{"id":7421,"date":"2026-05-12T09:33:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T13:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trincoll.edu\/reporter\/?page_id=7421"},"modified":"2026-05-12T09:33:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T13:33:35","slug":"what-brings-you-joy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.trincoll.edu\/reporter\/fall-2021\/features\/what-brings-you-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"What Brings You Joy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat brings you joy?\u201d<\/h2>\n

\"\"That\u2019s the question The Trinity Reporter<\/em> asked the college community this past spring through newsletters, social media, and emails. While it\u2019s a seemingly simple question, these days\u2014amid a once-in-a-century global pandemic\u2014it\u2019s anything but.<\/p>\n

As Randolph \u201cRandy\u201d Lee \u201966, director of Trinity\u2019s Counseling and Wellness Center and associate professor of psychology, notes, \u201cIt\u2019s clear that the pandemic has had an impact on most of us when it comes to our emotional state.\u201d For some, he says, \u201cthese impacts will last longer than for others, but I think if we focus on resilience and trying to let ourselves bounce back as things get better, realistically and not na\u00efvely, but also with optimism, we can minimize the long-term effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee offers a metaphor that he says speaks to finding joy: running a hurdles race. \u201cThere are long stretches of flat, smooth ground, but you know at some point soon there will be a hurdle that you need to jump over,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes you may knock down the hurdle, and sometimes you may clear it. After the hurdle is another smooth area, but you always know there will be another hurdle. In some ways life is like that. We need to try not to focus on the hurdles and instead focus on the flat ground between them when we can be more at peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what \u201cflat, smooth ground\u201d helped those in the Trinity community get through the trying times of the COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout? What is it that brought joy? Read on to find out.<\/p>\n

\"\"My husband, when he belly laughs, can lift the mood of an entire room. His simple, silly glee brings me an insane, heart-bursting, tears-in-my-eyes amount of joy. All the better if I\u2019ve said or done something to crack him up like that. Pure magic.
\nCarla Boecklin \u201901
\nPark City, Utah<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"I wanted to share something that brought me a lot of joy this past school year, which was my Jarvis dorm room. It truly was one of the prettiest rooms I\u2019ve ever lived in. It was supposed to be a double, but because of COVID, it was a single, so it was super spacious, and I had so much fun decorating it.
\n\u2013 Katie Russell \u201922
\nGrafton, Massachusetts<\/em><\/p>\n

I find joy in sharing simple pleasures of the moment with Beth, my wife of 58 years: Drinking a coffee or tea on our screened-in back porch during a heavy rain; verbal firecrackers that stimulate thought, like \u201cFranklin, we use the word overwhelming a lot, but I never hear whelming\u201d; or rhyming exchanges, as we get ready to sleep. \u201cFranklin, your words sound like you might be a poet.\u201d And I respond, \u201cYes, but how else can I show it?\u201d To which she rejoins, \u201cYou still have a long way to go it!\u201d<\/p>\n

None of this is profound or worth a dash in Professor Samuel Morse\u2019s class on poetry. But it is, I believe, a derivative of Thoreau\u2019s Walden<\/em> that we read as sophomores. Thoreau wrote to describe how he had reduced life to its fundamentals. In a much different way, Beth and I have done the same thing.<\/p>\n

Our careers\u2014as lawyers, legislator, and author\u2014are behind us. They are what they are and cannot be changed. Life with Beth is ongoing and changing. At our ages\u201485 and 82\u2014joy comes from the present moment, as I tried to show here.<\/p>\n

Franklin Kury \u201958
\nHummelstown, Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"A big part of the joy in my life this spring 2021 has been meeting up with Tanya Jones, my good friend and fellow Class of 1997 graduate. We have been going on long walks in the uptown parks in New York City: Morningside, Riverside, and Central Park.\u00a0Walking and talking about the ups and downs this year. Joy for us both.
\nAli McCartney Auth \u201997, with Tanya Jones \u201997
\nNew York, New York<\/em><\/p>\n

