A campus life leader on the transformative power of caring
“I try to be the person that cares for our young people beyond what they can see of themselves in this moment,” said Emily Quigley, assistant diretor of campus life for outdoor education programs.
Photo: Alonso Nichols
As an undergrad, I was a trip leader for Tufts Wilderness Orientation. I didn’t see myself as anything special; I just led my trips and spent time in this warm, silly community. I majored in computer science, and figured I had to work in the field I’d just spent all this time studying. I had loved the major: the collaborative projects, the logic puzzles, exuberant professors like Ming Chow and Ben Hescott … but the actual tech industry made me sad. I could see a future of long days staring at a computer screen generating profit for billionaires stretched out in front of me.
The year I graduated, I came back to campus to help with TWO for a couple days, and the summer after that, Christa Ricker (the former advisor) called me and said, “I want someone to come back for longer, and I want it to be you.” I remember feeling surprised, like, “Why would she want me? I’m not unique?”
Working with Christa and the student coordinators that summer, there were nights I’d be up at 3 a.m. packing thousands of tortillas into plastic bags for trips, and I’d think, “This is stressful, but I could do it forever.” That’s when I started to think about a career shift. And that’s the role of a mentor, right? … Christa seeing something in me that I couldn’t see at the time. She helped me acknowledge that this was something I was good at, and that I can work in something I love to do.
I started to realize how amazing it is to publicly and loudly care about things, to love our people and community unapologetically and unflinchingly. Recreating outdoors with others lets us practice the radical trust and care that we want to see in the world; it gives us space to really be together in an authentic way. It helps us understand what is necessary to get there in our everyday lives. Those lessons matter.
Like Christa was for me, I try to be the person that cares for our young people beyond what they can see of themselves in this moment. The core of my job is to ask how I can make sure you feel cared for, so that you can grow and do what you want to do. Because at the end of the day, caring is cool!
—Emily Quigley, A15, assistant director of campus life, Outdoor Education Programs
Our Tufts is a series of personal stories shared by members of the Tufts community and featured on both Tufts Now and Instagram.
