Recently, I’ve been privileged with several culture excavation projects. One of them was for Pikes Peak Community College’s (PPCC) strategic goal to increase its Latino enrollment and ultimately become an official Hispanic Serving Institution.

I’ve been in the strategy business for quite a while—19 years in fact. And I love it.

To me, strategy is like Change and Creativity got married and had a baby named Courage.

Ah, 2020—you bastard. We’ll euphemistically call you “The Year of Unanswered Questions.” There are the really big questions like: How long will this last? How will it end? How long will it take to get to something resembling stable?

I am a privileged white woman.

The first part of that label isn’t an easy one to accept. As I’ve thought about it, I figure there’s at least two ways to avoid owning one’s privilege: 1) It’s all we’ve (usually) ever known, and; 2) It’s super easy to find someone wealthier and less industrious than ourselves. But I think I caught a glimpse of it. I have started to realize the process of my privilege irrespective of the product of my privilege.

It goes without saying that these last many weeks have been a roller coaster of emotion; so you have to take your laughs where you can. One of ours was occasioned by a recent mayoral press conference in which he spoke of “getting back to as normal as possible,” “the new normal,” and the fact that things will be different. In a roundabout fashion, he captured the crux of the problem ahead of us—we’re stuck hoping to resume normal, while becoming aware that some things—perhaps many things—have shifted and we’ve learned a lot in the meantime.