By Grace Tillman ’24

As life on campus ramped up to a frantic close during the final few weeks of class, I found myself more isolated than not, tucked away in a quiet corner of Buntrock with only last-minute assignments to keep me company. I wondered if other students felt similarly: that during finals, connecting with others fell to the wayside in favor of catching up on weeks of work I should have done already. Finals week itself was always a similarly isolating experience, with friends and classmates quietly departing campus after wrapping up their business. We would exchange vague promises to see each other after break ended, and I always looked forward to that– but what of the time in between?

For some students, winter break is a well-earned respite from school, an opportunity to return home, spend time with family, friends, and other loved ones, or celebrate the holidays that fall during the break between terms. For other students, however, that break feels cavernous. Break can be a daunting– and lonely– time for students who can’t return home, or for those students who find “home” to be an unwelcoming place for them.

Break can be a daunting– and lonely– time for students who can’t return home, or for those students who find “home” to be an unwelcoming place for them.

With this in mind, and anticipating my own self-imposed solitude with the approach of finals, I wanted to provide at least a small moment for people to come together and connect during finals week. I called it “Community Night.”

“Community Night” is the first solo event I’ve planned and held as an Interfaith Fellow at the Lutheran Center and what I imagined for it was ambitious. I organized a few different activities for people to take part in including letter-writing, different rounds and packs of We’re Not Really Strangers (a question-based card game revolving around connecting with others), designed and distributed posters for the event, and catered food and drinks. Postage for the letters was free of charge to anywhere in the world, we had a gallon of hot chocolate, and I baked multiple loaves of pumpkin bread and other sweets to be enjoyed and taken home for later.

When fewer people than expected showed up, I was initially disappointed, but it led me to reflect on what my hopes for the event had been and what had actually come of it. 

What I overlooked, in pursuing a more individualistic, “embodied achievement” type of success, were the small moments that made Community Night the experience that I had hoped and intended it to be.

Initially, I defined a successful event as one students would flock to. It was my first semester as an Interfaith Fellow, and I wanted to prove myself worthy. How better to do that than to plan an event all by myself and have it be well-attended?

What I overlooked, in pursuing a more individualistic, “embodied achievement” type of success, were the small moments that made Community Night the experience that I had hoped and intended it to be. One of the students who showed up to the event stayed for over an hour, sitting and talking with me about their experiences as a first-year international student. They expressed their desire to start a Buddhist group on campus, and we made plans to reconnect during J-Term to start working on ways to help them with that. Another student came in during our conversation and, upon hearing the first-year express an interest in taking music lessons, offered to help them reach out to the proper figures on campus to set up lessons for the rest of the year. I had never met either of these students before and they were strangers to each other before meeting that night, but the connections made in those moments wouldn’t have happened without the chance for one-on-one conversations at the event. I met a few more students who were pleasantly surprised that the Lutheran Center was hosting something like this, and expressed a tentative, almost hopeful, interest in attending something similar in the future.

It also helped me to recognize that success is more often found in small moments.

While the room had been quieter and emptier than I hoped it would be, it made a meaningful difference to the students who had the opportunity to send a letter to a loved one and to the students who connected in the space we’d intentionally made for each other. It also helped me to recognize that success is more often found in small moments. Carrying these reflections with me, I’m excited to see where my future work in the Lutheran Center will take me, and look forward to finding and cherishing the little wins in life that I would previously have missed.