are struggling, they are not always walking into counseling offices. Research shows they are far more likely to turn to family, friends, or peers first.

Student engagement and leadership teams hosted events designed to foster connection, inclusion, and belonging — protective factors that support student mental health and persistence. Some campuses introduced breakout sessions for parents and caregivers during new student orientation to help families better understand student mental health challenges and available campus resources.

Institutions have also launched coordinated campaigns to increase awareness of counseling services using multiple communication channels, including campus flyers, digital displays on campus TV screens, and targeted outreach to departments, student clubs, and organizations.

These changes may seem modest on their own. Together, they reflect a broader shift in how campuses think about student wellbeing, and it sends a powerful message: Student wellbeing matters everywhere on campus.

Just as importantly, campuses are beginning to recognize that student voices must be central to shaping mental health solutions.

Through listening sessions and peer-led discussions, institutions gained deeper insight into the realities students face, from academic pressure and financial stress to impostor phenomenon and experiences of exclusion or isolation. When students were invited to participate in the decision-making process, institutions were better able to design programs that felt relevant, accessible, and culturally responsive.

Another important lesson has been the value of collaboration across institutions.

Too often, colleges attempt to solve mental health challenges in isolation. But through the E.M.H.C. learning network, participating campuses are sharing strategies and innovations, accelerating progress across institutions.

One campus convened a district-wide mental health summit that brought together students, faculty, and staff to discuss wellness and belonging. Another embedded mental health priorities into its institutional strategic plan. Others developed faculty training programs focused on trauma-informed leadership and how to recognize and respond to student distress.

These examples point to something important: Improving campus mental health does not always require entirely new programs. Often, it begins with rethinking how existing systems, from orientation and advising to faculty development and campus communications, can better support student wellbeing.

This shift is particularly critical for students from underserved and under-resourced communities. Many students of color, first-generation students, and students from low-income backgrounds face additional barriers when seeking mental health care, including stigma, lack of culturally responsive providers, and feelings of isolation on campus.

When institutions intentionally center belonging and cultural responsiveness, students are more likely to seek help and remain engaged.

Ultimately, the lesson from our work is straightforward. Mental health must be embedded in the environments where students learn, live, and connect. Counseling centers remain essential, but they cannot carry this responsibility alone.

Faculty shape classroom experiences. Student affairs leaders create spaces designed to foster belonging and peer connection. Administrators set priorities and allocate resources. Each has a role to play. When those efforts come together, campuses move from reacting to creating conditions that support wellbeing from the start.

And that shift matters, not only for student mental health, but for student success.

Students who feel supported are more likely to persist in college, engage in campus life, and reach their academic and professional goals. Mental health is not separate from student success; it is foundational to it.

The challenges facing today’s college students are real and complex. But across the campuses we have worked with, one thing is clear: meaningful progress is possible when institutions commit to building environments grounded in trust, belonging, and culturally responsive care.

The path forward is not about doing more in one place. 

It is about making sure students are supported wherever they are.

Colleges must move beyond viewing mental health as an isolated service and begin treating it as a core element of the campus experience. That shift is underway, but far from complete.

The lessons from this work are outlined in The Steve Fund’s Excellence in Mental Health on Campus retrospective report, which highlights strategies campuses are using to embed mental health into institutional culture and student success initiatives. The full report can be accessed here: Excellence in Mental Health on Campus (EMHC): A Retrospective Report – The Steve Fund

Dr. Annelle Primm is senior medical director of The Steve Fund, a leading nonprofit dedicated to promoting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of young people from underserved and under-resourced communities.

Peter McGinnes is a pre-medical neuroscience student at Stanford University whose lived experience with a suicide attempt has shaped his path. Today, he channels that experience into advocating for better access to mental health care, particularly for students.

Every year, thousands of students in mental health crises are left searching for resources. What if, printed on their university ID card, were three digits that could make reaching out for help just that much easier?

People often imagine suicide as dramatic or obvious, but that usually is not the case. Most students struggle silently, showing up to class, keeping up appearances, while feeling increasingly isolated and overwhelmed. That silence is exactly what makes it so hard to notice, and why accessible resources matter.

I know, because I’ve been there. As a teenager, I felt trapped, convinced no one could understand. My grades stayed high, my face appeared calm, but internally, I was breaking down. Mental health resources were hidden behind webpages and brochures that no one gave a second thought. I didn’t know there was a national hotline, much less that calling it could mean someone would listen.

I spiraled until I couldn’t anymore. I attempted to take my life and spent two months in a residential treatment center. For the first time, I was surrounded by people who could relate to my pain. I learned to sit with my thoughts instead of drowning in them. I left stronger, but still fragile.

Months later, I saw a poster in my doctor’s office: “988 – National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.” The numbers stuck with me like a song lyric you hum without thinking. Later that month, I was sitting in bed at my grandmother’s house, heart racing, chest tight, feeling like silence might swallow me whole. I dialed the three numbers. 

On the other end was a calm voice. Someone who didn’t rush or judge me. We talked through coping strategies, and by the end of the call, I wasn’t magically healed, but the fog had lifted just enough for me to keep going. In that moment, that was all I could ask for.

I saw a poster in my doctor’s office: “988 – National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.” Later that month, I was sitting in bed at my grandmother’s house, heart racing, chest tight, feeling like silence might swallow me whole. I dialed the three numbers. 

