Jodi Kantor

You described students surrounded by institutional collapse, political conflict, a lot of uncertainty.

And yet the question that they brought to you wasn't about any of that, but really about how were they going to begin their lives.

That's what was so stunning.

Like, this was peak Columbia chaos.

Like, this, I mean, you remember just the mess upon mess upon mess, the feeling that there was no bottom and that this totally great and beloved institution that so many of us owe so much to was just totally falling apart.

But you put it perfectly.

I mean, they said, we don't want to talk about Gaza.

We don't want to talk about Israel.

We don't want to talk about President Trump.

We don't even want to talk about...

The university administration we all hate for a million different ways.

They said our class, for all of its political differences, is united in one anxiety.

How do we find and start our life's work in this crazy environment?

And, you know, their question is the question of a generation, Debbie.

Like, I know it's, like, polite and the expected thing to say that, like, students on elite campuses are different from students at community colleges.

True.

Like, of course.

Like, obviously.

True.

But I'm finding this question up and down the economic spectrum.