Letter:

Dear Twin A,

I hope you’re well! I know college can get pretty intense around this time of year – midterm exams, job applications, bitter cold, bitter people. I hope you’re finding some sunshine to make you happy under these gray skies, as mom would say. Does your school provide any resources to lift people’s spirits in the winter? Here, we have these “pet love” sessions where they bring in therapy dogs to bury our faces in and cry. The wellness center says the event is helpful because “as non-judgmental, fountains of love and loyalty, animals are natural vehicles for providing support and companionship to you.” You probably know where I’m about to go with this, but HAH – it seems like these people are getting caught up in their superiority complexes and forgetting that humans are animals too, because that definition definitely doesn’t fit naturally for our species! I’m sitting in the library right now, the watering hole of campus where we all gather to survive – to my right there’s a group screeching and gossiping about their friends, to my left a threatening professor cutting off some trembling freshman who couldn’t figure out the printer fast enough, and generally scattered around are the usual passed out and/or sobbing bodies invisible to those walking past –not because they’re not in plain sight, but because they’ve blended into a familiar part of our watering hole – what I can’t see are those people who are “non-judgmental, fountains of love and loyalty,” and not because they’re familiar too.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, anything is better than nothing and I love getting a chance to squeeze the life out of those joyous fluff-balls, but I wonder if it might instead be better to make events where we can create permanent “natural vehicles for providing support and companionship” in each other rather than relying on other animals to come in every so often and get the job done. It’s almost like they had to pick animals that we don’t share a language with as to avoid the risk of negative conversation in a space intended for support. Maybe instead of creating environments where conversation is impossible to remove the potential for harmful discourse they could educate us on how to best support each other in such important conversations? (The library bell just rung; I’ll have to walk home now in the swarm of stress that’s about to file out of here.)

You’ll never guess the post by the wellness center I opened upon getting home – they’re cancelling this quarter’s pet love event because, wait for it, the dogs are DEAD. Yep, dead. Classic. So much for my dose of love, loyalty, companionship, and support this term. But, again, I hope you are finding your sunshine, please write me back and let me know if you are!

Much love,

Twin B/Your non-judgmental fountain of love and loyalty

Lecture to the University of Chicago Health & Wellness Center Faculty:

At the University of Chicago, the Health and Wellness center hosts quarterly Pet Love events, wherein trained therapy dogs are brought onto campus to provide love and support to students during highly stress-inducing times. Psychological research has shown that spending significant time with these animals can lower cortisol levels, muscle tension, blood pressure, and the risk of depression while simultaneously elevating serotonin and dopamine levels, inducing a state of overall calmness and relaxation. These health benefits are undoubtedly positive, thus, in light of the recent Pet Love event cancellation due to the passing of many of the therapy dogs, fellow students and myself were left devastated. I understand that this may come across as an exaggerated response to you, but I believe it to be perfectly adequate given the circumstances. The University of Chicago Health and Wellness Center describes the event to be beneficial because “as non-judgmental, fountains of love and loyalty, animals are natural vehicles for providing support and companionship to you.” To be stripped of one’s “natural vehicles for support and companionship” would undoubtedly lead to devastation. This temporary instantiation of love and loyalty on campus, led me to wonder – what if we could instantiate this permanently?

Our campus is full of animals – the students and professors. If we could provide training in how to show care and support towards people to the humans constantly on campus rather than just the dogs temporarily visiting we would likely not have to face such devastation in the future. Therapy dogs are said to provide companionship, and they do, but a person can only utilize non-verbal communication with such creatures. These dogs cannot say “I hear you” after divulging your pain or provide experience-dependent advice or check in on you the next morning. This can only occur through human-to-human interaction. Thus, I believe additionally training our students in therapeutic methods would valuably construct a more accessible and in-depth system of support on campus that, given the present devastation, is highly necessary.

Now one might argue with me that we already have trained therapists available on campus for support. However, in considering the high attendance levels at the Pet Love sessions in comparison to the much lower number of students willing to walk through the doors of the counseling building, I believe my demand still stands. Having trained counselors on campus is unquestionably essential, however, they are often intimidating to students, especially those currently experiencing low moods or anxiety. I argue that if students in daily interactions on campus were to better understand how to support one another they would do so more frequently, thus, creating an environment where seeking emotional guidance becomes less daunting and appears more accessible. Therefore, considering the role of counselors does not undermine my demand that students be trained in the aforementioned ways, but rather further strengthens it.

We’ve taught dogs how to support us, isn’t it time we taught one another?

Process Notes:

I wanted to write the letter to my twin because I’ve always found it striking to compare the differences in our experiences later in life given that we came from the same environment of nature and nurture as children. In writing the letter, I felt myself leaning into more bitterness and ridicule of the university than I did when writing the lecture. In the lecture, I imagined presenting it to university faculty and focused on forming an argument that I felt would align with the university’s values rather than emphasizing how they had seemingly failed to live up to them. Interestingly, this observation led me to realize that in the lecture I backed the validity of my claims with scientific facts while in the letter I did so through the importance of ingrained family values and emotional responses to daily activities. In considering the power of referencing these daily activities, I was struck by Ruskin’s insertions of observations of his immediate surroundings in his letters because they provided insight into how his topic was impacting day-to-day occurrences, even while writing his letters. Thus, I attempted to insert such observations into my letter as well to hopefully provide the same sort of impact. Lastly, I found it interesting in this week’s assignment that I was much more aware of my target audiences, which allowed me to determine the type of tone I desired with much more ease than in prior weeks; I think this has reminded me of the importance of considering one’s target audience in all writings, not just those where you directly name those whom you are addressing.