I am a critical care medicine doc in Florida. This past year has been brutal at work. Too many patients, not enough beds or nurses, not enough treatments that work. Too many deaths. My little bursts of joy have been found through night sky watching and my pets. I love to be outside at night in Florida. It\u2019s cooler for one, fewer people are out, better time to walk my dog. We live in a suburb, so the night sky is pretty visible, and Florida is flat so you get the whole sky to see. It really is uplifting. I have seen many shooting stars, moonrises, and the close alignment of Mars and Jupiter last year. We have a big dog and two cats. They are a constant source of love and laughs. I cannot imagine living without them!
\nSarah A. Neilly \u201981
\nMelbourne, Florida<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"My garden brings me joy. I grow flowers and veggies at Knox\u2019s urban farm on Laurel Street in Hartford. Co-creating such bounty with the earth makes me feel like I can do anything.
\nGabby Nelson
\nAssistant Director, Urban Engaged Learning<\/em><\/p>\n

I realized that my whole experience building a movement in my city to create the 4C Tree Project, which stands for Capture Carbon Commemorate COVID, has been the greatest source of joy for me during this challenging pandemic.\u00a0This project is to honor those who lost their lives due to COVID-19 during the pandemic by planting trees in public places so people can stop, reflect, and remember the pandemic and those who lost their lives. I am working with the nonprofit Green Newton and partnering with the Newton director of forestry to make this happen. In the process,\u00a0I\u2019ve gotten to build amazing connections with kind and driven leaders across my city. I also joined the Green Newton Youth Group and created a subgroup within it, the 4C Tree team.\u00a0Now my team of high school and college students and I have raised over $44,000 to plant at least 220 trees across my city of Newton, Massachusetts.
\nElizabeth Sockwell \u201921
\nNewton Center, Massachusetts<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"As an aging retiree, I now reside in an apartment, which has a picture window facing east. I watch the dawn now with joy and marvel at the changing cloud patterns that make each dawn individual.<\/p>\n

Richard Ferraro \u201955
\nDover, New Hampshire<\/em><\/p>\n

For me, walks outside with my toddlers and connecting with my research students on Zoom brought me joy during these unusual times.<\/p>\n

Emily Derbyshire \u201902
\nDurham, North Carolina<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"Making a difference for the birds, other wildlife and the environment of Connecticut is what brings me joy.\u00a0As just one example, last year we had a pair of nesting American oystercatchers at my office at Milford Point. One day in July, I noticed that one of the oystercatcher chicks had something wrapped around its head. The next day we organized staff and partners and mounted a rescue effort. The bird was released back to the wild after we gave it some identifying leg bands.\u00a0The bands allowed us to track the bird until it fledged and later left for the winter grounds with its parents.\u00a0This is just one example of some of the things that have brought me joy in my\u00a0conservation career, but one of the more hands-on and tangible ones.\u00a0Other key tangible moments include helping to protect the former Griswold Airport Property in Madison; the Preserve property in Essex, Old Saybrook, and Westbrook; Salt Meadow Park and the Guilford Sluice property, both in Guilford; and the Suffield Wildlife Management Area in Suffield, which now supports a healthy population of the state-endangered grasshopper sparrow.<\/p>\n

Patrick Comins \u201990
\nStratford, Connecticut<\/em><\/p>\n

Student and alumni accomplishments that come from the teaching or advising that I do, sometimes over the course of many years, bring me joy. Whether that\u2019s a student or alum getting into medical school or a current student finding a course I recommended was a great fit, or whether it\u2019s one of my nutrition students taking control of their own health, knowing that I played a positive role in their development and seeing their pride in their accomplishment\u2014that brings me great joy!
\nAlison Draper
\nDirector, Center for Interdisciplinary Science<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"What brings me joy? Dropping our daughter [Allison Rau \u201923] at Trinity for freshman year exactly 30 years after my husband and I arrived as freshmen ourselves.
\nDana Meachen Rau \u201993
\nBurlington, Connecticut<\/em><\/p>\n

When I try explaining something to one of my guitar students several different ways and one of them actually works. I see their facial expressions change from puzzlement to comprehension, then joy and relief, as they integrate it. That never gets old.<\/p>\n

Andy Bassford \u201976
\nBronx, New York<\/em><\/p>\n

This year I\u2019m trying to focus on the small things that bring me joy:<\/p>\n