December 2020 Faculty Letter
by Assistant Dean of Students Mimi Maduff
If I were to characterize my experiences since January, the word I would choose would be “disorienting.” I have found myself in a liminal space of being at home, but not really feeling at home. Over the last ten years working with the Ph.D. students, faculty, and staff in the Psychology Department, I felt like coming to work every day was very much like being at home. Of course, I knew there would be an adjustment finding my way in a new environment, but I certainly had not anticipated that the feeling of work being home would take on such a literal significance. And that finding home among my new colleagues at the Divinity School would take a bit longer than I anticipated.
After almost two months of working in Swift Hall, we received the directive to work from home. I, like so many people, anticipated this would last for a couple of months at the most, but I never expected what was to come. I tried to prepare. Like many of you, I stocked up on soap and pasta, cleaned every surface in sight, and brought home the one plant I had in my office, just in case. I wanted desperately to have the opportunity to get to know my new colleagues and build relationships with faculty and students at the Divinity School. Instead of impromptu conversations and spontaneous meetings in the hall, meetings in offices across campus, introductions to new colleagues, I found myself alone with a laptop looking for a quiet corner of my house to use Zoom.
Feeling the loss of in-person connections has been a tremendous challenge for many of us during this time. While I am grateful to have my small family at home and a recently adopted rescue dog, I spend a great deal of mental energy every day concerned about how to learn a new job and connect with people I barely had the opportunity to get to know before all of these changes. I worry about how to handle the tragic news I hear about those who are close to me, or close to those I know well. I worry about my son not attending in-person school and the lack of social connections he has with others his age. I worry about his understanding of loss, social justice and injustice, and the inequality that exists within the collective trauma of this experience. At a time when he cannot interact with his peers, when none of us can in the same ways we did before, how can we begin to understand the range of emotion and experiences of others? How do we get the support of our extended family, our friends who are far away, make new friends, find first connections through a screen, develop a support network where we feel safe to share authentic reports of our experiences during these challenging days?
I wish I could say I have developed a list of best practices and strategies to manage a new job, online third grade, and the current social and political climate in this country. I wish I could say I have found new hobbies or spend my evenings and weekends absorbed in novels. But, like many of you, my days are absorbed in learning something new and managing tasks at home that must be done, and not the tasks that could be done. I am trying to find balance. I still wake up very early every morning, as I have done for the past many years, to exercise. And of course, I can always find time to bake bread and cookies (which makes the early morning exercise all the more important). Every day I set a goal for myself to do my best work, minimize self-criticism, minimize criticism of those around me, and find moments to remind myself of the many positive interactions of the past months. And certainly, every day that I have the opportunity to meet a student over Zoom, is a much brighter day.
Having so recently experienced the challenges of developing new relationships in a new place during this unprecedented time, I have been thinking not only about how this affects me, but also the connection my experience has with students who are starting a new program and trying to make these types of connections for themselves. Many of you, now far away from family and friends, are tasked with finding community at a time when our understanding of community has been upended and redefined. We live in a new world where social relationships are defined by avoidance and keeping physical distance, rather than connection and proximity. Finding ways to connect with others is much harder when we need to plan every social encounter and use what little energy we have to make the effort to reach out to others. In thinking about this particular challenge, I felt that piloting a peer mentoring program at the Divinity School could be a way to reach out to new students who, like me, would not have the benefit of spontaneous interactions with their new community.
The inaugural group of BONDS (Building Opportunities and Networks for Divinity Students) Peer Mentors is tasked with supporting incoming students and helping them to build networks with returning students, faculty, and staff at the Divinity School. They are an invaluable voice of experience that I believe will not only help orient new students to their environment but also provide warmth and a sense of belonging in a time fraught with social isolation. How do you make friends when you cannot stop and talk before or after class, you do not run into each other in the hall waiting for office hours, you are not in line together to buy coffee? These spontaneous moments that we so often take for granted, have much value and meaning in our daily lives. While we cannot replicate this with Zoom, I hope the warm welcome to our virtual Swift Hall will begin to bring students together in a place that can be whatever they want it to be. And perhaps on a selfish note, it is providing me with the opportunity to make these connections as well.
I am optimistic that our experience of this period will bring us closer together. As I remind myself every day, it is so important to connect with those around us. Even if we do not feel we need that connection for ourselves, the friend, family member, or colleague who receives our call, text, or email will feel cared for and remembered. We can all make a difference in how we make it through this time. And maybe, when we all come back together in Swift Hall, we can feel ourselves back at home.
