Don Liu (Class of 1983) interviewed by Rachael Wong (Class of 2024)

0:00:03.6 Rachael Wong: Thank you. Okay, so today is Friday, November 12th, 2021. This is Rachael Wong, Class of 2024, conducting an interview as a part of the Documenting Student Life Alumni Oral History Project. Could you begin by introducing yourself with your name and class year?

0:00:20.8 Don Liu: Sure, my name, Don Liu, a member of the Class of 1983.

0:00:26.7 Rachael Wong: Perfect. Don, what do you currently do for work? 

0:00:30.8 Don Liu: So, before I go forward, can I just ask a question. Is the video gonna be used or just the portions that I talk about? How is it gonna be used, the video itself or the words? 

0:00:43.9 Rachael Wong: I think the video itself is going to be used.

0:00:46.6 Don Liu: Okay.

0:00:46.6 Rachael Wong: Yeah.

0:00:48.0 Don Liu: Fantastic. Then I should probably look into the camera when I talk.

[chuckle]

0:00:52.5 Rachael Wong: Yeah, sure that would be great.

0:00:55.9 Don Liu: I'm a lawyer by training. I currently have the title of executive vice president and chief legal and risk officer at Target Corporation, which means that I'm responsible for all legal matters. But I also have several other non-legal areas that I'm responsible for at Target.

0:01:20.6 Rachael Wong: Don, what did you major in at Haverford? 

0:01:24.8 Don Liu: So, I started at Haverford with a Philosophy major and during my, I think second year as a sophomore, I added Religion and I wound up graduating with a double major in Philosophy and Religion.

0:01:43.6 Rachael Wong: Can you tell me a bit about where you grew up and how you found your way to Haverford and why you chose to enroll.

0:01:50.5 Don Liu: Yeah, so I was probably headed for a large university, my parents were hoping that I would be headed for an Ivy League somewhere, and I had that option, but wound up going to Haverford by chance. But let me start a little bit about my journey. I came here with my family, emigrated from South Korea, when I was 10 years old, and I had, I have, two younger siblings. One, three years younger. One, seven years younger. We had initially emigrated to West Philadelphia, not far from where Haverford is located. We were probably the only non-Black kids at that time in the public school system that we attended. It was a pretty culturally shocking experience that we went through, but as I look back, I thought it was actually very useful experience for later on in life. And then our family moved to the suburbs a couple of years after we arrived in the US, and we moved to a suburb in South Jersey, across the river from Philly, and that was predominantly White neighborhood. We were one of the very first Asian American families to move into that town.

0:03:18.8 Don Liu: It is now something like 25% Asian, because the school system is so good and a lot of Asian Americans were attracted to that town, but certainly when I was in school, through high school, we were one of very few non-White students in the school system. So, I essentially grew up in a very non-diverse environment, and Haverford popped up by happenstance. I played soccer. My high school team was a very good soccer team, that was highly ranked in the state of New Jersey. And one of my soccer teammates suggested that we go visit his older brother who was the captain of the soccer team, a couple of years ahead of us, at the same high school. And we went to go see him. And still to this day, I remember driving up the College Lane and seeing the duck pond on the right side, and the beautiful campus that I came to visit, and I fell in love with the campus.

0:04:30.1 Rachael Wong: Over the course of your time at Haverford, how did your initial impressions change? 

0:04:36.6 Don Liu: Impressions of? 

0:04:39.7 Rachael Wong: Of the campus and school culture.

0:04:42.3 Don Liu: I see. Culture, and maybe related, diversity was not a factor when I chose a college. That was not an element of what I was seeking on campus, I just didn't know enough to consider it. And in the late '70s, when I applied to college, my guess is that colleges didn't sell itself on the notion of the environment in which we are expected to study. Now I went to Haverford because it was highly ranked, and more importantly, I, delusionally, thought that maybe I can play soccer at Haverford whereas, I would not have a chance to play at least on varsity at a larger university. So one college I was considering going, other than Haverford, was University of Pennsylvania. And I was recruited to play soccer both at Haverford and at the University of Pennsylvania. And I thought maybe I'll have a better chance of starting on a varsity team at Haverford. So, those are some factors I considered, but certainly DEI, and culture was not a factor for me to have attended, it became an issue after I started college, and, for me, as I lived on campus and studied, I wound up feeling somewhat isolated at times, as one of the few diverse students on campus, and I just thought that we could do more to integrate the...

