I work at a community college that was built into the side of a hill, by the water.

On the third floor of the college, there is a hallway, and at the end of the hallway there is a door. The door leads outside into a small alcove – thick cylindrical pillars supporting an overhanging roof over the doorway, two trash bins, a quaint flat space surrounded by knee-high cement walls and wooden benches, a picnic table. A flight of cement-block stairs follows the curve of the hill up and past the O-building and into a parking lot. Daffodils and myrtle cover the side of the hill, and the branches of a big cherry tree settled over it all. There is always a hint of cheap cigarette smoke in the air. Hoffman.

I have a vivid, almost year-old memory of this place in my head. It was almost the end of my last semester as a student here. The weather had turned gentle and warm, and there were several of us sitting outside at the picnic table; we were working on our Linear Algebra homework before class. The breeze was playing with Emma’s hair and the pages of our notebooks. Both Alexes were struggling, but with different things.

I was struggling to block out the voices that were anxiously trying to gauge where I was compared to everyone else in that moment. I was noticing the warmth of the sun on my back, and it was a welcome kind of soothing.

In another memory, I am sitting alone. The sun was hidden behind a veil of clouds, but the air was warm. I think it must have been raining earlier that day. Think of the smell of dirt in the spring after rain.

The cherry tree’s white blossoms are a little past their prime, and every time the wind blows – even a little – a flurry of white flowers tumbles down. There are cherry blossoms everywhere: caught in the droplets of water on the picnic table, in the myrtle on the hillside, in my hair, on the lined-paper algebra notes open in front of me.

It was the very last day.

I shouldn’t even have been studying. I shouldn’t even really have been on campus, that day. Every other classmate had presumably taken their last test, handed in their last paper, locked away the schoolbooks in a drawer for the summer and thrown away the key.

But Hoffman had let me take all the time that I needed, and so I was still there. At the picnic table, under the cherry tree, worrying at thin pencil lines on white paper.

That feelings that’s something like uncomfortable and peaceful at the same time.

Yesterday I was curled up on that same picnic table in the sun. I’d skipped Alice, because I needed a moment to breathe.

Hoffman jumped down off the wall, smelling of cigarette smoke, landed on his feet. I was startled.

He told me that discouragement is valid, but also that taking a moment to disconnect from the dysfunction in the world and step away from technology and just – be – is so important. And it helps him.

It helps me, too.