Resilience Amid Challenge

The last year led many people across the world to search for new sources of strength. Here, students and faculty from the Orfalea College of Business reflect on where they found resilience and insight during challenging times.

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We had to adapt to so many different situations. Being a student at Cal Poly, I think I learned how valuable peer to peer connection is. Working around your peers, working with faculty, working with Student Services — I really leaned on all of them to help me adjust and adapt to situations I couldn’t predict. Looking back on it now, I cherish the work we did. We did as much as we could amid the pandemic. For me, resilience stemmed from being able to adapt to those times. I also think the social justice movement is continuing to impact us, our world, our society. It’s been a time of education. I know I’m still sitting down and learning as much as I can. I want to understand perspectives from all sides because I think that’s important. I also think it’s important to then stay awake in a time of hardship for many people and to really get involved where you believe you can help change things. Once I’m educated on an issue and have formed my own stance, I’ve made it a goal to really promote those ideas and help others, and lean on others, and to move in a direction where I want to see change happen. I think it was such a big year for that. I think it’s going to go down in history as a time of great change.

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My strength and resolve came from those closest to me: my partner and my child. They both let me rant and rail when needed, and there was plenty to rant and rail about this past year. Societal and political events were not just news. They sank in deep into my consciousness and forced me to stand up for issues that I care about. I learned more about politics, prejudice, disparity and history than ever before because it was a lived lesson rather than something abstract. My family and friends learned what mattered to me because I took the time to truly engage with them about issues. To stay positive on a daily basis, I made sure I had at least one good moment every day. And when things would go pear shaped, I would revisit and focus on that moment. I have close ties to India — my mother is very old and counts on me to either visit her or come and visit me. A year in the life of someone who is 90 is a long time. On numerous occasions, I felt completely overcome with emotion and full of despair. But, I promised to be strong for her, and we both agreed that we would dwell on the good in our lives, daily, and not think too much about the future. When I lost family and friends to the virus, I would try to make sense of the loss. Eventually, I resorted to the Buddhist philosophy that death is natural, inevitable and unpredictable. I started waking up every morning to a little bird on my shoulder and thanking it for giving my mother and I another day. When the pandemic is in our rearview mirror, I intend to continue waking up to that little bird and finding one good moment where I can direct my focus.

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When I think of resilience, I think of bouncing back from something. And I think you can only bounce back from something once you’ve acknowledged something bad has happened. The way I’ve built resilience is acknowledging that life hasn’t been super awesome this year. But then, I think a lot of it for me has just been trying to come up with a plan — saying to myself, “Here’s what my day is going to look like: I’m going to go get outside today, I’m going to try to catch up with a friend or FaceTime someone, I’m going to go to class.” I think those little moments of seeking normalcy have been helpful in building resilience. I’ve also been so used to always going full speed that I think this year created a chance for me to take a step back and reflect on my values. It became important to look out for other people and have time for yourself and your friends, in terms of mental health. We became more aware, overall, that our coworkers and our friends, our families and our parents might have things going on in their lives we may not even know about. And, with the social justice movements and the conversations around DEI and race, I think we also saw those conversations have opened doors. In the past, it seemed like a lot of people didn’t think they knew how to be a part of the conversation, while other people didn’t have a voice. Now there’s space for that.

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One of the biggest things I missed was just making connections. So, that was something I focused on this year — trying to make connections online, going to virtual meetings for clubs, connecting with my classmates and friends. I also got back into music. I play the guitar and I hadn’t really been playing a lot, but I had more time once we were in quarantine. I also started playing the piano, and I got into yoga. To destress, I spent a lot of time outside. When COVID-19 first started, I decided to learn a new skill, which was coding, and that helped me decide to minor in computer science. I think keeping up with your health and staying motivated and happy have all been important. Beyond that, I think between the combination of COVID-19 and the social justice movements, people became more aware of some of the big issues that are affecting our society. Now, when we go back to normal, I think we’re going to try to change. Getting back to normal is also going to involve getting us to a better place in society.

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My mantra this year has been “comparison is the thief of joy.” And I feel like that was kind of my motivating factor as a graduating senior — to not keep thinking about what our senior year was supposed to look like and just accept that this is what it was always meant to be. I’ve learned to let a lot of things go that were gone the minute the pandemic started. I’ve also learned that dwelling on those things would only hinder me from being able to do other things and take on new roles or new opportunities. In my classes, I’ve been given a lot more independence and autonomy to work. As someone who really does enjoy group work and group projects, I also think it was good for me to be able to take time for myself, to really think a lot of things through, to be more independent and grow that side of myself. I also had so many conversations with my roommates about the social justice movement. In the different groups I’ve been a part of, I feel like it became a subject in every conversation, which was really great — to be able to open people’s minds. From within our business fraternity, we were able to lead a really inclusive DEI survey and conversation. Pushing that more to the forefront, I think it’s going beyond just talking now. It seems like, as different movements have progressed throughout this, talking about the issues isn’t enough anymore. Now we’re looking at what we can do to change things. I think taking things even further and seeing that this as something way more essential to your work and life is where we’re headed.  