0:06:35.2 Don Liu: Diverse students with non-diverse students better. I wound up ultimately leading a Student Committee on Diversity, brought some controversial speakers on campus and probably became famous on one hand and unpopular with some other parts of the campus, but it was part of my growth as a student, and as an individual, as on the issue of diversity in, on campus and the larger world. So, I think the most meaningful event that I recall while I was on campus that impacted its culture and diversity was the plans for the administration to shut down what was then the, they called La Casa, which was the small house where Hispanic students lived and shared their own culture. And when the school decided to shut that down, that became a big issue for many of us, 'cause we always thought that it was one of the more proud elements of the campus life. Certainly, Haverford had all kinds of marketing materials that highlighted and proudly presented La Casa as a key element of the campus life, and when they were planning to shut that down, we just thought that was both imprudent and insensitive. And we wound up actually protesting. I was engaged in the student walkout that shut the dining center down for a day, asked everybody to think about it, and ultimately that led to actually keeping La Casa alive and open.

0:08:41.8 Rachael Wong: Were there any members of the student body that were in opposition of the protest, and what were the things being said around campus in relation to the protest? 

0:08:51.9 Don Liu: I don't think anybody expressed any opposition directly at us, at least I don't recall that. I do recall a lot of questions about why we were protesting, why we're shutting down the one and only place that students can eat on campus. So, I remember having a lot of small conversations with individual students who were more curious about what we were doing. And during the day, many students joined us actually, I would say, many students who didn't initially think about it and didn't know what it was about, wound up joining the line that was formed to prevent people from entering the dining center, and that was heartwarming.

0:09:43.2 Rachael Wong: How did you go about finding community at Haverford? 

0:09:48.0 Don Liu: Would you repeat the question? 

0:09:50.9 Rachael Wong: How did you go about finding community at Haverford? 

0:09:56.4 Don Liu: Meaning, how did I wind up socializing at Haverford, or? 

0:10:02.3 Rachael Wong: Yeah.

0:10:05.3 Don Liu: So, my social life and the people that I initially hung out with, when I first arrived on campus, was shaped by sports, and I know it's still very much an important and maybe even a controversial aspect of the college life. I had two kids who were more recent grads on campus, so I have some insight to the current situation, but my integration to the community life at Haverford was shaped by the early soccer camp that we had for students who wanted to play soccer. And I think I arrived maybe a week or two before the campus opened up for the rest of the freshman class, and my friends initially were all soccer players. Two of whom came with me from the same high school, so there were three soccer players from Cherry Hill West High School that came to Haverford, a little unusual, and all three of us were very much interested in playing soccer. So... And then I met other soccer players during that soccer early camp that we hung out together all the time, we ate together, played soccer together, even when the rest of the campus arrived, we stayed friends. So, that was my initial group that I belonged to. Over time, that changed.

0:11:46.2 Don Liu: First of all, despite my plans to play soccer on Haverford campus, I sat on the bench for most of the two years, and I eventually quit because it was very clear I wasn't gonna be able to play varsity, and just start on varsity. So I wound up changing my plans, my initial reason for coming to Haverford over Penn, didn't pan out, and I wound up getting much more involved with other students of color who thought that the campus didn't do enough and we didn't have enough of an environment that made the campus friendly to students of color. Which is how I got involved with diversity activities, as well as social activities that involved, one, Asian American students on campus, as well as, other students of color, with whom I started having conversations about ways in which we can make the campus better for all people of color.

0:12:56.7 Rachael Wong: Do you mind telling me what student groups you were a part of during your time at Haverford? I know you mentioned the student's one.

0:13:05.3 Don Liu: Yeah, so I probably was first introduced to the Asian Students Association, which was a small group because there weren't that many Asian students on campus. I remember trying to create a bi-college Asian Students Association so that Bryn Mawr and Haverford could come together as one body. That failed because Bryn Mawr students wanted its own students association for Asians and wasn't that interested in combining. So that was my initial student organization that I got involved in. And then as I mentioned earlier, I got more interest... I acquired more interest in the larger diversity issues, so I wound up joining a group called something like Committee on Diversity or Committee on Implementation of Diversity or something like that. It was called CCID. I can't remember exactly what the letters stand for, and eventually I wound up becoming the chair of that committee and really enjoyed putting more diverse activities on campus, which was the mission of the committee.

