AP Seminar Performance Task 2:

Individual Research-Based
Essay and Presentation
Directions and Stimulus Materials
January 2023
© 2023 College Board. College Board, Advanced Placement, AP, AP Central, and the acorn logo are
registered trademarks of College Board. AP Capstone and AP Capstone Diploma are trademarks owned
by College Board. All other products and services may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Visit College Board on the web: www.collegeboard.org.
 Contents
iv Introduction

1 Directions

5 Stimulus Materials
5 “Urban Evolution: How Species Adapt to Survive in Cities,” from
Knowable Magazine (from Annual Reviews), by Eric Bender
13 Long Walk to Freedom, Excerpt from Chapter 60, by Nelson Mandela
15 “How to Build a Resilient Future Using Ancient Wisdom,” by Julia Watson
16 “Migrant Mother,” by Dorothea Lange
17 “In their Own Words: Resilience among Haitian Survivors of the 2010 Earthquake,”
from Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (Johns Hopkins University
Press), by Guitele J. Rahill, N. Emel Ganapati, Manisha Joshi, Brittany Bristol,
Amanda Molé, Arielle Jean-Pierre, Ariele Dionne, and Michele Benavides
41 “The Dark Side of Resilience,” from Harvard Business Review,
by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Derek Lusk
43 The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Book IV,
translated by George W. Chrystal
49 Credits
AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Introduction
This performance task, highlighted in bold below, is one of three parts of the overall
assessment for AP Seminar, and one of two performance tasks. The assessment for
this course comprises the following:
Performance Task 1: Team Project and Presentation
❯ Component 1: Individual Research Report
❯ Component 2: Team Multimedia Presentation and Oral Defense
Performance Task 2: Individual Research-Based Essay and Presentation
❯ Component 1: Individual Written Argument
❯ Component 2: Individual Multimedia Presentation
❯ Component 3: Oral Defense
End-of-Course Exam
❯ Part A: Three Short-Answer Questions (based on one source)
❯ Part B: One Essay Question (based on four sources)
The attached pages include the directions for Performance Task 2, information
about the weighting of the task within the overall assessment, and detailed
information as to the expected quantity and quality of work that you should submit.
Also included are the stimulus materials for the task. These materials are theme-
based and broadly span the academic curriculum. After analyzing the materials,
develop a research question that suits your individual interest based on a thematic
connection between at least two of the stimulus materials. Your research question
must be rich enough to allow you to engage in meaningful exploration and to write
and present a substantive, defensible argument.

© 2023 College Board iv

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

AP Seminar Performance
Task 2: Individual
Research-Based Essay and
Presentation
Student Version
Weight: 35% of the AP Seminar score

Task Overview
This packet includes a set of stimulus materials for the AP Seminar Performance Task 2: Individual
Research-Based Essay and Presentation.
You must identify a research question prompted by analysis of the provided stimulus materials,
gather information from a range of additional sources, develop and refine an argument, write
and revise your argument, and create a presentation that you will be expected to defend orally
immediately following your presentation. Your teacher will give you a deadline for when you need
to submit your written argument and presentation media. Your teacher will also give you a date on
which you will give your presentation.

Date Due
Task Components Length (fill in)

Individual Written Argument (IWA) 2,000 words

Individual Multimedia Presentation (IMP) 6–8 minutes

Oral Defense (OD) Respond to 2 questions

In all written work, you must:

§ Acknowledge, attribute, and/or cite sources using in-text citations, endnotes or footnotes, and/
or through bibliographic entry. You must avoid plagiarizing (see the attached AP Capstone Policy
on Plagiarism and Falsification or Fabrication of Information).
§ Adhere to established conventions of grammar, usage, style, and mechanics.

© 2023 College Board 1

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Task Directions
1. Individual Written Argument (2,000 words)
❯ Read and analyze the provided stimulus materials to identify thematic connections among
the sources and possible areas for inquiry.
❯ Compose a research question of your own prompted by analysis of the stimulus materials.
Your question must relate to a theme that connects at least two of the stimulus materials.
❯ Gather information from a range of additional sources representing a variety of
perspectives, including scholarly work.
❯ Analyze, evaluate, and select evidence. Interpret the evidence to develop a well-reasoned
argument that answers the research question and conveys your perspective.
❯ Throughout your research, continually revisit and refine your original research question to
ensure that the evidence you gather addresses your purpose and focus.
❯ Identify and evaluate opposing or alternate views and consider their implications and/or
limitations as you develop resolutions, conclusions, or solutions to your research question.

❯ Compose a coherent, convincing and well-written argument in which you:

w Explain the significance or importance of your research question by situating it within a
larger context.
w Establish a well-organized argument that links claims and evidence and leads to a specific
and plausible conclusion, resolution or solution that addresses your research question.
w Integrate at least one of the stimulus materials as part of your argument. (For example,
as providing relevant context for the research question or as evidence to support
relevant claims.)
w Evaluate different perspectives by considering objections to them, and their limitations
and/or implications.
w Include relevant evidence from credible sources to support your claims. You should
include evidence from scholarly work.
w Cite all sources that you have used, including the stimulus materials, and include a list of
works cited or a bibliography.
w Use correct grammar and a style appropriate for an academic audience.

❯ Abide by the 2,000-word limit (excluding footnoted citations, bibliography, and text in
figures or tables). Word count does include titles, sub-headings, and in-text citations.
❯ Remove references to your name, school, or teacher.
❯ Upload your document to the AP Digital Portfolio as directed by your teacher.

2. Individual Multimedia Presentation (6–8 minutes)

❯ Develop and prepare a multimedia presentation that will convey the argument from your
final paper to an educated, non-expert audience.
❯ Be selective about the information you choose for your presentation by focusing on key
points you want your audience to understand.
❯ Design your oral presentation with supporting visual media (e.g., presentation slides, a
poster, a website), and consider audience, context, and purpose.
❯ Prepare to engage your audience using appropriate strategies (e.g., eye contact, vocal
variety, expressive gestures, movement).

© 2023 College Board 2

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

❯ Prepare notecards or an outline that you can quickly reference as you are speaking so that
you can interact with supporting visuals and the audience.
❯ Rehearse your presentation in order to refine your design and practice your delivery.
❯ Check that you can do the presentation within the 6- to 8-minute time limit.

❯ Deliver a 6- to 8-minute multimedia presentation in which you:

w Contextualize and identify the importance of your research question.
w Explain the connection between your research and your analysis of the stimulus materials.
w Deliver a well-organized argument that connects claims and evidence.
w Incorporate and synthesize relevant evidence from various perspectives to support your
argument. Make sure you cite or attribute the evidence you use to support your claims
(either orally or visually).
w Offer a plausible resolution(s), conclusion(s), and/or solution(s) based on evidence and
consider the implications of any suggested solutions.
w Engage the audience with an effective and clearly organized presentation design that
guides them through your argument.
w Engage the audience with effective techniques of delivery and performance.

3. Individual Oral Defense

Defend your research process, use of evidence, and conclusion(s), solution(s), or
recommendation(s) through oral responses to two questions asked by your teacher. Be
prepared to describe and reflect on your process as well as defend and extend your written
work and oral presentation. Make sure you include relevant and specific details about your
work in your answers.

Sample Oral Defense Questions

Here are some examples of the types of questions your teacher might ask you during your oral
defense. These are examples only; your teacher may ask you different questions, but there will still
be one question that relates to each of the following two categories.
1. Reflection on Research Process
❯ How did some preliminary information you gathered inform your research?
❯ What evidence did you gather that you didn’t include? Why did you choose not to include it?
❯ How did your research question evolve as you moved through the research process?
❯ Did your research go in a different direction than you originally expected?
❯ What information did you need that you weren’t able to find or locate?
❯ How did you approach and synthesize the differing perspectives in order to reach a
conclusion?
2. Extending argumentation through effective questioning and inquiry
❯ What additional questions emerged from your research? Why are these questions
important?
❯ What are the implications of your findings to your community?
❯ How is your conclusion in conversation with the body of literature or other research sources
you examined?
❯ How did you use the conclusions or questions of others to advance your own research?

© 2023 College Board 3

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

AP Capstone™ Policy on Plagiarism and Falsification

or Fabrication of Information
A student who fails to acknowledge the source or author of any and all information or evidence
taken from the work of someone else through citation, attribution or reference in the body of the
work, or through a bibliographic entry, will receive a score of 0 on that particular component of the
AP Seminar and/or AP Research Performance Task. In AP Seminar, a team of students that fails to
properly acknowledge sources or authors on the Team Multimedia Presentation will receive a
group score of 0 for that component of the Team Project and Presentation.
A student who incorporates falsified or fabricated information (e.g. evidence, data, sources,
and/or authors) will receive a score of 0 on that particular component of the AP Seminar and/or
AP Research Performance Task. In AP Seminar, a team of students that incorporates falsified
or fabricated information in the Team Multimedia Presentation will receive a group score of 0 for
that component of the Team Project and Presentation.

© 2023 College Board 4

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Species in urban settings are evolving along subtly different lines than their rural counterparts, researchers are finding. An example is the white
clover plant, shown here being sampled in Mexico City. The plant has evolved to produce far less hydrogen cyanide in urban environments than
in rural ones. CREDIT: DIEGO CARMONA

Urban evolution: How species adapt

to survive in cities
Plants and animals are evolving in cities around the world — offering ways to study
longstanding scientific questions and clues to where climate change is taking us
By Eric Bender 03.21.2022
From Knowable Magazine (from Annual Reviews)

B rown rats in New York City may be evolving smaller rows of teeth. Tiny fish across the
Eastern US have adapted to thrive in polluted urban waters. Around the globe, living things
are evolving differently in cities than in the surrounding countryside.

