Written by Nadia Kim (2026.01.26)

Over the past few days, I’ve found myself unusually distracted. I have been moving through my routines, but with a heaviness that is hard to explain quickly and even harder to ignore.

As an international student, it often feels safer and more appropriate to stay focused on my work and avoid commenting on events that do not directly involve me. I still believe humility matters, especially when you live in a place where you do not hold formal belonging. I do not think it is my position to judge a country’s politics as if I am an authority over it.

And yet, I also cannot pretend that what happens here feels distant.

Part of the reason is simple. I did not only come to the U.S. recently for graduate school. I have lived here long enough that many parts of my sense of self were formed here. The values that shape how I interpret the world were not inherited from one place alone. They were built in relationship.

Some of the most formative lessons I learned did not come from textbooks, but from people. Friends who showed me what it looks like to care for one another across differences. Friends who stood up for me when I felt small, and who taught me that dignity, solidarity, and dialogue are not abstract ideals but daily practices.

I remember moments when I was struggling with the comparison mindset I carried from earlier years, and people around me responded not with competition but with care. I remember being supported when I did not know how to advocate for myself. I remember learning, slowly, that communication and debate can be forms of mutual respect rather than conflict. Those experiences did not make me “better.” But they did make me more responsible for what I choose to carry forward.

A lot of that grounding traces back to my high school years at Idyllwild Arts Academy. The motto there was simple: “Remember who you are and what you stand for.” At the time, it was a fun and spiritual way to end the all-school. However, over the years, it became something else. It became a way to return to myself when the world feels unstable. Not a slogan, but a practice.

Because of those relationships and experiences, moments of social tension feel closer to home than I sometimes expect. When you have been cared for by people from many backgrounds, you stop seeing “other people’s vulnerability” as an abstract topic. You start feeling the weight of how easily safety, dignity, and belonging can become unevenly distributed.

This is where planning enters the picture for me.

Planning, at its best, is about understanding how institutions and spaces shape everyday life. It asks who gets to feel protected, who is excluded quietly, and who becomes invisible through rules that appear neutral on paper. It also forces us to confront a harder truth: planning can create gates just as efficiently as it can create bridges. A zoning line, a school boundary, a service eligibility rule, a permit process, a “temporary” policy tool. These are technical devices, but they produce social realities.

That is why I’ve been thinking about empathy, not as a personality trait, but as a professional skill.

Empathy is the ability to treat another person’s constraints as real, even when you do not share them. It is the discipline of asking what a policy does to someone’s life, not only what it intends to do. It is also a refusal to let categories and boundaries replace attention. In planning, where we work through institutions, empathy does not mean sentiment. It means precision about impact.

I’ve been reflecting on what responsibility looks like in my work. For me, it has been about returning to the values I learned early on: listening carefully, staying humble about my position, and asking how my work can reduce harm rather than reproduce distance.

I do not have a perfect conclusion. But I do have a question I want to keep close, especially as I move forward in my research and practice.