0:14:33.2 Don Liu: And then the third committee I was probably involved was, a... For some reason, I got into foreign films, and the films that were shown on campus were really, I thought, not diverse. It was particularly focused on American films, and I just thought the students would enjoy a broader set of exposure to films made outside the US. And what I used to do, because I had a car on campus, I used to run to the Philadelphia Library, rent foreign films from the library, brought it back and played it on campus, and I remember students liking it quite a bit because they were exposed to films that were not exposed to either on campus or for that matter, elsewhere.

0:15:32.2 Rachael Wong: What attempts were made to diversify Haverford during your time there? 

0:15:37.4 Don Liu: Can you repeat the question? 

0:15:39.5 Rachael Wong: What attempts were made to diversify Haverford during your time there? 

0:15:44.7 Don Liu: Yeah, so I was aware of the student walkout that took place in the early '70s. And while I didn't know any of the individuals who were responsible for that walkout in the '70s, I was also mindful of the concerns raised by those students, when they were on campus. So what I learned from that process of acquiring information was that the campus really did not progress enough on diversity front, either on the number of students of color or the programs or activities designed for the benefit of students of color. So my personal involvement were genuinely opening up the campus to both issues, organizations in the larger society, as well as the challenges that people of color face. So I brought speakers on to campus that could address the issue. I mentioned how I brought some of these controversial activities on campus. I brought what was then called the Palestinian Liberation Organization, PLO, an organization that was very much involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I brought a speaker who spoke on behalf of PLO because I thought that the campus didn't really know what PLO's concerns were, but frankly, my Jewish friends did not like that at all. They thought that we brought a terrorist on campus and gave him a podium that was undeserving.

0:17:55.6 Don Liu: I brought the Moral Majority onto the campus. I was not supportive of any of these organizations, but I wanted to hear from them. And I don't know if Moral Majority means anything to you, but back in the '80s, Moral Majority was the Christian Right that was outspoken led by a guy by the name Jerry Falwell, who was a very outspoken speaker for the Christian Right. And because they were so controversial, I thought it would be actually educational for people to hear from them. Again, I was not very popular for a while because it was perceived as giving the Moral Majority, a undeserved right to speak. But my own personal view is that the better you understand those people who are adverse to your own position, the better you can understand where you are vis-à-vis people who have different views, and you can at least have some common debate if one is deserved. But not everybody saw it that way, and that's to be expected in any attempt to reconcile too strong of views that are not seeing the world the same way. It was frankly equally as educational for me personally to see the animosity and the emotions fly as it might have been for some to hear somebody out who had a very different perspective than your own.

0:19:46.0 Rachael Wong: How would you describe the experience of being Asian at Haverford? 

0:19:50.6 Don Liu: Back in the old days? 

0:19:52.5 Rachael Wong: Yeah.

0:19:55.8 Don Liu: There were moments when it was lonely because there were so few of us, and because there were so few of us, there were many who didn't understand who we were and where we came from and how we feel about life in general. But it also came with a sense of camaraderie among the few Asian friends that I got together with and socialized often. So, University of Pennsylvania had a fairly large Asian student population, and they had an Asian Student Association, they would have parties for the Asian American students on campus. So we would all come together and go to attend, and attend those events. And it was empowering, because to see the critical mass of people all sharing similar experience of growing up, and to be able to meet and get to know them was incredibly empowering. So, it was empowering even though a small group on campus, but because we got together regularly and socialized, there was a sense of power that came from that. And then obviously when we would join the other campuses with even larger number of people, it was even more empowering. So, it was both lonely as well as empowering at the same time at different moments.

0:21:36.9 Rachael Wong: By the end of your time at Haverford, do you think you found lifelong friends? 

0:21:41.8 Don Liu: Yes, I did. So, my roommates are still very much... And my roommates I mean by my Lloyd suite, my senior year. I'm still in touch with them. Actually, during the pandemic, we had Zoom calls that we hadn't done for years as a group, and it's still very much a group that when we get together, it feels like when we were in our 20s or late teens in terms of the way we relate to each other, the way we talk to each other, etcetera, even though we're much older today. And even outside of that suite group, I've had other friends that I get in touch with from time to time. I don't get to see them regularly but certainly, whether it's the alumni events or some other events where we can see each other, it's wonderful to get together.

0:22:50.1 Rachael Wong: What was Haverford’s relationship with Bryn Mawr like during the time that you went there? 