It’s happening in plants: White clover in downtown Toronto is less likely than clover in
surrounding rural areas to produce a cyanide that deters herbivores — a trend mirrored in cities
in many countries, a new study finds. And it’s going on in birds: Songbirds in Europe and owls
in Argentina show evidence of natural selection in genes associated with cognition.

All are examples of urban evolution: genetic changes that may help living things adapt to life
in big city environments. “A city changes an environment dramatically. It creates a completely
novel ecosystem,” says Marc Johnson, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Toronto
Mississauga.

The city is also the fastest-growing ecosystem on the planet, home to more than half of the
world’s people. So perhaps it’s no surprise that studying the evolution of species in urban settings,
a field that barely existed at the start of the millennium, now is a focus for many biology labs.

Cities can act as test beds to address longstanding questions in evolution. Do different
populations of the same species evolve in similar ways when faced with the same environmental
pressures? And do different species in the same locations evolve similar characteristics?

Many environmental factors are similar across thousands of cities, says Johnson: things like
higher temperatures, pollution and habitats fragmented by buildings and roads. But cities also
differ in age, amount of green space, climate and more.

“You can look at these similarities and these differences and start to ask, how can this drive
evolution?” Johnson says.

© 2023 College Board 5

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

A city rat enjoys a tasty snack. In New York City, brown rats in different neighborhoods have accrued genetic differences. The populations
appear to be kept apart by intervening areas with more intense rat control and less human food to feast on.
CREDIT: ERNIE JANES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Observing how creatures respond to urban life also may help to improve conservation
management or pest control, and to plan cities with functioning ecosystems that are
environmentally more robust and better places for people to live.

And urban evolution may hold hints about our future world. “Cities are kind of the key for
understanding responses to global climate change,” says Sarah Diamond, an evolutionary
ecologist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and coauthor of an article on
urban evolution research in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. “You
can step through time. You can say, ‘This city is giving you the global climate warming that we
would expect by 2050 or 2070 or 2100.’”

People often feel that city life is removed from nature, says Colin Garroway, an evolutionary
ecologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. “But cities are nature.”

Looking out our back doors

Probably the best-known example of urban evolution is the English peppered moth whose
coloration darkened in the 19th century in response to coal pollution. In a famous 1955 paper,
British geneticist Bernard Kettlewell presented evidence that this was a case of natural selection
in which darkness helped the moths evade bird predation as they rested on sooty tree trunks.

But the field of urban evolutionary ecology remained tiny until recently: “Most evolutionary
biologists would not be caught dead in a city,” says Johnson. That began to change with the rapid
growth of urban ecology studies in the 1990s and accelerated with discoveries of surprisingly
quick cases of evolution, such as Caribbean lizard populations that displayed larger toepad area,
crucial for clinging to surfaces, after two major hurricanes in 2017.

© 2023 College Board 6

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

It didn’t hurt that professors of evolutionary biology generally are employed in urban universities
and curious about what is happening in their backyards. “These dynamics are happening all
around you,” says Ryan Martin, an evolutionary ecologist at Case Western Reserve and coauthor
with Diamond of the Annual Reviews article. “Go out and look in your garden, and you’ll
see a bunch of native pollinators that are all presumably evolving in response to these changes
in the city…. You don’t have to do anything special to see these cool dynamics; you walk out
your door.”

In industrial parts of England, black-bodied forms of the peppered moth Biston betularia became more abundant as air pollution increased
after the Industrial Revolution, blackening trees and buildings. The frequency of black moths decreased again when the air became cleaner.
CREDIT: CHISWICK CHAP / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The water flea Daphnia magna — a freshwater crustacean up to a few millimeters in size — is
one species busy evolving in cities in response to heat, pollution and even local predators. These
zooplankton can prevent algal blooms that overload ponds with toxic cyanobacteria, so this
adaptation may have a big effect on freshwater ecosystems, says Kristien Brans, an evolutionary
ecologist at KU Leuven in Belgium, who studies the water fleas.

© 2023 College Board 7

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

One basic challenge in such urban investigations is to distinguish between two modes of
response to altered environments: evolution (genetic alterations that appear across generations)
and phenotypic plasticity (the flexibility to alter physical and/or behavioral characteristics in an
organism’s lifetime).

For water fleas, it turns out that both are at play. Fleas raised in lab experiments at temperatures
matching urban ponds are smaller, and mature and reproduce more quickly, than fleas reared
at rural pond temperatures that tend to be several degrees cooler. (That’s phenotypic plasticity
— no genetic changes have occurred.) But over time, urban water fleas living generation after
generation in warmer, urban pond waters have genetically changed to have those same kinds of
alterations. (That’s evolution.)

In a 2017 paper, for example, Brans and her coworkers took populations of water fleas from
a range of habitats — some more rural and some more urban — and reared them for many
generations before testing their ability to survive in urban-temperature water and rural-
temperature water. Fleas collected from urban ponds displayed higher heat tolerance in the warm
ponds than those collected from rural ponds, along with smaller body size and other changes.

A follow-up study published in 2018 showed that urban Daphnia have significantly higher
concentrations than rural water fleas of total body fat, proteins and sugars, trait changes that are
associated with handling stresses such as heat as well as with faster life cycles.

Scientists studying the water flea Daphnia magna in rural and urban ponds have identified gene-based differences in traits such as tolerance
to water temperature. CREDIT: HAJIME WATANABE FLICKR

© 2023 College Board 8

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Brans and coworkers have also recently found that urban water fleas are more likely than their
rural cousins to survive exposure to a common pesticide, and that populations of Daphnia display
different genetic adaptions to pesticides depending on whether they grow in ponds surrounded
by conventional farms, organic farms or nature reserves. In lab tests, water fleas taken from
ponds surrounded by conventional farmland displayed higher resistance to a pesticide called
chlorpyrifos that’s routinely employed in such farming. Fleas near organic farms were more
resistant to two pesticides allowed in organic agriculture.

Looking up the food chain, Brans and colleagues have evidence that urban water fleas
and predatory insects that eat them — damselflies — are evolving in step with each other.
Urban damselfly larvae are far better than rural damselfly larvae at encountering and gobbling
up rural water fleas, for example. But they have a tougher time preying on the urban fleas.
In other words, when rural or city damselfly and flea populations are matched, there seems
to be more balance — as you’d expect if two populations are evolving in step with each other.

Brans also is studying how the microbes that live in Daphnia guts differ between city and
countryside. These microbial communities — or microbiome — shape what the water fleas
can eat, and some flea genotypes encourage microbiomes that enable fleas to digest toxic
cyanobacteria that can overrun ponds.

Adapting successfully, or maybe not

Acorn ants offer another case of adaptive urban evolution. With colonies so tiny they can live
inside a single acorn, they are easy to study. (“Put them in a little plastic cup with some sugar
water and a little dead mealworm and they’re totally happy,” Martin says.) Colonies in Cleveland,
Ohio — whose downtown temperatures average about 4 degrees Celsius warmer year-round
than the rural surroundings — have higher heat tolerances but lower cold tolerances than rural
ants, Martin and Diamond found. “We’re pretty confident that it’s due to underlying genetic
differences,” Martin says.

Brown rats in Manhattan offer yet another case of urban evolution, though it may not impart
advantages to the unloved creatures. Jason Munshi-South, an evolutionary ecologist at Fordham
University in New York, and colleagues analyzed the genomes of 262 rats and found that the
animals have evolved distinct genomic profiles in different neighborhoods. The scientists believe
it’s because the rat populations don’t move freely between these spots, and slowly, over time,
accrue differences.

What’s keeping them apart? Midtown Manhattan may act as a kind of soft barrier between
Lower and Upper Manhattan, the scientists say, because it is less residential (providing less food)
and the site of intense rat control efforts. Roads and waterways also can genetically split up rat
populations, according to studies in New Orleans, Salvador in Brazil and Vancouver in Canada,
where rats also show genetic variations by neighborhoods.

Such insights may prove useful in designing measures to suppress rat populations. “If you
understand how rats move around and what facilitates or prevents their movement, you can
break the city down into more manageable units for rodent control,” Munshi-South says.

Other changes in rats may be adaptive. Munshi-South’s lab has evidence that natural selection
is changing the skulls of the rats such that they have longer noses and shorter sets of teeth.
These might be adaptations to colder environments and a diet of human leftovers respectively,
the scientists speculate. Similar changes in teeth have been spotted in urban white-footed mice,
so this might be a general phenomenon in rodents in cities, Munshi-South says.

© 2023 College Board 9

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

In the clover
Urban plants are on the genetic move too — such as white clover, a perennial plant that thrives
in human landscapes. The plant, due to the activity of two known genes, can produce hydrogen
cyanide, if it invests the resources to do so. This protects it from browsing herbivores.

Sampling the plants from the center of Toronto out to surrounding rural areas, Johnson’s lab
discovered a striking inherited correlation: The closer to the center, the less cyanide gets
produced. Johnson and his colleagues suggest this happens because the center is colder in winter,
due to less snow cover, and plants that make hydrogen cyanide are more susceptible to freezing.
(His lab found generally similar results in several dozen other North American cities.)