That night taught me the power of a small, timely gesture. In behavioral science, they call it a nudge: a simple change in how choices are presented that makes a better outcome more likely. Think about putting vegetables at eye level in a grocery store instead of banning junk food. The choice remains, but the path to the healthier option becomes clearer. For someone in crisis, seeing three digits on their student ID card could work the same way. The difference between knowing or not knowing about 988 could be the difference between spiraling and picking up the phone.

The 988 National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a 24/7/365, publicly-funded resource that has been shown to save lives. The problem is awareness. According to a 2024 poll by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, fewer than one in four Americans are even “somewhat familiar” with 988. That means millions of people could be reaching for help without knowing the resource exists. 

Students are particularly vulnerable. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 15-24. And college counseling centers are overwhelmed with wait times that stretch for several weeks. In moments of acute crisis, students cannot afford to wait until their next appointment or go searching through Google for resources. They need support in the moment.

That’s why printing 988 on student ID cards matters. Contact with 988 is on the rise. In just a year, calls to the lifeline rose by 48 percent and texts by 1445 percent, a clear sign that, as the visibility and accessibility of the number increase, so does its use. Printing 988 on an ID card, an item students carry everywhere, means they don’t have to remember a poster or navigate a website in a moment of panic. The number is right there.

What makes this initiative so powerful is how little it costs. Universities already reprint IDs regularly. Adding three digits is a minor design tweak. Schools spend thousands on wellness campaigns and programming; yet this simple step might reach more students than all of those efforts combined. 

Some states are already leading the way. New York and Virginia, for example, have passed laws requiring schools to include 988 on student ID cards. That progress is encouraging, but a patchwork approach isn’t enough. Mental health crises don’t stop at state borders, and neither should access to lifesaving numbers.

That’s why national advocacy is critical. As a council member for the Coalition for Student Wellbeing (C4SW), I have seen firsthand how powerful coordinated action can be. C4SW’s mission is simple: bridge the gap between students and decision-makers through advocacy, collaboration, and education. Printing 988 on IDs is exactly the kind of systemic fix we aim to achieve. That is why the coalition has launched a national advocacy campaign to add 988 to student ID cards.

I am still here today, not because I am stronger than anyone else, but because in a moment of silence, help was within reach. 

Universities can make this change now. Legislators can make it standard nationwide. This is not about saving every life; no single policy can do that. It is about ensuring that every student has a fighting chance to reach for help when they need it most.

Dear Readers and Listeners:

As we move into 2026, I have been reflecting on the year’s worth of stories we have been honored to share in LearningWell. So much of LearningWell’s coverage mirrors what influences your work supporting student flourishing. Here’s a reference to some of the top stories that captured those struggles and gains.   

2025 may be remembered as one of the most disruptive years in higher education, set apart by numerous drivers of uncertainty and anxiety, all of which influenced campus wellbeing. “Without a Net,” “A Voice for High-Needs Students,”and “Uncertainty Weighs on Mental Health Researchers” were some of our stories that captured those dynamics, including the impact of federal upheaval on financial distress, equity initiatives, and research.

Student mental health issues remained at the forefront of higher education concerns and policies. At LearningWell, we tracked the latest national data in student wellbeing, while delving into the key factors at play: We heard about the influence of social media from psychologist Jean Twenge and of A.I. from reporter Beth McMurtry. Reflections from students and recent graduates offered first-hand insight into the mounting pressures they’re feeling. And we acknowledged the continued rise of mental health and wellbeing among institutional priorities, covering the Princeton Review’s Campus Mental Health Survey and The Wall Street Journal’s use of the Human Flourishing Project’sflourishing scale to rank the best colleges. 

But amidst these challenges, resilience, perseverance and innovation abounded. Practitioners and administrators across the country began thinking more holistically about student mental health, focusing on population outcomes, preventative strategies, and curricular and co-curricular partnerships, as reflected in these articles: “Leading the Next Chapter of College Mental Health,” “New Thinking in College Student Mental Health,” “Be REAL,” and “Experience U.”

Perhaps the best way of chronicling this progress in student-centered education is by telling the stories of the people doing this work and the places where it is unfolding. The institutions within the LearningWell Coalition continue to forge new programs and pedagogies aimed at preparing students to flourish in life and work — schools like Lehigh University, Roanoke College, Boston College and the University of Utah, among others. 

Character education has emerged as a constructive pathway toward human development goals, like curiosity, empathy, and intellectual integrity. LearningWell has featured a number of these programs set in unusual contexts, such as sports fandoms, cultural reconciliation, global peacebuilding, and intellectual virtues.   

As we look forward to another year of telling your stories, a sincere thank you for supporting ours at LearningWell magazine. 

All the best for a great new year! 

Marjorie Malpiede, Editor-in-Chief

You can reach LearningWell Editor-in-Chief Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

When The Steve Fund began in 2014, youth mental health was just beginning to break into the national conversation. But the nuanced needs of young people from underserved and under-resourced communities and first-generation college students were largely invisible in both research and practice.

The numbers tell part of the story: over one million students impacted through our programs, five million people reached through our Family Corner digital platform, and 66 colleges engaged in our Excellence in Mental Health on Campus Initiative. But behind every statistic is a young person who found support, a family that learned to recognize warning signs, a campus that transformed its approach to student wellbeing.

