October 27, 2026
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had the chance to return to Arizona State University where I earned an MA and most of a PhD and Emerson College where I earned a BA. When you read this I’ll probably be in my office in SMPA. Even though my talk at ASU was in a building that I passed countless times as a student, it felt like a place that was similar to somewhere I had been but it was otherwise unfamiliar. SMPA is the opposite. I have only known SMPA where and how it is today. A lot around SMPA has changed, but the building and program itself are largely the same as they were when I arrived. On the other hand, Emerson moved across town after I graduated. My old classrooms are now condos. The new campus is in a part of town that used to be called the combat zone and is now the theater district. Programs have come and gone. Most of my professors have retired, moved on, or passed away. Yet it feels like home.
Sitting at Logan airport waiting for my flight back to DC (wearing my new Emerson pullover), I am wondering how it is that I feel the strongest ties to the place that has changed the most.
I think part of the answer is that because Emerson is in Boston the buildings matter less than the city. If you go to school in a place like Boston or Washington, DC the city itself is your campus. But that’s only part of it. Part of the place is the memories and feelings it invokes. Boston is where I established lifelong friendships, learned from professors who pushed me and encouraged me, where I learned how to fail and learned that failing is OK, and much more. It’s hard to explain those feelings (as I am making painfully clear), so I locate them in a place on a map. I put them in a building. I am incredibly lucky to be at GW and part of our SMPA community in ways I can explain. But Emerson is home in part because I can’t explain it. Home is a word used to capture an otherwise difficult to describe feeling of becoming, being, and belonging.
One of my hopes for you is that you will feel the same way about SMPA and GW as I do about Emerson and Boston. We are together in a place on a map for a limited amount of time. We are also, hopefully, creating a place that you will struggle to explain but that always feels a lot like home.