To delve more deeply into urban evolution, a few years back Johnson and colleagues launched
the Global Urban Evolution Project (GLUE), bringing together 287 scientists in 26 countries.
(Many responded to tweets Johnson sent out while pursuing another project in the Galapagos.)
“GLUE is the largest collaborative study in evolutionary biology ever attempted, if you don’t
include the human genome project,” Johnson says.

GLUE took white clover’s cyanide production as a model to study three questions. Do instances
of urbanization in different cities lead to similar local environments? Do those similar
environments lead the clover to evolve along the same lines — display parallel evolution — in
a trait of interest (in this case, cyanide production)? And if so, what environmental factors are
driving the pattern?

In a new Science paper, the collaborators showed that urban environments do indeed end up
quite similar to each other, with less vegetation, more impervious surfaces and higher summer
temperatures than their outlying rural areas. (In fact, downtowns of cities such as Beijing and
Boston are more similar to each other in such factors than they are to their rural areas, Johnson
comments.) Analyzing more than 110,000 clover plants from 160 cities in 26 countries, the
GLUE investigators also demonstrated a strong link between urbanization and clover cyanide
production. And after sequencing more than 2,000 clover genomes and analyzing the urban-rural
differences, the researchers showed that natural selection truly is at work.

But what are the environmental factors driving this change in cyanide? “The answer is pretty
complicated,” Johnson says, and may not be the same for all cities. The most important ones
the team uncovered were changes in overall vegetation (probably related to the abundance
and diversity of herbivores that eat clover) and the aridity of the environment. “We don’t see
temperature clearly popping out, which is what we had identified when we looked at Boston,
Toronto, Montreal and New York,” he says.

The first GLUE results show that white clover is a powerful global model for understanding
evolution and ecology in response to urbanization, he adds.

Disparities within cities

As researchers continue to study evolution in the big city, some are focusing on the effects of
social and economic inequality. The question, says Simone Des Roches, an evolutionary ecologist
at the University of Seattle in Washington, is whether plants and animals evolve differently in
low- versus high-income neighborhoods. Lead author on a 2020 paper on the interaction of social,
ecological and evolutionary dynamics in cities, Des Roches notes that racial discrimination in the
United States has produced strikingly different urban environments.

© 2023 College Board 10

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

The evolution of a species in a city involves an array of interacting factors, as shown here for mosquitoes. Factors can be social (blue),
evolutionary (red) or ecological (green). In the case of mosquitoes, these interactions are important to understand due to the ability
of the insects to carry dangerous pathogens such as the malaria parasite and the viruses causing Zika and West Nile disease.
CREDIT: S. DES ROCHES ET AL / EVOLUTIONARY APPLICATIONS 2020

Impoverished neighborhoods tend to have higher temperatures, greater exposure to pollutants

and other environmental disadvantages. These can act as playgrounds for disease-carrying pests
such as mosquitoes and rats that enjoy human company: Invasive tiger mosquitoes grow larger in
neighborhoods with abandoned buildings in Baltimore, for example. Researchers want to know if,
and how, organisms may evolve differently in these disadvantaged environments.

Urban evolution studies also can shed light on what lies ahead in this time of the Anthropocene
and suggest steps that might achieve a friendlier world for humans and other forms of life. For
example, in many cities, Diamond says, scientists can date the onset of high levels of warming
from industrialization. Researchers then can measure how much a species’ heat and cold
tolerances have changed over time, infer the rate of evolution of those traits and apply those
inferences to predict how life forms will respond to future climate change.

© 2023 College Board 11

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Diamond’s work in acorn ants suggests that rural populations may be able to evolve to take the
greater heat. But, she says, urban acorn ants appear less well-adapted to cities than the rural ants
are adapted to their ancestral homes.

Brans, meanwhile, looks to apply her research to preserve urban biodiversity and public health —
since urban conservation managers will want to see ponds growing healthy populations of water
fleas that bolster those ecosystems against toxic algae blooms.

Unfortunately, the genetic biodiversity that can fuel adaptation often dwindles in urban areas.
A genetic survey by Chloé Schmidt working in Garroway’s lab, for example, found this to be
the case, along with lower population sizes, for North American mammals living in more
disturbed environments. That’s a concern during a period when so many populations of animals
and plants are seeing their natural habitats degraded or simply destroyed.

Scientists don’t take urban environments as precise models for the impacts of climate change.
But they say such studies will provide important clues to how creatures may respond to
dwindling access to water and food, and exposure to pollution, heat, drought and other dangers.

“We’re in the Anthropocene, and we don’t understand how we’re changing the environment on
every level, from greenhouse gas emissions to changing the evolution of life around us,” Johnson
says. “People realize this research is part of the solution.”

10.1146/knowable-031822-1

© 2023 College Board 12

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Long Walk to Freedom,

Excerpt from Ch. 60
By Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was the leader of the movement against South Africa’s policy of apartheid in
the 20th century, during which time he spent 27 years in prison. He won the Nobel Prize for
Peace in 1993 for having led the transition from apartheid to a multiracial democracy and
became South Africa’s first Black president in 1994.
...Within a few months, our life settled into a pattern. Prison life is about routine: each day like
the one before; each week like the one before it, so that the months and years blend into each
other. Anything that departure this pattern upsets the authorities, for routine is the sign of a well
run prison.
Routine is also comforting for the prisoner, which is why it can be a trap. Routine can be a
pleasant mistress whom it is hard to resist, for routine makes the time go faster. Watches and
timepieces of any kind were barred on Robben Island, so we never knew precisely what time it
was. We were dependent on bells and warders‘ whistles and shouts. With each week resembling
the one before, one must make an effort to recall what day and month it is. One of the first things
I did was to make a calendar on the wall of my cell. Losing a sense of time is an easy way to lose
one’s grip and even one’s sanity.
Time slows down in prison; the days seem endless. The cliché of time passing slowly usually
has to do with idleness and inactivity. But this was not the case on Robben island. We were busy
almost all the time, with work, study, resolving disputes. Yet, time nevertheless moved glacially.
This is partially because things that took a few hours or days outside would take months or
years in prison. A request for a new toothbrush might take six months or year to be filled.
Ahmad Kathrada once said that in prison the minutes can seem like years, but the years go
by like minutes. An afternoon pounding rocks and the courtyard might seem like forever, but
suddenly it is the end of the year, and you do not know where all the months went.
The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every political prisoner, is how to survive prison
intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished, how to conserve and even replenish one’s
beliefs. The first task in accomplishing that is learning exactly what one must do to survive. To
that end, one must know the enemy’s purpose before adopting a strategy to undermine it. Prison
is designed to break one’s spirit and to destroy one’s resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to
exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality – all with the
idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.
Our survival depended on understanding what the authorities were attempting to do to us, and
sharing that understanding with each other. It would be very hard if not impossible for one man
alone to resist. I do not know that I could have done it had I been alone. But the authorities’
greatest mistake was keeping us together, for together our determination was reinforced. We
supported each other and gained strength from each other. Whatever we knew, whatever we
learned, we shared, and by sharing we multiplied whatever courage we had individually. That is
not to say that we were all alike in our responses to hardships we suffered. Men have different
capacities and react differently to stress. But the stronger ones raised up the weaker ones, and
both became stronger in the process. Ultimately, we had to create our own lives in prison. In a
way that even the authorities acknowledged, order in prison was preserved not by the warders
but by ourselves.

© 2023 College Board 13

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular, or whose results will not
be known for years to come. There are victories whose glory lies only in the fact that they
are known to those who win them. This is particularly true of prison, where one must find
consolation in being true to one’s ideals, even if no one else knows of it.
I was now on the sidelines, but I also knew that I would not give up the fight. I was in a different
and smaller arena, an arena for whom the only audience was ourselves and our oppressors.
We regarded the struggle in prison as a microcosm of the struggle as a whole. We would fight
inside as we had fought outside. The racism and repression were the same; I would simply have
to fight on different terms.
Prison and the authorities conspire to rob each man of his dignity. In and of itself, that assured
that I would survive, for any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose
because I will not part with it at any price or under any pressure. I never seriously considered
the possibility that I would not emerge from prison one day. I never thought that a life sentence
truly meant life and that I would die behind bars. Perhaps I was denying this prospect because it
was too unpleasant to contemplate. But I always knew that someday I would once again feel the
grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man.
I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part
of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward.
There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not
and could not give myself up to despair. That way lay defeat and death.

© 2023 College Board 14

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

How to Build a Resilient Future

Using Ancient Wisdom
By Julia Watson, TED2020

The video of this TED Talk can be viewed at either of the links below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DOOJx7AZfM

https://www.ted.com/talks/julia_watson_how_to_build_a_resilient_future_using_ancient_wisdom

© 2023 College Board 15

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Migrant Mother
By Dorothea Lange

Lange, Dorothea, photographer. Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. United States
Nipomo San Luis Obispo County California, 1936. March. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017762891/

© 2023 College Board 16

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

In their Own Words: Resilience among

Haitian Survivors of the 2010 Earthquake
Guitele J. Rahill, PhD, LCSW
N. Emel Ganapati, PhD
Manisha Joshi, PhD, MPH
Brittany Bristol
Amanda Molé
Arielle Jean-Pierre
Ariele Dionne, MSW
Michele Benavides, MSW

Abstract: Social sciences literature highlights the importance of resilience in relation to

risk and trauma. The 2010 Haitian earthquake compounded trauma for a nation that has
endured slavery/despotic leadership, structural violence and poverty. Since 2010, various
sources broadly describe Haitian survivors as resilient. We reviewed definitions of resilience
published between 1990 and 2013, comparing them with perspectives of earthquake survi-
vors from economically diverse communities in Haiti who, participated in semi-structured
interviews (n=38) and in six focus groups (n=63) between 2010–2011. Haitian resilience
accords with some definitions from the literature. It also comprises independent, discrete,
and isolated contextual resignation and intentional choice to survive and function—when
there is no alternative course of action. Understanding Haitian resilience, can inform health/
mental health and policy interventions, if these are taken as cultural resources. Intervention
efforts should incorporate survivors’ input as key informants on what constitute resilience
and reconstruction goals for them.
Key words: Haitian mental health and resilience, resilience and Haiti earthquake, Haitian
earthquake survivors, trauma and Haitians.