0:22:55.4 Don Liu: It was such a great relationship. It's almost sad to see some of that proximity disappear. I lived on Bryn Mawr campus for a semester, and even though before... During my junior year. And even though I thought I knew Bryn Mawr Campus and Bryn Mawr students well, because I took classes there. Living there was a completely different experience, and I loved it. For some people, it's a big secret, so I don't wanna give it all away, but there is a Hell Week for Bryn Mawr students. Which I didn't know about. At least I knew about it, but I didn't know exactly what it was about, and I got intimately involved with that. I got to meet some friends and when you hang out with somebody until late in the evenings, it's a different experience than just going to class there. So my junior year, our entire suite of four Haverford students all moved to Bryn Mawr at once. I wasn't as fortunate, but two of those four men students found their eventual spouses while living on campus, and so therefore they've been married, two students who they got to know during our living on campus in Bryn Mawr.

0:24:34.7 Don Liu: That's how meaningful it is and can be. I know a number of my classmates who also did the same thing to find their life partners at Bryn Mawr, and that was not uncommon consequence of the relationship that we had between Bryn Mawr and Haverford. So I thought it was one of the best aspects of living and studying at Haverford, which is to be able to take advantage of the second college which has, in some respect, so much alike in values and so forth, and yet obviously very different because it was all women. I was class of '83, which meant starting class of '84, we started accepting students who are female for the first time in the history. There were some lateral students who came to Haverford who are female, but '84 is when we started accepting... I'm sorry, fall of '83 is when we started accepting... I'm completely off it. Fall of '79, '83 is when I graduated. Fall of 1979 is when we started officially accepting female applicants.

0:25:58.6 Rachael Wong: Was it common for Haverford students to live on Bryn Mawr's Campus? 

0:26:03.5 Don Liu: Yes, there were many of us who we did, and in fact, it was almost kind of a ritual that many of us felt like if we didn't take advantage of, we would wind up graduating from Haverford with a significant gap in our experience. So, we did it because we thought it would be fun, but we also did it because we felt like it would be a shame if we didn't take advantage of that before we graduated, and there were quite a few Haverford students who lived on campus, some more than a year.

0:26:39.3 Rachael Wong: I also understand that you weren't at the time when women were admitted to Haverford. But did you hear from your friends you stayed in contact with what their opinions were? How was that received by your peers and the people in your class year? 

0:26:56.5 Don Liu: So, there were different constituents, I think your questions probably needs to be divided up among different constituents. So, the first and maybe the most important immediate constituents were Bryn Mawr students, as to how they perceived what was... Haverford college become bi-college, and accepting women. And it was one that smacked me up my face. I remember coming on campus, and one of the first signs at the Founder's front step was a sign that was... Large sign made up by Bryn Mawr students, and it said, "How can you cheat on us after 150 years?" [chuckle] It was so powerful. And at first, I didn't really understand what that meant, but I thought the more I've observed what the sign meant, the more I realized how significant of a step Haverford was taking in accepting female students. So that was one set of constituents, and obviously, it was Bryn Mawr students who put that sign up. So maybe what was something, that was not obvious to many people, which was the gradual disintegration of the proximity between Haverford and Bryn Mawr for years to come.

0:28:34.3 Don Liu: The alumni, and I probably gather the view of the alumni more over time than immediate, were of very different views. Many alumni, most of them are male, thought it would be inappropriate to have females on campus, it would somehow take the heart of what was about Haverford, and we were bastardizing it, if you will, and there were some negative views of the college becoming available for women. Other men thought it was a great idea, they thought, "More the merrier." We desperately needed gender diversity on campus, and it was fantastic to have more females on campus than just Bryn Mawr students studying or living on campus, so they were very different views. I'm sure it was part of the administration's thought, which was, it probably made Haverford College more competitive academically. It brought more competitive applicants to the school, I either heard it directly or later on kind of figured it out, but certainly creating a more vibrant, competitive college was the administration's job. So, from an administration perspective, it turned out to be a great move.

0:30:25.0 Rachael Wong: How did you decide on becoming a Philosophy and Religion major? 

0:30:33.5 Don Liu: I think Kathleen Wright, a professor at Philosophy Department has retired, right? You're a Philosophy major, so does the name Kathleen Wright mean anything to you? 

0:30:44.8 Rachael Wong: No, I don't believe that. I don't know.

0:30:46.7 Don Liu: And she might have retired a few years ago. So, on my college application to Haverford, I'm pretty sure, when it... On the question of major that you are thinking about, studying, etcetera... I forgot what the question was. But it was, "What is likely to be my major?" And I wrote down Math. And I wrote down Math because my English score on SAT was so bad that I couldn't possibly think that anybody would take me seriously if I didn't put down anything other than Math because Math score was higher than English on the SATs. I actually had no interest in Math, but my English was poor.

