August 26, 2025
Welcome back. I hope you found time to goof off during the summer and are ready for whatever the fall has to offer.
You’re drowning in updates and unsolicited advice, so I’ll resist the urge to pile on here. You’re also probably dealing with last minute schedule changes, job and internship hunts, roommate challenges, and the rest of the daily reality of being a GW student. I will also resist the urge to offer predictable reassurances (that said, you will find a way to make it work). Some of you - most of you I expect - are also stressed about politics, media, climate, and global affairs. Again, resisting the urge to comment.
At last spring’s CCAS graduation I reminded members of the class of 2025 that they came to GW to do hard things, to take on big challenges, and that over four years they learned to understand our present and shape what comes next. I told them that they, like you, are storm chasers.
You’re drowning in updates and unsolicited advice, so I’ll resist the urge to pile on here. You’re also probably dealing with last minute schedule changes, job and internship hunts, roommate challenges, and the rest of the daily reality of being a GW student. I will also resist the urge to offer predictable reassurances (that said, you will find a way to make it work). Some of you - most of you I expect - are also stressed about politics, media, climate, and global affairs. Again, resisting the urge to comment.
At last spring’s CCAS graduation I reminded members of the class of 2025 that they came to GW to do hard things, to take on big challenges, and that over four years they learned to understand our present and shape what comes next. I told them that they, like you, are storm chasers.
But sometimes you need shelter from the storm.
Over the next year we will come together in classes and at events. We will talk in offices and hallways. Some of what we do will be serious and difficult, some will be light and fun. Some of our conversations will probably be sad. If we do this right, you will be intellectually uncomfortable at least a few times this year (at least).
We will do all of it as a community.
Outside of SMPA we are sometimes on opposite sides of political campaigns, protests, and arguments about the future of our university and nation. Outside, we dive headlong into the storm. When you come into 805 21st St. I encourage you to shake off your coats and fold your umbrellas. Bring your intellect, your passion, your views, your debating skills, and everything else that makes you, you, to the community. As you do, remember we are in this together. Everyone in SMPA is here for a reason, and everyone deserves to be here. The person with the knucklehead views about soccer, pizza, and politics is part of our community, just as you are. Like you, they worked hard to get here and are working hard to succeed. Like you, they are at GW for the storm. And, like you, they sometimes need a break from the winds and rain. They, like you (and me) sometimes just want to talk about ideas because talking about ideas is fun, with nothing more at stake than the conversation itself.
Rather than offering unsolicited advice or general encouragement to start the fall, I want to use this first note of the year to encourage you to be who you are, here, together.
What you’re doing can feel difficult and stressful because it is difficult and stressful. We are in a storm and you are storm chasers. Our SMPA community can be a break from the wind and the rain. A chance for “what if” conversations, ideas for the sake of ideas, pizza, dumb jokes, maybe a puzzle.
You are here and you got this. And because we’re a community, we’ve got each other.
See you around the halls.