To the current cohort of MPH students: yes, you are missing some class time. yes, this probably means you will not have practiced particular public health skills as much as the cohorts above you. BUT YOU ARE THE GENERATION WHO WILL KNOW HOW TO DO PUBLIC HEALTH DURING A PANDEMIC.

You are the generation who will have navigated working in teams while people are isolated, while people are stressed, and while people are dying.

You are the generation who will know, into your bones, why we need public health, and why public health is not only about biology, but about racial inequity.

You can count on the public health cohorts above you to be forgiving when you lack that specific public health skill that we were going to practice in the last week of class. Public health is about forgiveness. They got your back.

And we are going to count on you to teach us about patience, compassion, empathy, and realism. These are also the stuff of public health, and you will know them better than those before you.

So hang in there. Yeah, course work is tricky, hard, and confusing. I'm sorry you are experiencing that right now. But public health is not just about coursework.

You are the leaders of our next public health generation. You got this.