Our signature initiatives have reshaped how institutions think about mental health support. Perhaps most importantly, we’ve always kept youth voices at the center. The Steve Fund’s Excellence in Mental Health Initiative provides evidence-based strategies for creating inclusive campus environments. Our Young, Gifted & Resilient conferences bring multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and cross-sectoral stakeholders together at universities across the nation, each event co-created with the host institution to address its unique challenges. My Digital Sanctuary, our newest digital platform, takes a fresh approach by speaking to concepts like love, hope, and creativity — shifting away from traditional medical models to more inclusive, spiritual, cultural, and artistic approaches that resonate with young people.

But we face a critical moment. Schools, families, nonprofits, and communities are facing significant reductions in resources at a time of sustained high need. Important systems that young people have long counted on are being dismantled. Intense pressures are being placed upon our nation’s most resource-limited youth and families that may have to suffer in silence due to unmet need and lack of access to mental health care and resources.

“There’s a real risk that young people may feel hopeless, uncertain, and fearful about the direction in which the country is going — anxious about violence, climate change, and civil rights rollbacks.”

There’s a real risk that young people may feel hopeless, uncertain, and fearful about the direction in which the country is going — anxious about violence, climate change, and civil rights rollbacks. That’s precisely why our work on risk and protective factors matters so much right now. We’re equipping youth and communities with resilience strategies and helping them learn to cope with stress, build supportive relationships, identify mental health services, and access restorative resources like nature, creativity, and rest.

The Steve Fund operates in a space where research meets practice, leading to direct impact and measurable outcomes. Our groundbreaking partnerships with the United Negro College Fund to assess mental health at H.B.C.U.s, our work with the Child Mind Institute on family mental health barriers, and our national student surveys inform every program we design. We ensure that our interventions are both culturally responsive and truly effective.

As we look toward the next decade, we’re scaling bold solutions that are youth-guided, family-centered, and grounded in rigorous research. We’re leveraging technology and embracing A.I., not as a replacement for human connection but as a tool to expand access and personalization for communities often overlooked in mental health practice.

The work of The Steve Fund matters now more than ever. When we support young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing, we’re building the kind of future we want to live in.

What began in a dining room as a family’s response to loss has grown into a national movement and a community of action. The Steve Fund’s first decade laid a compelling foundation built on research, collaboration, and a belief in the promise of every student. As we enter our second decade, we remain steadfast in our mission: to ensure that all young people have the support they need to thrive.

Because no young person should face their struggles alone. And every family deserves to know that help is available.

Dr. Annelle Primm is senior medical director of The Steve Fund, a leading nonprofit dedicated to promoting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of young people from underserved and under-resourced communities.

When a group of us recent graduates from Georgetown University were asked to be Hoya Fellows, we weren’t sure what to think. As Fellows, we were expected to weigh in on strategies and policies that affect Georgetown students, an area that we believed did not often involve listening to students. Students are seldom invited to be true active participants in the complex decision-making processes that dictate their campus experience. Most of the time we aren’t even familiar with how the process operates. As recent graduates ourselves, we wondered how much impact we could really have. 

Our degrees did not qualify us to oversee university initiatives, let alone challenge the culture of a centuries-old institution like Georgetown. But the school’s vice president of student affairs, Dr. Eleanor Daugherty, trusted in our abilities to make an impact. Dr. Daughterty, who had invited us into the process, had years of experience studying adolescent development while working in higher education, but she admitted she was far removed from knowing firsthand what the adolescent world is like. “I am the expert on your tomorrow, but you’re the expert on your today,” she often said.  

With that, we were thrown into the deep end, and like the child that learns to swim this way, we kicked our legs hard enough to keep our heads up. Rather than assigning us simple administrative tasks, Dr. Daugherty handed us complex challenges, like bolstering an atmosphere of “belonging and mattering” among Georgetown students. We weren’t told to be cogs in a machine; we were empowered to build new ones. We were asked to lead the way in designing new initiatives and solutions to address issues that we dealt with firsthand as students, like finding community within the university or balancing working hard with caring for ourselves while being away from home for the first time.  

There would be constant pressure, not necessarily to succeed, but to maintain unwavering ambition and creativity. We were required to bring our respective passions and skillsets into conversation with the spirit of innovation, all in the name of creating a world we thought we could only imagine.

What we learned is that the deep end is not a place to drown; it is a place to learn. It is a place where Fellows are trusted to take on unsolved institutional challenges, to move beyond our comfort zones, and to think beyond our own years of experience. It is where we are asked to address student impostor syndrome while managing our own, tasked with changing a culture we were not sure we had the authority to critique.  

What we learned is that the deep end is not a place to drown; it is a place to learn.

We were given access to the full resources of the Division of Student Affairs and encouraged to collaborate with university leaders. We relied on each other and drew from our own experiences as alumni, as well as from the students who are still attending. Most importantly, we were not afraid to make mistakes because we were guided by leadership who encouraged us to take risks. For Fellows, there was no consequence for failure besides learning a lesson and trying again. It’s inevitable that we’d falter along the way, and we agreed that the only thing that fearing failure does for us is hinder and delay our eventual triumphs. Failing didn’t mean the journey ended; it just provided us another memory, lesson, and motivator to propel us towards results.

Since the beginning of the Hoya Fellowship in October 2023, the Fellows have helped student affairs launch a number of initiatives and projects, which have proven almost overwhelmingly successful. Each Fellow was encouraged to pursue projects aligned with our own strengths and to collaborate and learn from each other in the process.  

