The Foreign Service Journal, December 2020

86 DECEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT who graduated high school last spring and planned to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts in the fall. But “IAIA is a tribal college, and these schools are all located on or near reservations, which have been hit very hard during the COVID-19 pandemic,” explains Tsoniki, so the university quickly made the decision to change to an online learning format. Their freshman wasn’t interested in taking a gap year, and so she adjusted her sleep schedule—she’s six hours ahead of the school in Santa Fe, New Mexico—to allow her to join classes remotely. “I’ve said it’s like practice for when she gets to leave for college,” her mom laughs. “We hardly see each other.” The family is transferring to Europe soon, which means their freshman will once again have to adjust her clock to keep up with her peers. Says her mom, however, “I have been very thankful as to how IAIA has handled this transition. … Tribal colleges have really stepped up to be leaders during this time, showing what can be done.” The Dreaded “R”Word Spend enough time with FS family members, and you’ll hear somebody grumble about the “R” word: resilience. Too often, that word is directed at spouses and children who are expected to step up and deal with all manner of problems and insufferable situations, some of which could reasonably be expected to break a person. Most of us have dealt with serious illnesses, horrible moves, housing we hate, absentee spouses and posts with no access to decent junk food. Through it all, we’re often told we just need to be more resilient. So we smile on the outside even when we’re wondering how the heck we wound up in this place, crying in the bathroom at noon on a Tuesday because we couldn’t find our way to the grocery store, let alone ask for the right laundry detergent once we finally got there. It turns out, though, that this resil- ience, which many of us have spent years cultivating, is what’s getting all of us FS parents through these crazy times. Most of the parents I spoke with LOOKING FOR RESOURCES? W hile they don’t specifically focus on college students or their families— nobody does!—the Foreign Service Institute’s Center of Excellence in Foreign Affairs Resilience (CEFAR) has a list of resources available at http:// bit.ly/CEFAR-resources , including an article about how to support your high school senior as he or she transitions to college (see http://bit.ly/supporting- hs-senior). In addition, check out the “COVID Coach”mobile app (see http://bit.ly/ COVID-coach). Developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, this free app has self-care tools, including meditation prompts, and trackers to check your mood and help you set daily goals. To learn about non-COVID State programs for college students that will be helpful both now and when things get back to normal, go to the Family Liaison Office’s webpage College and Beyond (see http://bit.ly/FLO-college-and-beyond ). —DSG