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On April 22, 2026, Tufts students were invited into a classroom that treats solitude not as an affliction to be hidden but as material to be examined and transformed. Instructor Leticia Priebe Rocha frames the course EXP-0008 as a writing workshop where participants use language to map emotional landscapes. Drawing from both her creative life and professional training in Clinical Psychology, Rocha guides students through techniques that connect private experience with communal expression, turning what can feel isolating into an opportunity for shared insight.
The class is grounded in a belief that artistic practice can act as social infrastructure. In these sessions, students encounter poems, essays, and media that treat loneliness as a recurring human condition. Rocha emphasizes the difference between being alone and the specific emotional state many name solitary: loneliness here is explored as a felt condition that can be written into existence, witnessed, and—importantly—responded to by others. The course balances craft instruction with discussion, creating a space where vulnerability is cultivated rather than minimized.
Why the course was created
Rocha’s motivation mixes personal history with professional observation. She describes periods of deep solitude that pushed her toward creative writing as a way to name and navigate inner experience. Her academic and clinical work with groups such as immigrants and older adults exposed patterns linking isolation to mental health outcomes, and these encounters sharpened her interest in how loneliness is represented across formats. The class therefore becomes a laboratory for examining representation: students study texts and media to see how other artists render solitude, while also producing work that reflects their own encounters with disconnection.
In building the syllabus, Rocha intentionally places personal narrative alongside cultural analysis, asking learners to consider both craft and context. She treats the classroom as an experimental commons where the goal is not to cure loneliness, but to make it legible and communal. By encouraging students to share drafts and respond to one another, the workshop aims to convert isolation into a collaborative act, suggesting that art can be a method of social repair as much as a mode of self-expression.
Why this conversation matters now
The urgency of the subject is tied to recent social shifts that have altered how people connect. Events like the COVID-19 pandemic, the acceleration of digital life and dependence on technology, and political trends such as rising fascism have all contributed to greater social fragmentation. Rocha argues that these forces create new textures of solitude that demand attention. Treating loneliness as merely a private problem ignores its cultural dimensions; instead, the course asks students to see isolation as both an individual feeling and a symptom of larger systems, and to respond through art that both witnesses and resists.
Practical guidance for students
Rocha offers concrete advice for anyone feeling disconnected on campus. She acknowledges that college is a paradox: a densely populated environment where students can still feel profoundly alone. Her first recommendation is persistent engagement—showing up repeatedly to spaces that feel generative. She frames this as a practice: simple presence accumulates into belonging over time. Students are encouraged to try varied modes of participation, whether through clubs, creative practice, movement, or organizing, and to treat each attempt as data about what nourishes them rather than as a final verdict on their social life.
Finding the right spaces
Understanding that not every setting will fit, Rocha suggests experimenting until a sustainable community emerges. She advises being candid about expectations and allowing relationships to develop slowly. In the classroom, she models feedback as a tool for connection: when peers respond to each other’s work with generosity and attention, creative risk-taking becomes safer. For students, the lesson is pragmatic—keep searching, prioritize activities that spark curiosity, and remember that community often forms around shared practice rather than preexisting identity labels.
The role of creative work
For Rocha, the act of making is central to moving through loneliness. Whether through poetry, essay, or other forms, creative writing gives shape to feeling and invites others to inhabit that shape. She believes that consistent practice can transform private pain into public conversation without diluting its truth. Her own publications, including In Lieu of Heartbreak and This is Like (Bottlecap Press, 2026), serve as examples of how personal material can become generative art. Students leave with tools for craft and a reinforced sense that their sincerity has creative and communal value.
Rocha’s background gives the course additional perspective: she won the 2026 Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize, was named a 2026 Undocupoets Fellow, and has received support from the Fine Arts Work Center. Her writing appears in outlets such as Salamander and Rattle, and she balances her artistic life with a professional role as a UX Researcher at Toyota Research Institute. A Tufts graduate (class of 2026), she returns to campus to steward a space where solitude can be acknowledged, examined, and reclaimed through collective creative labor.