A Semester of Depth, Connection, and Discovery
This fall, I had the privilege of guiding a small group of five semester students through a learning journey that became far more intimate, layered, and meaningful than any of us anticipated. The scale of the group allowed us to slow down, go deeper, and build the kind of trust that transforms a course into a shared experience.
One of the greatest gifts of the semester was welcoming a series of remarkable guest speakers whose presence expanded our understanding of leadership, resilience, and inner clarity. Tuaca opened the classroom in entirely new directions with her insights on mind mapping - not merely as a creative technique, but as a daily practice of grounding, pattern-finding, and staying connected to one’s inner architecture of thought. Olena brought a tender and courageous honesty while speaking about navigating turbulent times, and how upheaval plays out within families, friendships, and the quiet spaces of daily life. Her perspective encouraged the students to explore the emotional landscapes behind global narratives. Kerry guided us into the realm of personal leadership, helping the group examine what it means to navigate responsibility, intuition, and agency in both personal and professional contexts.
Beyond the classroom walls, our site visits added their own layers of learning.
At Framer Framed, we encountered Lawan!, an exhibition that brought the histories of the Indonesian archipelago and West Papua into vivid focus. Through visual and archival work, it invited us to reflect on resistance, memory, and the responsibilities we hold as witnesses to histories that continue to shape the present. The experience offered a quiet but powerful moment of reckoning and empathy.
Our exploration of the city continued with a visit to ReRoll Works, a queer board-game shop where play, imagination, and community-building intersect. Adrian welcomed us into a world that reminded us how creativity and storytelling can foster belonging.
We also spent time at the Amsterdam Archives, diving into layers of local history, and wandered through the living stillness of Hortus Botanicus, where nature softened our pace and reminded us of the restorative power of green spaces.
Across all these encounters - with guest speakers, with each other, with art, with archives, with nature, with play - the thread that held everything together was connection.
Connection to diverse perspectives.
Connection to personal stories.
Connection to history, creativity, and the natural world.
Connection to ourselves.
This semester reaffirmed how essential it is to create learning environments that are not just intellectually rigorous but emotionally spacious and imaginatively alive. With only five students, we were able to cultivate exactly that - a shared journey where thinking, feeling, and experiencing could coexist and inform one another.
It was an important semester. A moving one. And I am deeply grateful to have shared it with such an open, thoughtful, and engaged group.