GUITELE J. RAHILL is an Associate Professor for the School of Social Work, College of Behavioral
and Community Sciences, at the University of South Florida. N. EMEL GANAPATI is an Associate
Professor for the Department of Public Administration, School of International and Public Affairs, at
Florida International University. MANISHA JOSHI is an Assistant Professor for the School of Social
Work, College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, at the University of South Florida. BRITTANY
BRISTOL is a Graduate Student in Social Work, at the School of Social Work, College of Behavioral and
Community Sciences, at the University of South Florida. AMANDA MOLÉ is a Graduate Student in
Social Work, at the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, at the University of South Florida.
ARIELLE JEAN-PIERRE is a Graduate Student in Psychology, at Columbia University. ARIELE
DIONNE and MICHELE BENAVIDES are both associated with the College of Behavioral and Com-
munity Sciences, at the University of South Florida. Please address all correspondence to Guitele J. Rahill,
School of Social Work, University of South Florida, 13301 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., Tampa, FL 33612.
Email: [email protected].

© Meharry Medical College Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 27 (2016): 580–603.

© 2023 College Board 17

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 581

T he January 12th, 2010 Haiti earthquake measured over seven points on the Richter
scale and thrust Haiti into the international spotlight. Thus far, it is Haiti’s most
visible shock in the 21st century.1 The distress experienced by survivors of the earth-
quake was evident to witnesses globally, through continued coverage by the media. In
the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, media sources referenced the “resilience”
of the Haitian people.2,23 We reviewed social science literature on resilience to enhance
our understanding of the functioning and prognosis of Haitian survivors of the 2010
earthquake within months of the event, and to consider how our findings might influ-
ence the development of culturally relevant interventions and policies.
Understanding Haitian survivors’ perceptions of resilience and the traits that influ-
ence one’s resilience increases the ability of clinicians, researchers, and policymakers
to implement resilience-based interventions for them and for similar populations who
have endured centuries of cumulative personal, political, and biopsychosocial trauma.
If the literature on resilience of Haitians from the Haitian perspective and within the
historical context of Haiti is scarce, we would make an important contribution to the
literature; we would also discover if definitions of resilience in the literature capture
the span of the experience of Haitians post-earthquake, and if extant definitions can
help us understand the ability of Haitians to emerge from a trauma as severe as the
earthquake as they initially were (or stronger).
In the immediate aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, a journalist, Montas, reported
that since the day after the earthquake, youth from even the most disadvantaged areas
demonstrated Haitian resilience in that they returned to places where they expected
to find survivors (e.g., the universities), to help recover survivors or remains of the
deceased. Montas indicated that their behavior was characterized by the discipline and
resilience which characterized that of their ancestors over the previous two centuries.2
Montas’ description of Haitian resilience is helpful. It describes resilience as “accep-
tance of conditions,” as solidarity demonstrated by “Haitians helping Haitians,” and as
resumption of normal activities despite the devastation levied by the earthquake. Indeed,
the American Heritage Dictionary defines resilience as “The power or ability to return
to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity;
the ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like.”3[pp.1051–1052]
Elsewhere, resilience is defined as “a range of processes that bring together quite diverse
mechanisms operating before, during, and after the encounter with the stress experi-
ence or adversity.”4[p.135] Still, Montas’ observation might blur the focus on individual,
community-level, and infrastructure trauma and their long-term biopsychosocial
impact.
Trauma comes from the Greek word for “wound.” Trauma refers either to physical or
to psychological, life-threatening injury resulting from catastrophic personal, familial,
or disaster experiences, from which the individual or community cannot escape, but
to which the reaction is one of terror, helplessness, and a sense of being overwhelmed.5
Consistent with the latter definition, the 2010 Haiti earthquake was unexpected (in
contrast to familiar seasonal hurricanes); the earthquake evoked terror and helplessness
in response to inescapable forces that were beyond the ability of its victims to manage
or resist (Heart-rending images of traumatized survivors were viewed on television

© 2023 College Board 18

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

582 Resilience and Haitians

sets, on the Internet, and in newspapers around the globe). The earthquake also led to
the death of an estimated 230,000 people, as well as displacement and severe injuries
to tens of thousands more.6
The intensity of a person’s response to sudden traumatic events is, in part, based on
prior exposures to trauma. Trauma may cause adverse physiological changes such as
the release of stress hormones that can actually weaken health and resilience.7 However,
the outcomes of trauma, regardless of its source, are not limited to adverse, irreversible
health or social outcomes. Rutter notes that cumulative trauma and adverse responses to
traumatic events can result in adaptive recovery/resilience.4 Given Rutter’s contribution,
post-earthquake Haiti provides an ideal context in which to study resilience because
as a nation, it has experienced cumulative trauma, beginning with slavery, followed by
centuries of social and political turbulence, and culminating in centuries of structural
violence that facilitate the perpetuation of inequities such as poverty, illiteracy, and
preventable disease.8 Moreover, Haitians have endured geographical disasters, such as
annual cyclones and flooding. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Haiti was further
ravaged with a cholera epidemic that killed thousands of earthquake survivors and that
severely taxed the country’s health and economic infrastructure.9
In the present work, we first explore the meaning of resilience and its applica-
tion to Haitians as resilient through a review of the literature on resilience published
between 1990 and 2013. We then examine the extent to which resilience as defined in
the literature applies to Haitian earthquake survivors who took part in a larger study
conducted in Haiti between 2010 and 2011 (In that study, we investigated the role of
social capital in post-earthquake shelter recovery, and explored personal functioning
and neighborhood characteristics before and after the earthquake).10–11 In accomplishing
our objectives, we enhance understanding of resilience among Haitians by presenting
an intellectual and culturally contextualized framework for the ability of Haitians to
continue “business as usual.” We begin with a description of the methods from the
larger Social Capital Study,10–11 following this with a description of the methods for
exploring the literature on Haitians and resilience. Then, we present the results of
the literature review first, using it as a context within which to understand the pres-
ent study participants’ responses. We proceed with the findings from the Haiti-based
Social Capital study, followed by a discussion of our findings from the present study
and concluding with the implications of our findings for clinical practice with Haitian
survivors of the earthquake and for policy more broadly.

Methods
Methods of Social Capital Study in Haiti.10–11 Population studied. We traveled to Haiti
in May 2010, to examine the role of social capital on post-disaster shelter recovery
processes across three neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital: Delmas,
Canapé Vert and Pétion Ville. Delmas comprises Haut Delmas (High Delmas), a middle-
income area, and Bas Delmas, (Lower Delmas) a lower-income neighborhood. Canapé
Vert remains a high-income area where intellectuals and wealthy people reside, in spite
of multiple squatter homes that now populate its hillsides. Pétion Ville, a suburb in the
Port-au-Prince mountains, is socioeconomically similar to Canapé Vert.

© 2023 College Board 19

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 583

The main focus of the social capital study was not on resilience per se, but we asked
community leaders and members who survived the earthquake to compare their lives,
their functioning, and their neighborhoods’/neighbors’ characteristics pre and post-
earthquake, and to offer their perspectives on the speed of housing recovery.10–11 That
study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Ethical considerations. The social capital study was approved by the University of
South Florida Institutional Review Board (IRB), by the Florida International University
IRB, and by the Haitian National Bioethics Committee.
Recruitment. Building on established collaborations with Haiti-based scholars and
community leaders, we employed targeted purposive sampling and snowball sampling
to recruit participants for semi-structured interviews and focus groups. We reached
saturation12–13 after interviewing 38 community leaders and conducting 6 focus groups
across the three communities.
Setting. The interviews and focus groups were held in different but convenient
locations across the targeted communities, maximizing comfort and privacy for the
participants. These sites included the Haitian Institute of Community Health (Institut
Haitien de Santé Communautaire [INHSAC]) of Pétion Ville, local churches in Canapé
Vert and Delmas, and a tent school in Canapé Vert.
Data collection process. We used a semi-structured interview guide and a semi-
structured focus group guide to collect data in three phases: (1) baseline data collec-
tion and analysis (May–September 2010); (2) follow-up data collection and analysis
(October–May 2011); and (3) validation/participant verification research (June 2011).
Our data collection methods varied across the three phases of research.
During the first and second phases, we conducted focus groups (n=6), in-depth,
semi-structured interviews (n=36), participant observation in the targeted neighbor-
hoods, and review of secondary sources. During the first and second phases, we also
conducted a total of 38 in-depth interviews.
In the first phase, we conducted six focus groups as baseline data on the role of
social capital in post-disaster shelter recovery, on neighborhood and family dynamics
before and after the earthquake, and on accessing food and other basic resources in the
aftermath of the earthquake. (Two focus groups were conducted in each of the three
communities, and within each community, one focus group targeted female partici-
pants and the second targeted male participants.) Across the three communities, we
recruited 47 focus group participants. In the second phase, we conducted six follow-up
focus groups in the same communities, equally divided across the communities, for a
total of 45 participants. Focus group participants from our first phase made up 62% of
focus group participants in our second phase; and we recruited additional participants
to arrive at 45 focus group participants in the second phase. Our semi-structured
interviews and focus groups were conducted in Haitian Kreyòl, the language that is
understood by members of all social classes in Haiti.
We also used close-ended questions to collect demographic data and additional data
on social capital and solidarity within and across the neighborhoods during and after
the earthquake (Copies of research instruments are available upon request).
During our third and last research phase, Assessment (Validation/Participant Veri-
fication) Research, we facilitated two Town Hall Meetings at INHSAC, using a semi-