One of our biggest accomplishments came directly from our own experiences. A major goal of student affairs has been to focus on “belonging and mattering” on a campus, which is welcoming but also often too perfect for its own good. On a campus like Georgetown, many students find it difficult to be anything other than perfect. This cycle of pretending to be perfect causes some of the brightest adolescent minds to wonder if they really belong in a place where everyone is as smart or smarter than they are. From this came the development of a class called “Blowing Up Perfection,” meant to teach students some of the skills they might not learn in other classes: how to build authentic friendships, how to face conflict, how to be resilient in the face of difficulties, how to embrace vulnerability. These skills help students understand that belonging comes not from perfection but from connection and self-acceptance. It is something we had to learn ourselves. 

Another related initiative is Hello Hoyas, a summer program where university leadership travels around the country to visit incoming first-years in their own hometowns. Particularly impactful for first-generation and low-income students, Hello Hoyas offers a powerful message that students and families belong here and that we will be here for them when they arrive. Hello Hoyas expanded from five cities in 2024 to 10 cities in 2025 and has welcomed hundreds of students before they even reach campus across both years.  

Expanding our impact beyond Georgetown, Fellows even helped advance scholarship and research on adolescence, most notably by leading a national research symposium that reimagined how we approach adolescent development within the context of today’s challenges and opportunities. The gathering, called “The Promise, Possibility and Power of Adolescence,” convened K-12 and higher-education administrators, educators, non-profit leaders, and renowned researchers, who were brought into conversation with adolescents themselves — the very people who would be impacted by the work. Like the Hoya Fellowship, the hallmark of the symposium was that the youth led the way. There, young people spanning 14 to 22 years old worked alongside adult participants to co-create innovative solutions aimed at promoting universal adolescent thriving, regardless of one’s location or access to resources. 

Our experience as Fellows made us realize that the distance between students and administrators didn’t come from disagreement, but from mutual misunderstanding. While institutional leadership can offer frameworks of what young people should be, only young people themselves can speak authentically about their own current reality. The Fellows program has helped expand the opportunities for students and administration to communicate directly with one another. Our office initiatives include a student advisory, which invites all students to join university leaders for dinner and discussion. There are Hoya Family Forums, which invite curious parents to meet different student, professor, or staff panelists and keep families informed about what happens on campus. The Fellows have helped build bridges between Georgetown leadership, families, students, alumni, researchers, and everyone who is invested in making universities everywhere a better place for adolescent wellbeing.  

Through these initiatives and projects, the Fellows have helped reframe how the university approaches its students. There are many more opportunities for students to connect directly with leadership, even before their time on campus. And in turn, leadership can better understand the state of adolescents today. The Fellows have helped blow up the culture of perfectionism and exclusivity which permeated the otherwise very welcoming Georgetown community, and we hope to continue doing so in the future.  

We never thought we’d be working for the university, let alone teaching classes or organizing national conferences. We’re driven by our pride in being members of the Georgetown community, and we’re honored that we get to serve as a connector between students and administrators, all of whom want the best for our university. The issues we tackle — adolescent development, student wellness, belonging and mattering, to name a few — reach far beyond Georgetown’s gates. Through the Hoya Fellowship, we aim to show how empowering young people to lead not only develops them but also ignites impact at scale. 

One last note: When you throw people like us into the deep end, we’ll never want to leave the pool.

Since October 2023, Hoya Fellows have worked in key university offices across Student Affairs to develop strategic initiatives focused on student life and well-being. These positions enable the university to benefit from the experience and insight of alumni who understand the lived experience of our students, while also empowering these new graduates to help build Georgetown into the institution they hope to leave for future generations of Hoyas. 

Whether you’ve studied psychology for four years or one semester, textbook theories often pale in comparison to the lived experiences of those around you. As I navigated the diverse and layered culture of the University of Miami — both as a student and mental health peer educator — I came to understand just how vital and nuanced mental health is for such a malleable population.

Whenever our group, Counseling Outreach Peer Education (COPE), organized classroom presentations, housing events, or tabling sessions aimed at marginalized communities, I saw firsthand how deeply mental health is shaped by trauma, identity, and the pressures of socioeconomic hardship.

While this may seem like a fairly obvious point to make, a short conversation with someone outside your own echo chamber illustrates just how detached we all are from the dynamics that feed into our mental processes. 

In the banality of it all, we have forgotten how to ground ourselves and acknowledge the emotions that come with our most difficult experiences. One unfortunate effect of an individualistic culture is the tendency to downplay the severity of our traumas.

Mental health is not a one-size-fits-all experience. It is deeply nuanced, shaped by an individual’s upbringing, identity, environment, and lived experience. It cannot be measured solely by diagnostic labels or external behaviors.

Mental health is deeply nuanced, shaped by an individual’s upbringing, identity, environment, and lived experience. It cannot be measured solely by diagnostic labels or external behaviors.

For college students in particular, mental wellbeing exists at the intersection of transition, expectation, and uncertainty. What looks like resilience on the surface may mask exhaustion, and what is labeled as disengagement may actually be emotional burnout.

Understanding this complexity is vital, especially in peer support sessions, where emotional nuance is often the difference between surface-level interaction and meaningful connection.

I know the sentiment may seem rich coming from a student at a private institution, but if you look beyond the name of my university, you’ll see a community filled with students from backgrounds far removed from the monetary comfort that surrounds Coral Gables.