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I think something that has helped was everyone was trying to figure out how to handle the pandemic together. There was definitely an adjustment that was made once everything went virtual, but since we were all learning together — professors and students — it made the year less stressful. It was an intense time with the pandemic, as well the social justice movements, and I often found myself looking for credible information. I think the main way I tried to stay involved was to keep myself informed on all of the movements and events. Also, I think having such a supportive group of family and friends helped make this year manageable. I found my resilience through my friends and family. Seeing all my friends grinding to graduate and wanting to make my family proud motivated me during these challenging times.

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It’s certainly been an interesting time — the non-permeance of things, how we interact, how much we’ve clearly had to Learn by Doing. For me personally, it’s also been a time of caring and looking out for people, and I’m just fortunate to have a home structure that’s nurturing. My family and I have traveled the world in the past, and we’ve always done it as a unit. And in normal life, that’s sort of where you disrupt things and take yourself outside of your daily structure. In doing that, we’ve learned how to eat well, sleep well and get a lot of activity, no matter where we are. So, in some ways, we learned to cope by just continuing that process. Things also got very real when they closed the schools, and I saw that our daughter, who’s in second grade, was going to be home all the time. To balance work and suddenly being in a homeschool or virtual situation for her required a lot of support within our household. It was also pretty great at the same time — to have that involvement and participation in her life and education. Looking beyond my family, there’s obviously been a lot of pain and suffering and disappointment in our society over the past year, outside the pandemic. We have high ideals and aspirations, and we often fall short of them. I also always believe we can do better, and we should continue seeking that ideal and continue to build and create and develop within our society, within our college and within ourselves.

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I definitely have a really strong support system, which was important this year. I’m an ambassador for the College of Business, a peer mentor for the college, as well as an advertising sales account executive for Mustang Media Group. And, I’m on the executive board for the sorority Alpha Chi Omega. All the organizations I just mentioned have had multiple meetings per week via Zoom, which obviously is different than being able to meet in person. Still, I’ve felt a really strong sense of community through those meetings. It’s like everyone logs on, has their camera on, is present, is focused and has great things to contribute. We’ve figured out ways to stay connected. Even though Zoom fatigue is prevalent in everyone’s life, we still have a lot of meaningful connections and conversations. I also felt like this support system in San Luis Obispo, as well as at home, helped me with the social justice movements and the political events last year. My family is super supportive and willing to talk about these things. And, at school, we were working on posting pieces on Mustang News to give relevant and important information to students. Everything was obviously really hard to process — every single event led to so many questions. But my friends and my boyfriend and coworkers and my family were there, and I think educating ourselves and talking about these things helped me navigate them.

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I think just seeing the good, as difficult as it is to do, and being grateful for what I do have has helped me this year. The pandemic took away a lot — just being able to be in a room with my friends or be on campus, for example. And, because I learned that these things could be taken away so quickly, I think it’s made me refocus on what I do have: the fact that I’m alive, that I get to go to school, that I can work virtually with my internship. It was also helpful for me to embrace challenges as opportunities. Inhabiting the mindset of making the most of what we have has helped me avoid running away and allowed me to really dive in. I also found it was okay to admit we’ve been in a unique situation. It’s okay to take time to stop and recognize what everyone is going through. As an Asian American, the anti-Asian hate crimes definitely affected me this year, as well. I spent a lot of time over the last year watching events play out across our society. All of them made me recognize how much we each have going on behind the screen. And while we may be at school or at work, we’re all also pulled in other directions. I think for me it was overwhelming to feel these different things and to recognize these large scale problems, all within the context of a pandemic. As a response, I mostly tried to recognize what I could control and what should be done. For me, that was diving into the work that I do within my community and my involvement in social impact and diversity and inclusion. I think it was also crucial to recognize it’s not something we’re going to solve in a day. It’s something that’s going to take patience and constant, intentional progress.

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One of the very positive things that came out of this year is that it changed my perception. I’ve been thinking about the future and our new normal. I was called upon early in the pandemic to be part of the team that put together the COVID-19 field hospital at the Cal Poly Rec Center. As an instructor of supply chain, I helped with selecting materials and designing the floors and some processes. I was impressed with the response of the community during these hardships and the solidarity and the communal spirit I saw. We were building something that was intended to be a lifesaving facility, which we needed to put together quickly. Everybody was there on a volunteer basis, trying to either put the beds together, supply the medicine or make sure we had an efficient workflow. We were collaborating with different people from the healthcare industry, from the civil defense industry. This was a scary time, right in the beginning, but we were all there working together. I enjoyed the spirit of it and the idea that a single human, and by extension a social element or a community, could make a difference. It’s one of the memories that will keep living with me.

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All responses have been lightly edited for length, flow, and clarity.