I had not hugged a friend or a family member for more than two years until recently when my sister-in-law flew in for a brief visit. For everyone's safety, we met outside. Despite the wintry weather, her hug warmed me from the inside out. It's strange, but only now do I truly realize how much I've missed embracing loved ones--the warmth that remains long after our arms have loosened.

Growing up through war in my hometown of Sarajevo, Bosnia, every moment was full of danger. On one peaceful morning, I had begged my mom to let me go outside after spending weeks wilting (蔫) indoors. She finally agreed. I was outside for only 10 minutes when I was caught in an explosion. I ran to my neighbor's house for safety and threw my arms around her neck just as my legs collapsed underneath me. She hugged me with both arms and dragged me into her house. I was still in her arms when the ambulance arrived.

Thankfully, I made a full physical recovery, but the emotional scars never left me. Years later there was another explosion near my house. I was safely inside, but my father had left to buy a loaf of bread. He had only just missed the blast. When he came back inside, I gave him the biggest hug imaginable. I was caked in tears as I held him tight.

That same night my parents managed to arrange my escape from our war-torn city. They desperately wanted at least some of my childhood to be normal. I was 16 and came to America on my own. A generous host family took me in and I began learning English and going to school. They had a large dog called Oscar. Over the next several months, I secretly struggled with feeling homesick and worried about my family back home. Despite managing quite well at school, I couldn't express my feelings. The only way I shared how I felt was by giving Oscar a big hug.

It is yet another sad aspect of our pandemic lives that hugging a stranger is the last thing on our minds.

For many of us, even hugging a relative or a friend comes with stress and anxiety over risks and precautions (防范). Perhaps we have undervalued the impact of a simple hug. As I look back on my past, I count myself truly lucky to have been held, shielded and encouraged at some of the most key moments of my life by the almost super power of a hug. I pray that in the not-so-distant future we can safely hold one another again-a friend, relative, or even a stranger.

At the graduate program's annual workshop（研讨会）, presentation after presentation highlighted students' successes, But Michelle, Emily, and two other PhD students were taking a different approach, sharing their most painful failures. The audience of PhD students sat in silence, apparently shocked. However, they weren't ashamed, but proud to share their full selves and build a foundation for authentic relationships.

Setbacks（挫折） are an unavoidable part of graduate school, but often we try to hide them. By sharing our whole selves, including our failures, we go on to build a deep, meaning-ful relationship.

Michelle and Emily wanted others to experience that openness and support, too. So they made a change to the workshop by presenting their stories onstage, and invited the audience members to turn to one another and share their own significant failures. An awkward silence followed, but it only lasted a few seconds. Soon the students jumped into enthusiastic conversation,

From that point forward, every presentation at the workshop included some mention of the failures that led to the results. The students shared that their most significant data slides took more than a year to get right. It reminded the audience that behind every impressive re-sult is a person who is just trying his or her best.

Since the workshop, Michelle and Emily have noticed a continuous change in their classmates. Besides feeling closer to their classmates, the students are asking one another for help not only on technical challenges, but also about how to handle the personal challenges.

It's hard to relate to someone when all we know about them is their accomplishments. We should talk about failure and normalize it. To lead by example, Emily said that she hadn't won an NSF fellowship. It was a disappointment, but she was proud to share it.

In 1916, two girls of wealthy families, best friends from Auburn, N. Y.—Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood—traveled to a settlement in the Rocky Mountains to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. The girls had gone to Smith College. They wore expensive clothes. So for them to move to Elkhead, Colo. to instruct the children whose shoes were held together with string was a surprise. Their stay in Elkhead is the subject of Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden, who is a magazine editor and Dorothy Woodruff's granddaughter.

Why did they go then? Well, they wanted to do something useful. Soon, however, they realized what they had undertaken.

They moved in with a local family, the Harrisons, and, like them, had little privacy, rare baths, and a blanket of snow on their quilt when they woke up in the morning. Some mornings, Rosamond and Dorothy would arrive at the schoolhouse to find the children weeping from the cold. In spring, the snow was replaced by mud over ice.

In Wickenden's book, she expanded on the history of the West and also on feminism, which of course influenced the girls' decision to go to Elkhead. A hair-raising section concerns the building of the railroads, which entailed（牵涉）drilling through the Rockies, often in blinding snowstorms. The book ends with Rosamond and Dorothy's return to Auburn.

Wickenden is a very good storyteller. The sweep of the land and the stoicism（坚忍）of the people move her to some beautiful writing. Here is a picture of Dorothy Woodruff, on her horse, looking down from a hill top: "When the sun slipped behind the mountains, it shed a rosy glow all around them. Then a full moon rose. The snow was marked only by small animals: foxes, coyotes, mice, and varying hares, which turned white in the winter."