Many of us work tirelessly to support ourselves, trying not to place any additional burden on our families. We throw ourselves into student-led organizations to show our parents that being here means something — that their sacrifices weren’t made in vain. For some, excelling academically and remaining emotionally composed are not just goals. They are expectations. 

Within this context, peer-to-peer roles take on deeper meaning. Student leaders are not only building campus communities but also helping one another manage the weight of invisible pressures.

At nearly every event I participated in through COPE, I spoke with students facing unimaginable financial stress, complicated family dynamics, or overwhelming mental health crises — often with multiple factors compounding at once.

Although the student population is majority White, students from all backgrounds — especially those from marginalized communities — often face significant cultural stigma around mental health. In many cases, families may attempt to dismiss or hide mental health struggles to save face, or they may believe that mental illness cannot exist in a “first world” country.

As a result, some students do not seek psychiatric care and instead turn to peers for emotional support. Peer education becomes vital in these cases, offering a space where students feel safe to share difficult truths they cannot express elsewhere. These conversations are not clinical interventions, but they are deeply effective, meeting students where they are and giving them space to feel heard.

College can be an isolating experience, but in those brief moments as peer educators, we create a space where students feel seen — because they know we understand what they are going through. We are not outsiders offering advice; we are peers navigating the same struggles.

Almost every student is struggling in silence, and what matters most is knowing that both their peers and their administration are showing up with genuine support. The effort to create safe, consistent spaces is what helps prevent this generation from repeating the silence of the last.

All of this reinforces the simple but often overlooked truth: Mental health conversations and peer education are essential to building a healthier student body.

Anisah Steele graduated in 2025 from the University of Miami, where she served as co-chair of Counseling Outreach Peer Education (COPE). Starting this fall, she will pursue her master’s in epidemiology at the University of Florida, hoping to bridge psychology and public health to inform more equitable, evidence-based mental health interventions.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent the University of Miami, its Counseling Center, or Counseling Outreach Peer Education (COPE).

As our plane rolled into the terminal, my seat neighbor asked if it was my first time in Egypt. I told him it was — my first in the country and second in the Middle East, although I hadn’t been back since before I started college and studying Arabic. He told me he was born and raised in Cairo and coming home after a few months coaching squash in Dallas. 

We turned out to have more in common than being about the same age on the same plane. When he heard I went to Harvard, his face lit up in recognition. He quickly listed off the names of squash players, friends of his, who had been students. Some were Egyptian, others French and Canadian. Several of them I knew. We had lived together in the same dorm for years.

Within seconds of landing somewhere new, I met someone familiar. At the time, we laughed about the world being small. Now I wonder if it isn’t just that Harvard is big, its international network as wide as its roots in Cambridge are deep. 

I thought about my chance encounter in Cairo after news broke of the Trump Administration’s order for Harvard to stop enrolling international students. Around a quarter of my classmates came from other countries. The concept of their absence is difficult to grasp and harder to swallow. What rare moments of connection would be missed? How many global touchpoints lost?

After four years studying the Middle East, I felt tied to the place upon arrival not because of the books I read or language I learned but because of the relationships I formed. This international education was a personal one, and it had lasted long after my Arabic began to fade. 

When I was a student, even academic interactions with international students were personal. There was the friend from Marseille who edited my emails in French when I needed to reach out to subjects in Paris for my senior thesis. There was another from Cairo who, sitting across from me in the dining hall, would look up from her own math homework to answer my questions about Arabic. There were countless who deepened my understanding of course material — a place, culture, or tradition — because they reflected on it in the context of their own upbringing.

My most important relationship with someone from outside the U.S. had nothing to do with the Middle East. She was my randomly assigned first-year roommate, now my best friend. 

On paper (and in reality), we’re different. She arrived in the U.S. from the other side of the world for the first time a week before move-in, while I drove the 25 minutes up I-90 from the Boston suburbs the day of. She worried about economics lectures delivered in English, which she was still mastering. I cried over essays assigned in the only language I’d ever really known or been asked to know. She spoke her mother tongue softly on the phone to her mom in the mornings when the time difference was manageable. I sometimes saw mine for lunch on a weekday.

That my house became both our closest home bonded us. We’ve stayed close for a million other reasons: a similar outlook on the value of family and friends; a common sense of humor and appreciation for art; the love of tennis we each inherited from our parents.

More than anything, I think we like listening to each other, chit-chatting. A lot of the time, our views on an idea, a social issue, a personal problem, align. When they don’t, I consider why we’re divided and often, how where each of us comes from has informed the way we think and operate now. That tendency to want to understand difference, I hope, has made me not just a better friend but a better person, maybe even a better writer.

We’re not friends because she’s from another place. But I recognize and admire all the ways her home and upbringing are inseparable from herself  — her braveness and boldness, intelligence, humor, and singular thoughtfulness towards me and the world.

Sometimes a friend from a different country teaches you about the world; other times they teach you about the person you want to be. 

Sometimes a friend from a different country teaches you about the world; other times they teach you about the person you want to be. 

I know other students have had similar experiences. In her Harvard commencement speech last month, master’s student Yurong “Luanna” Jiang opened with her own testament to the university’s global footprint: While completing a summer internship in Mongolia, she received a phone call from classmates in Tanzania who needed help translating the Chinese instructions for their washing machine. “There we were: an Indian and a Thai, calling me, a Chinese in Mongolia, to decipher a washer in Tanzania,” she said. “And we all studied together, here at Harvard.” The crowd erupted.

