How Faculty Can Impart Hope to Students When Feeling Hope-depleted Themselves

In the early weeks of the pandemic, I was keenly aware of my students' struggles. Reflecting on my own hardships, I decided to write a piece for educators, “Hope Matters,” inviting us to impart optimism to our students. I wrote the article -- which appeared a year ago to the day -- because, like my students, I, too, was looking for hope. Some of my students would ask me point-blank, “How do we hold on to hope?” I wasn't surprised at the question. After all, hope is an abstract concept. We don't intentionally teach about hope; we don't talk about it beyond a cursory mention of it (“Let’s hope the exam goes well”), and we certainly don’t know how to measure it.

I wrote that article because I have an idea of what it means to be a young student whose life is abruptly disrupted along with their community’s. I recognize that the isolation and ongoing uncertainty pushed many people young people to the edge of despair, and they are struggling for glimpses of hope from a parent, a teacher, a mentor, a friend, a beloved. For most of 2020, we experienced shocks of existential crises, and I found myself wondering, “Where can I find beauty and hope amid so much death, injustice and unresolved grief?” Again, the notion of hope irritated me. Nonetheless, I wondered, “How do I move forward?” and “What option do I have but to hope?”

To continue to hold on to hope, which at times feels absurdly difficult, I had to entertain the questions “Why hope?” “Does it matter to hope?” and “What does it mean to enact hope in myself and others?”

It was in moments of deafening hopelessness that I realized that before we can talk about and impart hope to others, it is essential to interrogate and reignite our own individual relationship with hope. How do we go from an abstract, raw concept of hope to a more developed understanding of what it is and how to cultivate it? How do we experience and impart hope in others when we are feeling hope-depleted?