© 2023 College Board 20

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

584 Resilience and Haitians

structured guide. These town hall meetings, like the focus groups, were segregated by
gender to allow participants from across the three communities to express their views
freely. There were approximately 25–30 participants in each town hall meeting. The
town hall meeting format allowed us to present, discuss and corroborate or correct our
findings from the previous research stages with the study participants, helping us to
enhance the trustworthiness of our findings. Additionally, the town hall meetings gave
the project participants the opportunity to hear what members of other communities
had experienced, to explore others’ perceptions on the impact of the earthquake on
members of other communities, and to begin networking across communities.
We audio-recorded and transcribed the interviews and the focus groups with the
informed consent of participants, translating them into English as we transcribed, as
this method increases efficiency.14
Data analysis. In the social capital study, we used ATLAS.ti®, supportive software for
textual data analysis to conduct a thematic analysis of our interview and focus group
transcripts.15 We analyzed the close-ended sociodemographic data from the focus
groups via SPSS 16.0,16 thus, obtaining findings from univariate and bivariate analysis
of characteristics of the Haiti-based study participants.
Summary of findings from the Social Capital Study. The study highlighted that
social capital in the Haitian context is a culturally-based connection between a struc-
tural aspect of social capital that participants described as moun pa (literally, “person
of mine”, figuratively, “person who is part of my inner circle”), and an attitudinal/
trust component of social capital called konfyans (literally, “trust”). Haitians report-
edly engage in pati pri with their moun pas, literally, “take sides” with their close and
trusted associates. Social capital study participants also reported that those who have
access to resources will often intentionally block individuals who are not their moun
pas from important shelter and food resources. A startling example of Haitian social
capital was offered by study participants who told of one woman who had so many
moun pas that she had amassed an overabundance of rice and tents, which she then
sold to others who did not have moun pas who possessed the needed resources. Thus,
social capital in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake sometimes resulting in negative
consequences, i.e., violence towards those who were denied access to resources.10–11
The definition of social capital in the post-earthquake Haiti context was particularly
salient when we considered the question of resilience among post-earthquake Haitians.
The research prompts that are the focus of the present work permitted us to consider
resilience among survivors of the Haiti earthquake across the three phases of research.
These prompts included the following: 1) discuss your neighborhood before the earth-
quake; 2) discuss your family before the earthquake; 3) discuss your neighborhood since
the earthquake; 4) discuss your family since the earthquake; 5) discuss your opinion
of the speed of shelter recovery in Haiti and in your neighborhood.
Methods of literature review. We conducted a literature review using pre-established
selection criteria to analyze studies conducted on resilience between 1990 and 2013. (This
timeframe is important in that there had been a great deal of political and geographical
turmoil in Haiti during that period; therefore, it could be expected that the resilience of
Haitians would appear in the literature during that time frame in conjunction with risk
and the physical, psychological, and emotional trauma). However, recognizing that no

© 2023 College Board 21

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 585

single review of the research literature can be comprehensive, we employed a strategy

that explicitly operationalized how articles are chosen for review.16
We established the following criteria for inclusion in our final sample of relevant
articles: (a) English language articles published from 1990 through 2013 in peer-
reviewed journal articles in the fields of social work, sociology, public health and/ or
psychology (these fields are relevant to social work practice, policy and research, and
to the biological, neurological, and psychological correlates of trauma and to policy);
(b) articles published in Canada or in the United States (U.S.) (Canada was included
because Montreal and Quebec are home to large Haitian enclaves); (c) articles on resil-
ience that examined resilience specifically in relation to Haitians; (d) peer-reviewed
publications for which abstracts and the actual articles were accessible via searches
conducted in PsycInfo, Social Work Abstracts and Social Services Research; e) works
that were cited as seminal studies, even if their dates of publication were prior to our
1990-2013 selection criteria. We excluded dissertations, books, and book reviews; but
we remained open to including book chapters in cases where the author was an expert
on content concerning Haitians and mental health.
ATLAS.ti® also permitted us to view the findings from the literature search and the
findings from the social capital study as one corpus of data. Thus, we got a clear sense
of which conceptualization (s) of resilience was most applicable to the experiences of
the earthquake survivors we studied.

Results
Results of literature review. Table 1 lists the keywords, databases and process used in
our search for literature on resilience.
As is evident in Table 1, above, we received the fewest hits across the three databases
when we specifically sought for “resilience and Haitians and trauma.” Box 1 presents
specific works that emerged from our search for “resilience and Haitians.” Of those,
only three actually advanced knowledge on resilience and Haitians, and that too in a

Table 1.
KEYWORDS AND DATABASES USED IN SEARCH FOR ARTICLES
ON HAITIANS AND RESILIENCE

Social Services
Social Work Research
Keywords Psych INFO Abstracts Abstracts

What is resilience 198 6 87

Review of resilience 327 13 185
Resilience and disasters 430 7 62
Resilience and Haitians 7 1 0
Resilience and trauma 1,383 28 181
Resilience and Haitians and trauma 3 1 0

© 2023 College Board 22

 Box 1.
RESULT OF LITERATURE SEARCH USING KEYWORDS “RESILIENCE AND HAITIANS”

© 2023 College Board

“1990–2013”
AP® Capstone Program

Specific to Enhances
Year Author (s) Title Haitians? K on R +H How K on R+H is expanded Publication Type

2013 Roysircar, G. (sp) Disaster Counseling: A Haitian Yes Yes Discusses disaster mental health and Book
family post January 12, 2010 available resources on the community
earthquake. and individual level in Haiti.
2011 Asante, M. K. Haiti: Three analytical narratives Yes Yes Discusses how Haiti dealt with natu- Journal of Black
of crisis and recovery. ral and man-made disasters using Studies
class, religion and culture.
2011 Belizaire, L. S. & Attachment, coping, acculturative Yes No Resilience as coping Journal of
Fuertes, J. N. stress, and quality of life among Counseling and
Haitian immigrants. Development
2011 Bellegarde-Smith, P. A man-made disaster: The Yes No Discusses the potential bounds of Journal of Black
earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010- A Haitian resilience in the light of the Studies
Haitian perspective. multiple challenges Haitians face.
2011 Lundy, G. Transnationalism in the Yes Yes Discusses identity among second Journal of Black
aftermath of the Haiti generation Haitians as resilient and Studies
earthquake: Reinforcing ties and how the earthquake has affected that.
second-generation identity.
2011 Rahill, G., Jean-Gilles, Metaphors as contextual Yes No Discusses how metaphors focus American Journal
M. , Thomlison, B., & evidence for engaging Haitian on cultural strength and resilience of Psychotherapy
Pinto-Lopez, E. clients in practice: A case study. among Haitians.
(Continued on p. 587)
Stimulus Materials

23
© 2023 College Board
Box 1. (continued)
AP® Capstone Program

Specific to Enhances
Year Author (s) Title Haitians? K on R +H How K on R+H is expanded Publication Type

2010 Nicolas, G., Schwartz, Weathering the storms like bam- Yes Yes Resilience as flexibility and grounded Book
B. & Pierre, E. boo: The strengths and Haitians in traditional rituals
in coping with natural disasters.
2009 Stewart, M. R. Autobiographical narratives of Yes No Discusses Haitian youth who were Dissertation
Haitian adolescents separated separated from their families during
from their parents by immigra- immigration and how their resiliency
tion: Resilience in the face of can play a role in their lives.
difficulty.
2004 Yarvis, J., Sabin, Haitian Immigrants in the United Yes No Resilience as adaptation Caribbean Journal
M., Nackerud, L. & States: Intergenerational Trauma of Social Work
Pandit, K. Transmission, Adaptation and
Ethnic Identity.