Those cheers, I’m convinced, signaled agreement as much as pride. I imagine every recent Harvard student and alum could point to an instance when the university shrunk the world down a size, made a strange place knowable. They wouldn’t have had to study the Middle East like me or international development like Jiang, either. These moments usually come down to something with more staying power than a shared class or major: friendship.

In high school, guidance rarely reached me. The encouragement was well-meaning but abstract. I was full of potential, but no one translated that into actionable steps. No roadmap was provided.

I would have to chart my own course through systems structured by geography, class, and institutional habit and designed for students born into different expectations.

My journey through higher education followed no predictable path. It began with my basketball coach, who introduced me to St. Joseph’s College in Maine. Several players like me from Charlotte Amalie, US Virgin Islands, had enrolled there before, creating a tenuous bridge I could follow.

I arrived on campus filled with idealism, only to discover that my teammates and I comprised virtually the entire Black student population. For the first time, I had a white roommate, and I befriended people for whom I was the first Black person they had ever met. The cultural terrain matched no map I’d been given.

Then came financial reality. Unable to afford my expected family contribution, I stopped out with my transcript frozen due to unpaid balances. This began a fragmented, eight-year journey across multiple institutions. At the University of Southern Maine, I couldn’t qualify for aid without parental support — federal rules at the time required students to be 23. After a personal loan proved unsustainable, I enlisted in the Air Force. When medical issues intervened, I worked, re-enrolled at 23, and kept working until graduation.

What reads on a résumé as a non-linear path was, in truth, a masterclass in adaptation through systems offering little direction and even fewer second chances.

Seeing the System from Both Sides

My understanding transformed when, with my hard-won undergraduate degree in hand, I joined Bowdoin College’s admissions office. My recruitment trips revealed how significantly zip codes determine college access. At Chicago’s Hyde Park Academy, I found talented students with just one overwhelmed counselor for 1,800 predominantly Black students. Miles away at suburban New Trier, seven counselors served fewer students from far wealthier families. My role shifted from promoting Bowdoin to providing basic application instructions that affluent students took for granted.

The contrast was stark: brilliant minds with untapped potential, shaped by schools whose structures, not intellect, had narrowed their imagined futures.

Even as our team diversified Bowdoin’s student body, I recognized that admission alone wasn’t enough. Students who defied odds to enroll found themselves grappling with belonging and cultural translation, the very territories I had navigated years before.

This firsthand understanding later informed my dissertation research on “undermatch,” illuminating how talented students from historically marginalized backgrounds often enroll below their academic potential, not from lack of ability, but from systemic barriers to information, guidance, and belonging.

Not Grit, But Grace

The prevailing narrative celebrates individual grit while ignoring the systems we navigate. What distinguished my journey wasn’t exceptional perseverance but moments of grace when relationships created bridges across institutional gaps.

At Saint Joseph’s College, classroom discussions about poverty were framed through a white lens. As a low-income Black student among peers who shared my economic background but not my racial experience, I carried the invisible labor of translation, navigating coursework while bridging unacknowledged differences.

What made the difference wasn’t superhuman resilience but relational infrastructure. I pieced mine together slowly, while students in programs like Posse arrived already equipped with mentoring, cohort support, and cultural translation, structures mirroring what intergenerational college-goers receive naturally. When someone explained unwritten rules or affirmed the right to belong, seemingly insurmountable barriers became navigable challenges.

This reveals a deeper truth: educational environments often leave students unprepared for meaningful dialogue across difference. We raise students in segregated spaces, then expect authentic engagement without preparation. When institutions create environments where diverse students build networks and process belonging uncertainty together, they transform individual struggles into collective strength, benefiting everyone, regardless of background.

Designing Belonging

After years navigating systems not built for students like me, I began asking: What would higher education look like if belonging were deliberately designed, not left to chance?

Too often, access becomes the endpoint, and success stories become misleading proof that the system works — classic survivorship bias. Real equity requires shifting from celebrating those who overcome broken systems to designing ecosystems that recognize all students’ needs. This means partnerships between colleges, high schools, and communities, ensuring readiness extends beyond academics to navigational knowledge.

Real equity requires shifting from celebrating those who overcome broken systems to designing ecosystems that recognize all students’ needs.

One promising approach scales the relational infrastructure found in effective mentoring programs. My research shows information travels best through trust. Students act on guidance from people who understand their context. Systems embedding personalized support within human connection democratize opportunity.

These solutions aren’t just technical. They’re deeply personal. I’ve lived in systems that confuse potential with preparedness and mistake access for belonging.

As students, especially from low- and middle-income backgrounds, rightly question whether college is worth its rising cost, I offer no simplistic promise of prosperity. The debt crisis is a matter of justice.

Yet even as the system must change, I hold fast to what Baldwin called the “liberation of consciousness”: education that sharpens critical thinking, deepens empathy, and gives us language to name systems as they are and imagine how they could be.

In a world of rising disinformation and artificial shortcuts, real education helps us discern signal from noise — a clarity I once sought amid the quiet pressure to trade opportunity for survival. It is not only a path to making a living but also to making a life. As Mandela reminded us, it remains one of the most powerful tools for changing the world, not just for ourselves, but for each other.

