The start of this semester feels different. Though it would be too quick to say the pandemic is behind us, there is new life and energy on campus this fall.
As is often the case at SLU, I looked across my classroom on the first day and saw students I’ve known since their first year on campus. But this year–of course–was different. Several of the students sitting in class were also sitting in my FYS course when the pandemic hit. These students went from enjoying new freedoms at SLU to being cast back home and into remote learning.
Many of these seniors are returning from off-campus studies, and all of them have the maturity and poise I associate with a SLU education. On the one hand, nothing is more expected. Our seniors have grown into the graduates we are rightfully proud of. On the other, they’ve done so under the most challenging circumstances.
Walking across campus after class, two words kept springing to my mind: gratitude and resilience. I am terribly grateful to everyone who worked to keep SLU going these past two and a half years. I am tremendously grateful for our students, who showed up and managed to grow into the seniors sitting in our classrooms this fall.
I am also in awe of the resilience students–and our SLU community–developed over the pandemic. I encourage us to consider, in our ways and as we can, how we can honor and build upon that resilience this semester and over the course of the year. What many of our students may’ve lost in terms of skills we’d expect students in previous years to have developed, what did they gain in resilience?
This is not to make light of the challenges ahead and the losses of the pandemic. But pausing for gratitude is one way of building resilience and one way of signaling to our students that we see them and we are committed to helping them get the most from this academic year.