0:31:38.0 Don Liu: I told you I immigrated here to US when I was 10, English was my second language. When I took the SATs, I think I was all of six, seven years in the US. So, I was not great in reading or writing English, so that lack of confidence in English probably took me away from all Humanities majors. But in my first year on campus, everybody kept saying, "The most popular major on campus is Philosophy," and it's probably the best major because the professors were so good. We had a professor named Richard Bernstein, who was a philosopher of his own, and the story was, they studied Bernsteinism at Harvard, was the story. Now, I don't know if that was true or not, but that's how proud we were of the Philosophy Department, and it certainly was very popular. Because so many kids wanted to take Philosophy 101, we had a lottery system, to get into Philosophy 101. There were like five, four, Philosophy 101 classes, and everyone was over-booked and that year, what they did was, they gave us a...

0:33:03.1 Don Liu: Points like 100 points, and we can figure out how many points we wanna bid on Philosophy 101, which would be fewer points for other classes that are also popular, but you only have 100 points. So you have to figure out how many points you wanna use up for the most popular classes. So I forget what I did, I think I've put 25 points on Philosophy 101. I didn't get it. It was so popular, there were other kids who bid a lot more points, but I got waitlisted, so I went to look at my name and I saw that something like 20 kids got it, and I was like the 22 or 23 kid. I looked at it and saw that my name was not listed, so I probably cursed and I said, "Ah". And then I'm not gonna say it since I'm being taped, but it was a word with F in the word. Another more senior student says to me, "What's the matter?" So I said, "Ah, I didn't get into Philosophy 101 and I really wanted to take it, but I got waitlisted on Professor Kathleen Wright's 101 class." She says, "You know, students drop out. So why don't you go attend the class and see what happens, and if you're waitlisted, if a couple of kids drop out, you're in." So I said, "That's really good advice. So thank you, I appreciate it."

0:34:38.6 Don Liu: So I went to my Philosophy 101 class hoping that couple of kids would drop out, and the professor was none other than the very student that gave me that advice. She was so young looking that I mistook her for a student and she turned out to be Kathleen Wright, and I took something like four or five classes from Kathleen Wright over the four years, and she became my senior advisor on my paper, senior paper, senior thesis. We became great friends, and I admired Kathleen Wright tremendously during the four years. She was an amazing professor. And I told you I was a terrible writer of English and I am today, for better or worse, the writer that I am because of Kathleen Wright. And I'm a practicing lawyer, I have to write every day. I like to think that I'm not... I'm not a bad writer, but I was a terrible writer who became a lot better writer because Kathleen taught me how to write.

0:35:52.8 Don Liu: And what I didn't realize, the essence of writing is not what goes on paper, it's the thinking that occurs before your thoughts go on the paper, and I didn't appreciate how much thinking is involved in good writing. And she taught me that. So for me, being a philosophy major wasn't just a major, it changed the trajectory of my career and my life. So that's how I became a philosophy major. My first class in Kathleen's class, I still remember, she wrote on the board something like, "God is good, God is omnipotent. Why is there evil in the world?" And it was just so profound. And for me, that orientation really shaped not only what I studied for years, but probably what I now do for a living today, so I'm grateful for not only philosophy major, but really the study of humanities in a way that goes beyond just classroom, which is what I learned from her.

0:37:21.0 Rachael Wong: And how did you decide to pick up a double major in religion as well? 

0:37:27.2 Rachael Wong: Again, I was heavily influenced by another professor, his name is Ron Thiemann, his nickname on campus was known as God. That's how good a professor he was. So I took one class with Ron Thiemann at somebody... At the recommendation of another philosophy student who had double... Who was double majoring in religion and philosophy, and said, "Why don't you take one class with Ron Thiemann?" It was an evening class, so it was something like between 6 and 8 o'clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I had to go quickly from the Dining Center and run to the class, it was just such a powerful class. It was an upper class theology class, and because I had taken Philosophy 101, I was eligible to take the more senior class without taking Religion 101. And Professor Thiemann would start each class with a short lecture, but it wasn't a lecture, it's more of a conversation, story-telling. So I still have distinct memory of his introduction to Soren Kierkegaard, and he described this man who arguably shaped modern western theology.

