We were interested in exploring the sources of student’s resilience, and so we asked for them to tell us about a past experience that had given rise to their resiliency. Students responded via short answer and we analyzed their responses qualitatively.

Many student’s answers were coded into more than one of these themes, underlining the idea that people’s personal lives and social circumstances overlap. We included subcategories under each theme in order to show the nuances within each. We were careful to not make assumptions about student’s experiences and so coded them closely to how they were written. The one exception to this conservative coding was in regards to having a lack of human rights, which we coded for when people discussed larger social systems. It was important for us to be able to capture the role of oppression in student responses. 

The major themes students talked about were as follows:

• 38% discussed personal health, which included physical and mental health, substance use, and overcoming a personal health challenge.
• 30% discussed their family, which included divorce, family separation, death, health scares, and the resurfacing of family trauma
• 19% discussed some form of being socially marginalized, which included being bullied, being ostracized, or having a lack of human rights within a larger social system.
• 17% discussed having a strain of resources, which included homelessness and poverty.
• 11% discussed personal violence, which included sexual assault, rape, and abuse
• 6% discussed enduring a large-scale disaster, which included COVID, Hurricane Maria, and 9/11

Although our sample was overwhelmingly white (60%), people of color were overrepresented in the following areas:

• 80% of students who described a lack of human rights within a larger system were people of color
• 88% of students who described a strain of resources (which included housing and finances) were people of color

These findings are unfortunately not novel, yet it is still important for Silberman students and administration to be awake to the disparities in the student body. A lens of privilege and oppression must be central to our analysis of students’ experiences.