Dear Students, particularly my Seniors,
Dear Students, particularly my Seniors,
My heart aches for you right now. The week before spring break I wished you all well and said: “see you in two weeks”. None of us realized that “seeing” each other would mean only inside little boxes over Zoom calls and not together in the classroom. As campus announcements trickled in — online classes for 2 weeks, then online classes for the rest of the semester, then the canceled graduation ceremony — I could feel the disappointment sink exponentially. While many seniors (including likely you) find the last semester of senior year to be stressful, with the agony of major critiques, all-nighters, showing up to office hours in tears, relatives bugging you about what you’ll do when you graduate — it also is one of the best times of college — when students come together to work together, share together, live together (sometimes in the labs), creating together. The senior show and graduation are some of my favorite times of the year. Ask any of our alums — they’ll tell you I always cry tears of joy. But now, you are each at home. Some of you in a different time zone, without the printers, scanners, band saws, and other resources in our XARTS studios, without the ability to go on coffee runs and pizza outings, only seeing each other online and in group texts. This is not what you, or I, ever anticipated.
The summer before my senior year in college I felt like I was living a dream. I had a paid internship at a digital arts magazine in New York City and a hip Tribeca apartment. I was living it up with friends and family, polka dot dresses and funky shoes. I planned that after I graduated I’d go back to New York, have a job at the same magazine, and be with the same friends. I had it all figured out.
Week 2 of my senior year, at 9:00 am on a Tuesday, I was in my senior thesis class in the studios of the Maryland Institute College of Art. My professor (who to this day I still call a friend and mentor) walked in, baffled, and said “a plane just hit the World Trade Center”. I couldn’t comprehend what she said… As in an accident?… No?… How?… Why?… Within minutes, everything had changed. We left classrooms to gather around TVs that were pulled out into hallways and lobbies showing the news (this was all pre-smart phones and social media). I remember the details of the floor tile where I was when I watched on live TV as the second plane hit. The World Trade Center was a building I looked at out of my appartment window every single morning over the summer. And then on the TVs, I saw footage of people running in the streets past the block my apartment was on. I remember all the faces of my friends who were there with me. I remember the exact spot I was walking, the color of the grass, and my blue cell phone that I called my mom on who was several time zones away at her work. I was looking for some kind of reassurance. In the hours that followed everything was shut down and quiet. But we were all mentally in panic. Students feared there would be a war, there would be a draft, we’d be bombed. Phone lines to our friends and family in New York were jammed. (There was no texting back then either.) By nightfall, the streets were empty, and everything was silent except for the sound of fighter jets flying overhead because of Baltimore’s proximity to Washington DC. Groups of us gathered in apartments to watch the news, share food, cry, laugh. I still remember the space, the smells, the friends. I was terrified. Everything felt unknown. Late at night, we held a candlelight vigil on the steps of our campus’s main building where we all cried. I remember being on the phone with my parents while I sat looking out my apartment window at the empty city. I told my dad how afraid I was of what might come in every worst-case scenario I could possibly think of. In a very mid-western dad sort of way he just said “You can’t let this scare you. You could also walk out your door and get hit by a bus. You just have to keep going.”
When classes resumed, after a week of cancellations, I couldn’t focus on working. I sat in my senior thesis class feeling numb and lost. I remember my professor sitting with me. I said, “I just don’t even know what to do”. She said, “we’re artists, we make.” She picked up two scraps of fabric and began sewing them together. It didn’t matter what I made, it didn’t have to be my final thesis, it didn’t have to be anything wonderful or anything that anyone would see. What was important was to pick something up and make — one stitch at a time, one mark at a time.
Needless to say, like you all, my senior year abruptly changed in a day. The magazine I worked for folded in the months that followed, as did many publications. Friends left the city. And to be honest, for a little while, I was afraid to go back to New York. Everything I planned out was no longer there. I imagine in some ways this is what you feel.
The scope and impact of the global pandemic we are currently in will be far greater than that of 9/11. I acknowledge that. I still had a senior show, I still got to take a picture of me in my graduation gown with my friends and professors. But in some ways, I share this with you, to try to reassure you that in times of crisis, we can pivot, we can thrive, we can make things we never imagined that will lead us to places we never thought of. For me, in some ways, it lead me to all of you, to being your professor. For if 9/11 never happened, I likely would not have gone to graduate school when and where I did, or move to California, or end up at a conference on a ship in the Baltic Sea where I was offered a temporary teaching job in San Jose (a story for another time), or moving to San Francisco, or applying to a job at USF, only to be rejected — but good thing as then I traveled for a year with my now-husband, and then got a call later offering me a different job at USF (again, a story for another time). You didn’t plan for this, but I wonder where it will lead you?
It’s hard right now. But, we will get through this. We will find new ways to connect. You will share this moment in history with each other and with the world. Your kids and grandkids will ask you to tell stories about the time that the whole world had to stay inside. And as I reflect on my memories of the unexpected crisis in my senior year, I offer you the same advice that was given to me — don’t let this scare you, and just start making something, one mark at a time.
I wish you the best.
(And yes, I still have virtual office hours. And I can still sign that form for you.)