Notes:
K= Knowledge
R= Resilience
H= Haitians
Stimulus Materials

24
AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

588 Resilience and Haitians

limited fashion, suggesting that a great deal more remains be discovered about resil-
ience and Haitians.
Scientific research on resilience is extensive and spans several decades, including
but not limited to those referred to here.4,17–26 Box 2 contains findings on resilience in
general, including scholarly works published between 1990 and 2013, which contributed
to our understanding of resilience among Haitians.
Throughout the literature searches, we compiled a list of recurrent concepts related
to resilience that were readily relevant to survivors of trauma such as the recent
earthquake in Haiti. These included: determinants of resilience, variability of resilience,
characteristics of resilient people, consequences of resilience, resilience in life adaptations,
resilience in cumulative trauma, resilience and spirituality, predictors of resilience, models
of resilience, and scales of resilience.
Summary of findings on resilience from literature search. Resilience in general.
We found varied aspects to resilience. In addition to definitions provided above, some
sources define resilience as the ability to return to a previous and healthy level of
functioning in the aftermath of a stressful situation.20,23
Luthar and colleagues distinguish resilience, a changing process of adapting to trau-
matic events, from resiliency, which is defined as a personal trait possessed by those
who survive traumatic experiences with little observable effects on their biopsycho-
social functioning.20 Linley identifies wisdom as an essential component of resilience,
offering “three dimensions of wisdom as crucial to an understanding of the role it can
play in posttraumatic positive adaptation. These dimensions are the recognition and
management of uncertainty; the integration of affect and cognition; and the recogni-
tion and acceptance of human limitation.”19[p.601] Linley further asserts that wisdom is
“consistently implicated in the development of post-traumatic positive adaptation.”19,[p.602]
Masten21 notes that resilience and resiliency can be developed and strengthened, and
can contribute to personal growth. These assertions point to necessary life adaptations
that must occur if a person is to emerge as resilient: more specifically they suggest that
resilience includes recognition, management, and acceptance of uncertainty and human
limitation, as well as integration of cognition and emotions.
Werner and Smith further expanded our knowledge of resiliency. Their pioneering
work on resilience consisted of a longitudinal study that tracked high-risk children from
birth through age 32.25–26 They found that those who grew up to be productive and
successful possessed similar traits including the ability to solve problems, the capacity
to initiate and retain friendships, a belief that they have control over what happens to
them, a sense of hope and purpose, an affectionate bond with a significant other, and
a spiritual stance that includes faith and prayer.25–26 Later, Flach added that resilience
includes peoples’ ability to tolerate stress and to be open-minded and disciplined while
having a low tolerance for unacceptable behavior in others.18 Flach also indicated
that a strong sense of humor, creativity, courage, and insight are present in people
described as resilient. Moreover, he found resilience to include a disposition to dream
and make plans that inspire hope and a sense of integrity. Flach further noted that the
most successful survivors of trauma are those who not only possess insight into the
psychological effect of their experience, but also possess the ability to verbalize it to
others. Furthermore, Flach also noted that the emphasis in resilience research should

© 2023 College Board 25

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 589

Box 2.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ON RESILIENCE IN GENERAL
(1990–2013)

Scholar (s) Definition of Resilience

Flach • ability to be open-minded and disciplined while having a low

tolerance for unacceptable behavior in others;
• strong sense of humor, creativity, courage, and insight;
• disposition to dream and make plans that inspire hope and a
sense of integrity;
• not only possess insight into the psychological effect of their
experience, but also possess the ability to verbalize it to others;
Werner & Smith • ability to solve problems;
• capacity to initiate and retain friendships;
• a belief that they have control over what happens to them;
• a sense of hope and purpose;
• an affectionate bond with a significant other;
• and a spiritual stance that includes faith and prayer;
Luthar, Cicchetti, • ability to return to a previous and healthy level of functioning in
& Becker the aftermath of a stressful situation;
◉ distinguishes resilience, a changing process of adapting to
traumatic events, from resiliency, a personal trait possessed by
those who survive traumatic experiences with apparently little
observable effects on their biopsychosocial functioning;
Masten • positive adjustment following conditions experienced as
challenging
• a set of behaviors, attitudes and skills that can be learned
Linley • wisdom as an essential component of resilience
◉ “three dimensions of wisdom as crucial to an understanding
of the role it can play in posttraumatic positive adaptation:
■ recognition and management of uncertainty;
■ integration of affect and cognition; and
■ recognition and acceptance of human limitation”
National Center • resilient persons emerge from stressful situations feeling normal
for Victims of and sometimes stronger for having experienced the situation
Crime
Nicolas, Schwartz, • Flexibility; (similar to bamboo);
& Pierre • cultural factors (PROVERBS)such as the family, the traditional
foods and spiritual factors as contributing factors to Haitian
ability to continue to “cope”
American • power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc.,
Heritage after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity;
Dictionary online • ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or
the like;

© 2023 College Board 26

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

590 Resilience and Haitians

be placed on traits that mitigate the occurrence of severe physical and psychological
distress among survivors of trauma (i.e., resiliency), rather than on factors that result in
disruptive health outcomes. Others have included independence, initiative, and moral-
ity as traits of resilient people27 as well as a positive history with one’s father, coupled
with an innate desire to help one’s fellow man.28
Resilience and Haitians With respect to resilience and Haitians, we found early in
the literature that N’zengou-Tayo, speaking of historical injustices that rural Haitian
women have endured, noted that Haitian women had “not given up hope of improv-
ing their circumstances” and that “their traditional resilience is now strengthened by a
fighting spirit.”29[pp.125–6] That is the only reference to resilience in N’zengou-Tayo’s work,
and it is consistent with the definition of resilience in as persistent hope and struggle
despite adversity.
In post-earthquake literature addressing resilience and Haitians, Nicolas and col-
leagues acknowledge that Haitians are as flexible as “bamboo;” they document that
cultural factors such as the family, traditional food, and spiritual factors contribute
to the ability of Haitians to continue to “cope” with traumatic events, including disas-
ters.22 The reference to bamboo as a metaphor elucidates the ability of Haitians to be
flexible as bamboo trees, which can withstand strong elemental forces without being
destroyed. To substantiate their metaphor, Nicolas and colleagues herald a popular
Haitian Kreyὸl saying, “Pliye, pliye, pa kase.” In English, the words translate as “Bend
(Fold), bend, don’t break.” Such a perspective is consistent with the definition from
the American Heritage Dictionary.3 However, the latter source suggests that the person
“bent [or] folded” as a result of trauma would return to his or her “original” form. We
currently have no scientific evidence that Haitian survivors of the 2010 earthquake and
of adverse contextual events return to their original form, as there is little to indicate
what that original form was. Lacking also has been knowledge that contributes to our
understanding of Haitian resilience from the emic or insider perspective of those who
survived a traumatic disaster such as the 2010 earthquake.
Having summarized the literature obtained through our search on resilience, we
tried to ascertain if patterns of resilience from the literature are related to the experi-
ences of survivors of the Haitian earthquake. Thus, we applied what is known about
resilience in the literature to data obtained in the social capital study. For additional
related work, see the last seven works cited in this paper.31–37
Application of literature on resilience to Haiti-based Social Capital Study. Using
the conceptualizations of resilience found in the literature, we analyzed transcriptions
of data obtained from semi-structured interviews of 38 community leaders and six
focus groups (n=36) conducted with community residents to see if their reported
experiences and activities reflected what the academic sources define as resilience. Table
2 summarizes the demographic characteristics of our community leaders’ sample by
neighborhood. It is followed by Table 3, which reflects the sociodemographic charac-
teristics of our focus group members.
All (100%) of the community leaders and focus group members who participated
in our social capital study confirmed and spoke about the experience of trauma, as
defined earlier, as a consequence of the earthquake.
Flach’s conceptualization of resilience.18 Consistent with Flach, our study partici-
pants demonstrated open-mindedness and discipline in their willingness to participate

© 2023 College Board 27

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 591

Table 2.
DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS—COMMUNITY
LEADERS—PHASE I AND PHASE II (N=38)

PétionVille Delmas Canapé Total (% and

(% and (% and Vert (% and Count) across
Demographic Characteristics count) count) count) communities

Age Group
18–25 10.0 (1) 0.0 (0) 11.1 (1) 5.3 (2)
26–30 30.0 (3) 10.5 (2) 33.3 (3) 21.1 (8)
31–35 40.0 (4) 15.8 (3) 33.3 (3) 26.3 (10)
36–40 20.0 (2) 5.3 (1) 22.2 (2) 13.2 (5)
41–45 0.0 (0) 26.3 (5) 0.0 (0) 13.2 (5)
46–65 0.0 (0) 31.7 (6) 0.0 (0) 15.7 (6)
Over 65 0.0 (0) 10.5 (2) 0.0 (0) 5.3 (2)
Total 100.0 (10) 100.0 (19) 100.0 (9) 100.0 (38)
Gender
Male 80.0 (8) 94.7 (18) 66.7 (6) 84.2 (32)
Female 20.0 (2) 5.3 (1) 33.3 (3) 15.8 (6)
Total 100.0 (10) 100.0 (19) 100.0 (9) 100.0 (38)
Education
Less than high school 0.0 (0) 10.5 (2) 0.0 (0) 5.3 (2)
Equivalent to high school 10.0 (1) 36.8 (7) 11.1 (1) 23.7 (9)
Some College/No degree 50.0 (5) 21.1 (4) 55.6 (5) 36.8 (14)
College/ BA Equivalent/ Credentialed 30.0 (3) 21.1 (4) 33.3 (3) 26.3 (10)
Graduate Degree 0.0 (0) 5.3 (1) 0.0 (0) 2.6 (1)
Unknown or Trade School 5.3 (1) 5.3 (1) 0.0 (0) 5.3 (2)
Total 100.0 (10) 100.0 (19) 100.0 (9) 100.0 (38)
Birthplace
Port-au-Prince 20.0 (2) 21.1 (4) 22.2 (2) 21.1 (8)
Other/ Rural 80.0 (8) 73.7 (14) 77.8 (7) 76.3 (29)
Unknown/Missing Data 0.0 (0) 5.3 (1) 0.0 (0) 2.6 (1)
Total 100.0 (10) 100.0 (19) 100.0 (9) 100.0 (38)
Employed
Yes 50.0 (5) 15.8 (3) 44.4 (4) 31.6 (12)
No 50.0 (5) 78.9 (15) 55.6 (5) 65.8 (25)
Unknown/ Missing Data 0.0 (0) 5.3 (1) 0.0 (0) 2.6 (1)
Total 100.0 (10) 100.0 (19) 100.0 (9) 100.0 (38)
Marital Status
Single 90.0 (9) 10.5 (2) 66.7 (6) 44.8 (17)
Married 0.0 (0) 78.9 (15) 22.2 (2) 44.8 (17)
Cohabiting/ Plase 10.0 (1) 0.0 (0) 0.0 (0) 2.6 (1)
Separated/Widowed/ Divorced 0.0 (0) 10.6 (2) 11.1 (1) 7.8 (3)
Total 100.0 (10) 100.0 (19) 100.0 (9) 100.0 (38)
Religion
Catholic 0.0 (0) 10.5 (2) 44.4 5(4) 15.8 (6)
Protestant 90.0 (9) 79.0 (15) 44.45(4) 73.7 (28)
None 10.0 (1) 10.5 (2) 11.1 (1) 10.5 (4)
Total 100.0 (10) 100.0 (19) 100.0 (9) 100.0 (38)