Inside the System I Once Observed

Even in doctoral education, belonging isn’t automatic. My research on underrepresented students navigating mismatched systems became autobiography. Despite strong initial mentorship, structural supports faded. My focus on equity didn’t align with traditional research models, and I often lacked a peer cohort or institutional roadmap. I was simultaneously in the system and not of it.

Even at the highest levels, I drew my own map in the dark. Reimagining belonging must extend to doctoral spaces, where too many still arrive unsupported, underfunded, and alone. This requires not only mentorship and peer networks but institutional recognition of the financial and emotional labor required to navigate systems never designed for us.

For Those Still Searching

My journey has come full circle, from navigating unfamiliar terrain to charting pathways for others. In my work with postsecondary transitions, I see what statistics miss: for every student who makes it through broken systems, countless others with equal potential never find their way. When I listen to students at their own crossroads, I hear familiar echoes: brilliance without direction, presence without recognition.

What ultimately matters isn’t celebrating exceptional navigation of broken systems but transforming those systems themselves. My story isn’t a model — it’s evidence for why we must design education where belonging is a foundation, not an accident, and where no student must draw their own map in the dark.

Dr. Rhoan Garnett’s work bridges the personal and systemic, informed by his journey as a first-generation immigrant student who navigated educational systems without clear guidance. Through his research-practice consultancy WeBe Collab, he leads transformative initiatives, including postsecondary mindset and transition research for the Gates Foundation and AI-enhanced learning systems at College Unbound. His dissertation on undermatch, mismatch, and reverse transfer — recognized with the Gordon C. Lee Award — continues to inform equity-centered approaches to educational design.

When the save-the-date from my son’s fraternity landed in my inbox, I was confused. I had never heard of a “Mom’s Weekend.” His older siblings hadn’t participated in the Greek system in college. The email mentioned a few activities and reminded us to bring a contribution for the silent auction. Photos of past baskets were attached to guide our creativity: a customized Yeti cooler filled with beer; a margarita-themed bucket with cactus-shaped glasses, limes, and a handle of tequila; a poker-motif basket with cards, bourbon, whiskey, and cigars.

Mom’s (and Dad’s) Weekend, I learned, is a tradition in the Greek system. It’s an opportunity to have special time with your student and get to know their friends during a number of planned activities. This is no small thing for mothers adjusting to seeing far less of their children, feeling your role in their daily life fade, to some extent, into the background of a Facetime square. Our Mom’s Weekend schedule was pretty open, with just a handful of organized social events, among them a cocktail-reception-house-tour, followed by a pub night, mimosa brunch, and silent auction, with proceeds benefiting chapter activities. 

I’m not a drinker, but all of it was a welcome window into my son’s freshman experience, more than a thousand miles from home. I decided to make it a road trip and visit family along the way. I gassed up the car and packed up my auction contribution — a barbecue-themed basket of grill utensils, spices, and sauces. (Sorry boys, not that kind of sauce.)

But I was coming into the weekend carrying more than my basket. My own experience at a small university was one where fraternities played an outsized role in campus culture and where, as editor of the newspaper, I was drawn by a campus controversy into the darker aspects of Greek loyalty. But that was then; this is now. I was hopeful I would come away from Mom’s Weekend with the sense that belonging to a fraternity today, in its more modern form, represented a positive opportunity for community among young men, including my son.

He is a private person, and I had only the vaguest idea of how his pledging process had gone earlier in the spring. Because he hadn’t participated in many of the fall rush activities — meaning, he hadn’t let it dominate his orientation to college social life — his options were limited, though he said the house he’d joined was “chill” with “good guys.” In his shorthand, that meant the parties weren’t the craziest, or the members too intense about their demands on his time. His grades were good, he had a steady girlfriend in his dorm, and nothing about the road to initiation had set off alarm bells at least from our parental perspective. We’d gotten a letter from the fraternity president assuring parents that they took their anti-hazing vows seriously.

***

During my own senior spring in college, I was working with the newspaper staff late one night to close an issue when the telephone rang on the office wall. An anonymous caller claimed to have recently broken into a secretive fraternity’s notorious windowless chapel and stolen decades of ledgers. In the pages, long-ago members had allegedly recorded their thoughts and activities, and over the years, generations of brothers had added notes the margins. The caller offered to bring me the ledgers.

At the time, I had only an English major’s best guess at the intricacies of journalistic freedoms and liabilities, something I would later study as part of a master’s degree in my chosen field. But I suspected I should not accept original stolen materials. So the caller made photocopies and left them in my car. There were references to some unsolved crimes on campus, chilling racial commentary, coded language about sexual encounters, and hazing episodes that had taken an alarming turn. More recent entries addressed changing rules and attitudes on campus and vowed that if the house were compelled to “build bridges,” they should only give enough lip service to remain the same. I began writing an article and called university administrators to let them know. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t run the piece. But they did advise against it and said they couldn’t insulate me from repercussions. 

After the article appeared, the rallies and protests began. There were calls to suspend or ban the fraternity and some to eliminate the Greek system on campus, a move that had been raised for years. Fraternity and sorority members pointed to the benefits of bonding and the charitable deeds done. The fraternity’s alumni leaders flew in with lawyers and investigators, determined to find out who had been behind the theft. I laid low. It wasn’t my place to offer opinions or get involved in debates. But I’d taken the call and written the article, and my car tire was slashed, and the university house where I lived as an RA had a window broken. I heard the fraternity’s legal team wanted to speak with me, but there was never a subpoena. The state’s shield law protected journalists’ right not to reveal their sources, but whether that covered university students remained to be seen. My father asked me to keep a low profile because he’d rather not take out a second mortgage to explore that precedent in court. 

