“Going to Yale has made me a worse person.” This is the first sentence of Elijah Boles’s Op-Ed, “The generosity killer.” Throughout his article, he explained how Yale has caused him to internalize thoughts concerned with “self-preservation.” As I was reading it, I was nodding. It’s a mindset that I’ve tried to swim against, especially as homework, essays and tests threaten to drown me and I sink deeper into a routine schedule.

I believe, however, that there are Yale students that strive to swim against “this current of selfish thinking.” It may take “a single bad experience with generosity to become subconsciously convinced that others-oriented thinking is not worth the mental energy anymore,” but it can also take a single good experience to remember that generosity thrives in the simple.

I had 30 minutes before class time. There was no need for me to sprint to the Watson Center, but I was desperate to study for an exam the next day. I flopped onto a chair, threw my heavy backpack on the floor beside me and stared at the long list of 70 unfamiliar vocabulary words written in another language. As I was repeating each word out loud, I was thinking that I could have studied in the morning, during lunch, on the walk. At this rate, I should study in class while the professor is figuring out how to run the projector for the tenth time.

Twenty-five minutes later, my classmate approached me with a steaming cup from Fussy Coffee in his hand. I glanced up at him, smiled, said hello and grabbed my backpack to enter the lecture hall. I memorized nothing. 

Before I got up from the chair, he stretched out his hand, offering the cup to me. “They gave me an extra chai latte. It was part of a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal,” he said. There’s no way. “Are you sure?” I asked, surprised. Why me? Why now? What had I done?

His answer was simple: “You have a ‘horrible poker face.’” “You read my article?” He hesitated. “No, it’s just obvious to see that you’re stressed.” He later admitted that he had read it, but that he didn’t want to be seen as “weird” for doing a random act of kindness. The “why’s” didn’t matter; he simply wanted to.

The answer as to why I was initially surprised by his act comes down to the generosity problem: combine “the stress in the life of a Yale student” and “a lack of character-oriented education, and you have a recipe for a very selfish person,” as Boles wrote. I thought that any random showing of kindness was just that: random. It’s easier to assume that everyone is focused on paving their respective paths, fulfilling their goals, which means that I should be doing the same.

But throughout last semester and at the beginning of this spring, I’ve realized that these moments happen often and that they take small forms. Sometimes, generosity appears in offering to take an aimless walk at night, talking about the anxious and the joyful things or not talking at all. It shows in a meme that touches on a previous dinner conversation or on a curated Spotify playlist. It shows in the persistence to reach out, to pray.

Acknowledging the simple is easy to forget, especially when there are much more “important” and “urgent” things to do for oneself while bearing “the weight of future success,” as Boles pointed out. It’s up to the students to come up with different ingredients. 

If Yale is the generosity killer, then students are the remedy.

ISA DOMINGUEZ is a Sophomore in Timothy Dwight College. Her Column, “Isaential Readings,” runs every other Monday. Contact her at isa.dominguez@yale.edu.