© 2023 College Board 28

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

592 Resilience and Haitians

Table 3.
DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF FOCUS GROUP
MEMBERS INTERVIEWED DURING PHASE I AND PHASE II
(N=63)

Pétion Delmas Canapé Total (% and

Ville (% (% and Vert (% and Count) across
Demographic Characteristics and count) count) count) communities

Age Group
18–25 40.9 (9) 46.6 (7) 26.9 (7) 36.5 (23)
26–30 4.5 (1) 40.0 (6) 26.9 (7) 22.2 (14)
31–35 18.2 (4) 6.7 (1) 19.2 (5) 15.9 (10)
36–40 13.6 (3) 0.0 (0) 3.8 (1) 6.3 (4)
41–45 4.5 (1) 6.7 (1) 11.6 (3) 7.9 (5)
46–65 18.2 (4) 0.0 (0) 11.6 (3) 11.2 (7)
Total 100.0 (22) 100.0 (15) 100.0 (26) 100.0 (63)
Gender
Male 54.5 (12) 60.0 (9) 50.0 (13) 54.0 (34)
Female 45.5 (10) 40.0 (6) 50.0 (13) 46.0 (29)
Total 100.0 (22) 100.0 (15) 100.0 (26) 100.0 (63)
Education
Less than high school 36.5 (8) 33.3 (5) 34.6 (9) 34.9 (22)
Equivalent to high school 54.5 (12) 40.0 (6) 46.2 (12) 47.6 (30)
Some College/No degree 0.0 (0) 6.7 (1) 11.5 (3) 6.3 (4)
College/ BA Equivalent/ Credentialed 4.5 (1) 6.7 (1) 7.7 (2) 6.3 (4)
Unknown or Trade School 4.5 (1) 13.4 (2) 0.0 (0) 4.8 (3)
Total 100.0 (22) 100.0 (15) 100.0 (26) 100.0 (63)
Birthplace
Port-a-Prince 50.0 (11) 46.7 (7) 53.8 (14) 50.8 (32)
Other 50.0 (11) 53.3 (8) 46.2 (12) 49.2 (31)
Total 100.0 (22) 100.0 (15) 100.0 (26) 100.0 (63)

in the study, to arrive on time for the interviews and other events we scheduled, to
patiently wait their turns, and to provide excellent interviews. However, the majority of
participants did not demonstrate a disposition to take matters in their own hands so as
to dream or make plans that inspire hope. Rather, a recurrent theme from males and
females across the neighborhoods reflected Flach’s ability to be disciplined while having
a low tolerance for unacceptable behavior in others. Some emphasized their integrity
as an impetus for perceiving their voting power, rather than violence, as a mechanism
of change, while others called for violent change in the nation, whatever the cost:

I am Angwase, nève! (Bitter; anxiety-filled). I feel like I must force the change. I am
not afraid to die! We were La Perle des Antilles (The Pearl of the Antilles). Now, we
can’t even find food to eat. There must be a revolution even if 500,000 people die—
better that than for us to spend the rest of our lives suffering together.

© 2023 College Board 29

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 593

Characteristics of resilience as defined by Flach were further evident among our

participants. For example, we observed many community members who were creating
beautiful works of art from the rubble under which the remains of loved ones decayed;
others painted exquisite scenery of people in the earthquake. Moreover, courage was
evident in the testimonies of community leaders, focus group members, and town hall
participants who persistently engaged in creative measures to obtain scarce resources
that were being offered and to meet with government officials that they felt should
help. A female community leader from Delmas described creativity, persistence, and
insight, as she asserted: “I went to his [government official’s] office and they told me
he was not there again. So, [laughing] I sat outside and waited until 5 o’clock and saw
him quickly jump in his car and drive off!”
All participants across focus groups and interviews spoke of their hope of possible
change as they awaited an election that was imminent during the first phase of the
study. They described anticipating support from foreign governments and international
aid organizations. A community member from Canapé Vert stated, “We believe in our
president, and as long as the American government gives him support, everything will
be resolved.” Others had hopes that the country would be rebuilt and would be better
in the long run, even while anticipating that socioeconomic inequity would persist and
bracing for the effect of cholera as a new, unanticipated threat. During the town hall
meeting, a young male Delmas resident stated,

Kote-k te mal ap toujou pi mal. [Places that were badly off will always be the worst.]
Those areas which were not too badly off before the earthquake will be not only para-
seismic but even more beautiful. The lowest class is the one that sustains and carries
all the problems, including this cholera that we are now facing.

While hope was evident, the final conclusion from the male town hall meeting,
was “Seeing is believing; we don’t know. There is hope, but we have to see. Here at
home, it is always like this- there is always beautiful, grand hope and then no result.”
Likewise, a sense of hopelessness stemming from “hearing” that things will improve
without “seeing” evidence on which to base hope was a theme in the female town hall
meeting. A female participant from Canapé Vert confirmed a subjective sense of void
with hopelessness, adding:

If we complain, we are speaking in the void. Nothing is going to be resolved, even

when we make organized protests. We don’t know what the government might do
for us. We hear that they are going to buy houses . . . that they give out food, but we
only hear. We don’t see because nobody comes to us. . . .

Werner and Smith’s conceptualization of resilience.25 Consistent with Werner

and Smith, participants of both town hall meetings strongly affirmed that their hope
was directed outside of themselves or their loved ones and that this external locus of
control may have hindered individual or corporate action: “Well, we don’t know. Our
hope is in God’s hands; we are waiting on God!” But even though the participants did
not assert an intrinsic hope in their personal ability to effect change, the hope born of

© 2023 College Board 30

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

594 Resilience and Haitians

their faith in God seemed to mitigate abject despair; however, in the men’s town hall
meeting, hope outside oneself and in God occasioned a lively debate concerning true
faith as something that endures, compared with something that many sought after
the shock of earthquake. A male community leader from Delmas acknowledged that
faith of the Haitian people may have been a result of the earthquake, rather than their
survival being the result of their faith:

Faith—it is part of the rubric—that is an answer some people had given in response
to your question about hope; but each person conceives of faith in a certain way. This
earthquake—the way it was—the magnitude—we don’t have that tradition/historical
experience. Today’s generation does not have a framework within which to understand
it. It’s normal that when the earthquake came—since from time to time, they were
instructing them they were telling them that the return of Jesus Christ is the end of
the world—and that they had never personally witnessed the death of such a great
quantity of people—it’s normal to interpret the earthquake as something to do with
the way they had been taught. Faith by its definition is something that is durable
and firm. It is not something that—when you have it, when it animates you—you
will not despair for what happens. The earthquake led every Haitian to scramble and
look for where their faith had been and where they’d hidden it—well, then there is
no Haitian who has faith—if that was it; if that is how it is. That means there is no
Haitian who has faith.

Werner and Smith’s view of resilience as including a spiritual stance of faith and
prayer was most evident in the initial phase of the study, which took place in the months
subsequent to the earthquake. During that time, members from all three communi-
ties had expressed a great deal of “faith” in “God,” and had stressed the importance of
faith and spirituality in their ability to continue to live day by day, even with recurrent
aftershocks, six months after the earthquake, “because we did not die in the earth-
quake.” These attributed the cause of the earthquake to the sins of the Haitian people
and ascribed their survival directly to their faith in God or in God’s ability to deliver
them for a higher purpose. Substantiating this belief, several study participants firmly
quoted a verse from Psalms 118:17:

Je ne mourrai pas, je vivrai, et je raconterai les œuvres de l’Eternel ; l’Eternel m’a châtié,
mais il ne m’a pas livré à la mort. [I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of
the LORD; the Lord has chastised me, but He has not given me over to death].

Others, including a male community leader from Delmas struggled with a faith
that encouraged endurance through suffering, asserting that his faith inspires hope,
but acknowledging that suffering is “not sweet” and can challenge one’s sense of worth,
leaving one with a sense of resignation and helplessness:

It makes a difference that I trust in God because there is hope; there is a song that
they used to sing [about] accept suffering. Whenever they are singing it in church
now, I can’t sing along because suffering is not something that a person can accept
as if it is something that is sweet. Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation that we
have to accept, because we don’t have the option of doing the contrary. We come to
the conclusion that maybe it is we ourselves who are not valuable.