Things quieted down a few weeks later when students left campus for the summer, but the fallout went on for years. The fraternity was suspended, moved to private property, and went underground. The faculty voted to abolish the Greek system, but the motion was symbolic and not supported by the administration. After I graduated, I received a manilla envelope in the mail with a printed list of companies that supposedly would never hire me. A year later, after I’d begun working at a magazine, I had a surprise visit. The receptionist said an industry publicist had arrived for an appointment and buzzed a man inside. He sat down in my cubicle, pulled a tape recorder out of his briefcase (there was once a thing called a briefcase), and started asking questions about the night I received the call at the newspaper office. 

***

Then and now, the takeaway for me about the Greek system is this: What happens when impressionable young adults join societies like these? Membership fosters group loyalty through a secretive selection and initiation process, rituals, identity, and language. To what extent is that loyalty inclined to supersede the individual morality these young people are still developing? This is the place where you live and (literally, with fraternity cooks) the hand that feeds you. These are the people you spend your weekends with, gravitate towards in classes, and have likely committed to live with going forward. Brotherhood, and all the ways that is entwined in your life, is a lot of your world. 

Loyalty is a funny thing when you live smack in the middle of it. It isn’t just a friendship where you go out for pizza and play video games, particularly if something doesn’t sit right in this new family-away-from-home. If we stick with the video game metaphor, you’ve been initiated by the people who created the world-building behind it. That shared game is your universe, and it feels like everyone in other Greek organizations have their own, too. The roles and personas and tones are set, whether it’s inside jokes or repeated stories, or old ledgers. 

The experiences you have in college, positive and negative, go on to shape your character and identity, as well as your resilience in the face of adversity. The lessons learned during these years contribute to making you you — either because of the environment, or in spite of it. A college’s atmosphere set by the administration and faculty can make the difference between a student feeling like their school has their back, or doesn’t. Mine didn’t. 

The lessons learned during these years contribute to making you you — either because of the environment, or in spite of it.

Mom’s Weekend was, to me, a smashing success, in part because most of what we did together existed beyond the footprint of the “weekend” itself. My son and I did a few of the organized activities, and I met some of his new fraternity brothers. But we skipped the bar crawls, and because it was too rainy to hike, went to the gym to work out. We had a delightful three-hour dinner at a local restaurant, and I got to know his lovely, down-to-earth girlfriend. She described for me her own pledging process, the pressure from sororities to present a cool image that’s your own impeccable brand, right down to a written statement about yourself and proof of a masterful social media presence. She is pursuing a demanding major and seemed to have kept pledging in perspective, though she saw it wreak havoc on others. A few weeks after Mom’s Weekend, I saw a story in the news that a fraternity at my son’s school had just been suspended for 40 years — though it was later revised to 15 — for repeatedly violating hazing rules while they were already on probation. They had been paddling pledges at the off-campus home of an alum. 

My son has confided to his father that he’s had some mild pressure from upperclassmen who say he doesn’t spend enough time at the house. He’s already committed to living in the fraternity during his sophomore year and, just recently, also in his junior year at one of the fraternity’s off-campus annexes. He tells us that kind of advance signing is required so that the brotherhood can retain its hold on valuable rentals. I’ve long felt that my boy is his own dog and doesn’t roll over to social pressure when he has a solid home base. Still, it’s not lost on me that this housing commitment years into the future in effect makes the fraternity the primary scaffolding of his college experience. This, before he’s even declared his major. That’s a lot of clout for an organization to have over my kid, an organization I can’t say I know much of anything about. I guess I can say that the house was pretty clean during the tour.

And yet. Another part of my maternal brain knows that belonging is so important to young people’s sense of connection and community. My son’s age-cohort was the one that entered high school remotely as the pandemic did its damage, and part of that damage was their dislocation from their peers and their academic world, slouched in front of Zoom, hoodies up. The last thing I want for him is isolation. What I do want for him is the development of a discerning character — steady in his sense of himself and true to his values, whoever he’s with, whatever they are doing. 

Leaving dinner that night, my son and I decided not to go to “around the clock” at the favorite local bar, where pitchers started off in the single digits in the afternoon, then go up by a dollar every hour. I dropped him and his girlfriend back at their dorm, then headed back toward my rental house. But first I had to stop back at the restaurant, where I’d forgotten my umbrella. 

I parked as close as I could on a side street behind the main drag of town, home to many of the annexes like the one by son had just committed to for his junior year. Just in front of me, a group of laughing young men weaved on and off the sidewalk, shirtless in the 40-degree torrential rain. From the other side of the street, another group called out to them, chanting something about… I don’t know what, but it seemed to be positive, or maybe they were mad. They ran and crashed into each other in the middle of the street with perfectly executed chest bumps, delighted or angry, yelling things I couldn’t understand. I gave them a wide berth, more than happy to be an inconsequential NPC in the background of their game. 

When I returned to the rental, my two housemate-moms were hanging out in the living room with their sons, watching basketball and eating popcorn. They’d gone to “around the clock,” then wanted to come back and chill at the farmhouse and watch TV. As the rain pounded the windows and wind threw the screen door back and forth, the four slouched, wrapped in blankets on a sectional in the dark room, ageless in comfortable silence.