0:39:10.8 Don Liu: But he humanized it for us. He humanized Kierkegaard for us. He told us what he was like, he was a very unpopular man in the Dutch church, because he was so sarcastic, he was so pungent with his comments, and for us, we loved that. So we would start with Professor Thiemann's description of human aspect of the theologians that we would read, and I fell in love with the way in which Professor Thiemann studied theologians. And I wound up taking one class and I said I got... So I wound up taking another four classes with Professor Thiemann. So, the problem I had was I didn't leave much for other classes, but I wound up taking two professors over and over again because I loved studying from them.

0:40:11.9 Rachael Wong: What interested you in partaking in this interview? 

0:40:16.3 Don Liu: I'm sorry, partaking? 

0:40:19.0 Rachael Wong: In this interview.

0:40:20.6 Don Liu: Oh, okay. Well, I guess I just wanted to share my own experience with the students today on campus, and I feel like my four years at Haverford were a growing experience, a maturing experience, deeply embedded to the college for the four years. And every year that goes by further away, from my graduating year of 1983 the more I appreciate Haverford. I was ready to leave Haverford by 1983, my graduating year. In fact, I was dead-set on never coming back, 'cause there were aspects of Haverford I didn't like or I thought was deeply flawed, but every year that goes by, the pros outweigh the cons. I also have the added benefit of my two kids, one's a Class of 2019, and another one is a Class of 2017. And I saw them go through whole four years of campus life of their own and got some insight to what Haverford is like today. Some things never changed. And some things changed a lot. I'm now sitting on the Board of Managers. I'm a manager for Haverford College, and I would love to see the essence of Haverford.

0:42:10.9 Don Liu: Those things that are so good about Haverford continue for the next 150 years, 200 years. And I wanna make sure that those things that I've learned, those things that I've really treasured about Haverford, you all benefit from, and hopefully later on in life will also feel the same way about the campus, and we'll wanna continue those and I wanna share my own perspective, so that others on campus can at least appreciate where I'm coming from.

0:42:48.2 Rachael Wong: What advice would you give to current students at Haverford, particularly students of color? 

0:43:00.3 Don Liu: So much, but I'm trying to distill it into a few minutes we have left on the interview, I came from a very under-privileged family, both economically, but perhaps even more importantly socially. We were frank, socially, outcasts in our own neighborhoods and certainly, in the larger society, because we were recent immigrants. I think Haverford gave me an opportunity to reflect on that fact and not get depressed, not give up, but actually it gave me the tools and the empowerment to move forward, notwithstanding the fact that I come from an underprivileged family and then have a wonderful career in life that I think I can be proud of today. And it's all because Haverford gave me the tools to be reflective about life, to be reflective about deep issues that are important in life and the flaws that exist in life that we as individuals can do something about. And that's the empowerment piece, and I spent the last close to 40 years after graduating in trying to address the flaws as opposed to constantly complaining, as opposed to giving up on it, to address those issues by doing something about them.

0:45:01.8 Don Liu: And to improve the lives of those people who are victims of the flaws that exist in life today, and I think Haverford, gave me both the opportunity and the tools to do that. I hope, however, students today can appreciate that, and when I think about what happened last year, practically during the strike, I can see how some people may have really thought that the flaws that exist in life and on campus can be disheartening, but I also hope that some if not all of them can appreciate the lessons learned during that period can be actually used in a constructive way to be able to help others help themselves and to help the larger society that we live in. And that is what Haverford gives you the capability and the tools to do. And I just hope that students can appreciate how in the future they can actually help the larger world to address the flaws that we all see, obviously.

0:46:19.4 Rachael Wong: Thank you for sharing that. Those are all the questions that I have. Are there any other things that you'd like to share? 

0:46:29.0 Don Liu: I alluded to this earlier, which is, when you are in the thick of storm or thick of a bad weather, it feels like there's just no future, there's nothing that can improve, and I do hope that for those students who are feeling like they're living in a storm that's never ending. That they see that weather changes and the weather comes and goes, sometimes it gets better, sometimes it gets even worse. But it rarely stays exactly the same, and I think because of the changing weather back and forth, sometimes good, sometimes bad, I think it's important for students to put that in perspective, that life doesn't exist in monotony same weather, it can get better or it can get worse. Really interesting story about a Chinese farmer that I don't have time to talk about, but that's the essence of the message, which is when things are really terrible, it's probably gonna get better. On the other hand, when things are really good, it really could become worse. And to be able to appreciate and put it in perspective so that you don't wind up over-reacting to the circumstances that you live in, I think it's really important, and I hope students today on campus appreciate that.

0:48:11.3 Rachael Wong: Thank you so much for your time.

0:48:13.9 Don Liu: Alright.