Students of means can distribute food from food banks. They can mobilize voters. They can organize social media campaigns for advocacy groups and child care for essential workers and reading lists for libraries. If youre a volunteer for six months, she points out, in many places you can just take over the damn organization.

They can help remove Donald J. Trump from office. Theres an idea.

Darling notes that finding a way to be useful will be especially valuable (if challenging) to this generation, which hasnt had much experience in structuring its own time many of her students have been overscheduled since birth and often conceives of identity-building as a process of self-examination, rather than simple doing. Theyll also have a chance to discover the importance of civic engagement at a time when its in severe decline.

The irony is lovely: While social distancing, they can develop habits that will ensure they wont spend their adulthood bowling alone, to borrow the political scientist Robert Putnams shorthand for our disengaged lives.

Of course, most students already know what it means to be useful. A 2018 report from Georgetown University found that 70 percent of full-time college students work. Those in community college, for instance, are generally older and come from low-income homes. Many take for granted that theyll be organizing their educations around work and parenting schedules. One can only hope that asynchronous learning will to them be a boon. Its much easier to care for your kids and hold down a day job if youre liberated from the tyranny of a fixed lecture schedule.

But that assumes they can afford the technology and have internet access. Many students, at community colleges and elsewhere, now do not. Others find themselves in households with one or two unemployed family members, and its suddenly on them to make ends meet which may or may not mean dropping out. Its a burden that, like so many others right now, is disproportionately afflicting African-Americans and Latinos.

Having the chance to be useful not to their families, but to the world is a luxury at this moment. Students ought to embrace it. They may be astonished by what they find.

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Dear Liberal Arts Students: Seize This Moment - The New York Times