© 2023 College Board 31

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 595

With respect to the aspect of Werner and Smith’s conceptualization of resilience as

involving relationships and a sense of purpose: Throughout the study, we were introduced
to mothers, brothers, children, and neighbors, and we observed a great deal of affection
among family members and friends. During Phases 1 and 2, we also were introduced
to “new” friends that participants had made as a result of the earthquake—people who
had offered help during or after the earthquake or people they had met in the displace-
ment camps. However, by the third phase, a recurrent theme was the loss of the “new”
friends, which compounded the loss of former friends who perished in the earthquake.
As an example, during both town hall meetings, participants who no longer resided in
the tents continuously reported that a friend or family member would allow them to
spend one or two days in a home from time to time; however, they asserted that these
were relationships that were forged prior to the earthquake. In fact, all agreed that in the
immediate aftermath of the earthquake, “rich and poor, light- and dark-skinned men
and women drank from the same cup,” as all pitched in to help each other. However,
new “friendships” did not endure after the initial aftershocks, as the wealthy scrambled
to regain their resources and to re-draw social and class boundaries.
In addition to acknowledging that new friends and social contacts did not endure
past the aftershocks, the most study participants also voiced an increasingly lower sense
of expectations of the country’s leadership. A male Canapé Vert focus group member
described a vicious circle of frustration, protest, and return to status quo, and others
agreed via strong spoken assent:

I’m bouke [tired to the point of weariness; at my end point/limit]. I am 49 years old.
Since my childhood, even if they [politicians] seem like good people, you come to
realize that they are what’s not good. You vote for change, but you observe that things
become even worse! We have been waiting too long. Our expectations have been
lowered. We went to school and put something in our brains for nothing. How much
time are we expected to wait? NOW! We are BOUKE! When people can’t handle it
anymore, they go and protest; when they protest, they beat them and right there we
return to the same thing again.

The sense of being stretched beyond the limit may have prevented us from finding
evidence that people would return to a previous and healthy level of functioning as
indicated by Luthar and colleagues. Study participants perceived that societal or insti-
tutional structures actually hindered Haitian individuals’ and communities’ ability to
recover. By the town hall meetings, Haiti had elected a new president, and participants
had observed the aftermath of an earthquake in Chile. They compared their own lead-
ers’ responses with those of Chilean leaders:

Well, then we will spend a five-year period sitting in tents, and then another admin-
istration will come into power and we’ll still be in the same thing; it is in the interest
of the government to help us but they pretend not to understand so as not to help.
Since the president just assumed power, when they have done taking note of our situa-
tion, they would see that the people no longer can handle the situation as it is—the
way that the terrains are not clean, the humiliation we are suffering, the water in the
area, hurricane season being here again; but we have asked, we have asked! We have

© 2023 College Board 32

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

596 Resilience and Haitians

asked already, isn’t that right? We have asked but we have not received a result! We
have made requests already; when you had come before, we had sent that message
with you; I see improvements in Chile. Here, there is no leadership. Se kòm si se yon
savann; yon ekip kabrit kap mache ladann san mèt. [It’s like a wilderness/wasteland;
a team of goats roaming about in it without a master.]

The above quotation contradicts Flach as well as Werner and Smith’s inclusion of
hope as part of resilience, and challenged their notions of resilient people as possessing
the belief that they have control over what happens to them. Indeed, few male partici-
pants in our study endorsed hope and purpose that was related to their own ability to
have control over what happened to them. For example, male town hall participants
echoed, “Nothing can be done to have made us more able to handle our affairs and
to keep ourselves safe,” although prior to the election of the new President, there had
been renewed hope that their shelter and food needs would be met. In contrast, 100%
of the female town hall participants study reported that the new government and its
leadership provided renewed hope for them that their needs would be met.
Luthar, Chichetti, and Becker’s conceptualization of resilience. With respect to
resilience as the ability to return to a previous and healthy level of functioning in the
aftermath of a stressful situation,20 throughout the three phases of research, partici-
pants across the three neighborhoods and across genders asserted that they and their
lives and quality of life had been completely changed by the earthquake. For example,
during the second phase of the research, both male and female focus group members
repeatedly re-emphasized the impact of losing family members, friends, associates and
neighbors, adults, elders, and children. Along with these losses, many experienced a
tremendous concern regarding the length of time that people spent under the debris
and the apparent inability of the Haitian government to enable speedy recovery of their
deceased loved ones, their belongings, and their residences.
A young female community member from Canapé Vert reflected Luthar’s criterion
of resilience as ability to return to previous level of functioning. However, in this
case the resilience seemed not to achieve a healthy level, as resources had dwindled
so greatly and the impact on people was so far-reaching. Her assertions, drawn from
Haitian popular wisdom, also partially illustrated Masten’s resilience as adjustment
under challenging conditions:

There are people from Mòn Rosa whose homes were not destroyed. If the person’s
home is not destroyed, even if it’s hard for the person to find food to eat, s/he is not
too bad; there is now no financing for their efforts, but they manage to live anyway.
From my viewpoint, the person spends as much as s/he knows s/he has. How does
the Haitian proverb go again? Mezi lajan ou mezi wanga-ou [Your magic/Voodoo is
only as big as your money].

Although this quotation does not indicate how positive the adjustment is, it does
support Nicolas and colleagues’ definition of Haitian resilience as flexibility, and of cul-
tural factors, in this case traditional proverbs, as featuring in resilience among Haitians.
Her statements regarding the ability of others to resume normal activities also reflect
resilience as defined by Flach in his positing of courage, plan-setting, and integrity as

© 2023 College Board 33

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 597

features of resilience, and Werner and Smith’s definition of resilience as an ability to

solve problems. Yet, although her statement, like others’, indicates that hopelessness was
inevitable (given long-standing financial inequities and rulers’ apathy), it still asserts the
capacity of individuals or communities to be either more or less resilient. Particularly
telling is her remark that people “manage to live anyway.”
National Center for Victims of Crime’s conceptualization of resilience.30 Consistent
with the National Center for Victims of Crime’s definition, some acknowledged that the
experience of the earthquake had made them stronger, while others maintained that
people continued as before the earthquake, but with a diminished capacity. Although
he is the only one from the study who maintained that he was stronger for the experi-
ence, a young male from Pétion Ville asserted,

Before the earthquake, I used to be afraid of blood; but I found myself lifting people
from under the debris who were covered in blood. I will never be afraid again. Noth-
ing worse could happen than what I have seen and experienced with this earthquake.

Among factors that affected Haitian earthquake survivors’ ability to emerge as normal
and stronger was a shift in the traditional communal response to death, in which friends
and relatives would gather to demonstrate emotional and social support to families
of the deceased. A female focus group member from Delmas expressed her despon-
dency that Haitians had become dekonsantre (desensitized). She explained that in the
immediate aftermath of the earthquake, she sought others to comfort her because she
had lost a one-year old daughter, her father, and her mother in the earthquake; but no
one comforted her because others had lost five or more family members. For her (and
others assented) life would forever be an individual and detached experience. In fact,
the loss of community that characterizes Haiti after the earthquake was summarized
by a woman from one of the town hall meetings, using a Haitian proverb—to which
all (100%) of those present assented loudly and in unison:

Se chak koukou kap klere pou je pa yo [It’s each firefly that is lighting the path for its
own eyes]. It’s not that one would not want to help a neighbor, but now, everybody’s
head is spinning, because everybody has problems, and so that’s what has happened.
You come to not have a mind anymore; problems have ravaged us—you can even
forget your own children in those moments. ...

Further evidence against the survivors’ ability to emerge normal or stronger was that
all (100%) of our focus group members and community leaders reported mental health
and behavioral symptoms stemming from the earthquake and the resulting trauma. A
female focus group member from Canapé Vert stated, “I feel like there is something
running through my head. I’m close to simply taking off and running. I just feel like
I want to escape—even by boat, just to not be in this environment anymore.” In fact,

© 2023 College Board 34

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

598 Resilience and Haitians

many individuals, males as well as females, described their personal experiences after
the earthquake as existing in a “void” or in “emptiness,” and this void pertained to their
living conditions, the living conditions of their neighbors, the impact of the earthquake
on their children, the loss of possessions and infrastructure, and a sense of helplessness
as they wondered if things would ever return to normal. A male community leader
from the Delmas neighborhood stated:

I feel as if I now exist in a void; now you are living in mud; when it rains, there is a
woman who puts her baby inside a drawer in the dresser to keep her dry. This makes
me cry. We cannot end without touching on children who are being lost in their
puberty period. Young men are heads of themselves; of 120 students who were at
our school, 20 returned from rural areas [where they had sought shelter]; not even
a bell or chalk; no seats to receive parents or professors; all scholastic equipment,
notebooks—all gone. I ask myself if things will ever return to the way they were.

Linley’s conceptualization of resilience.19 All (100%) of participants, regardless

of gender or neighborhood of residence, accepted that they were limited as human
beings, recognized and managed uncertainty, and integrated their emotions with their
cognitions. All noted that there was nothing to do but “wait,” but not all were content
to wait placidly and many disagreed on what they were waiting for. Some, in the first
phase, were waiting for the election and new government, others in subsequent phases
of the study, were waiting for more aid from international aid organizations, and still
others, by the town hall meeting, were waiting for God to answer prayers. There was
strong dissent to the latter with a few asserting such things as, “If we’re putting our hope
in faith, and we’re waiting for manna from heaven, the manna will never fall down.”
Although some expressed frustration of waiting helplessly, many highlighted the
need for positive emotions, stressing the importance of laughter, jokes, and sports
events for the children as valuable “distractions” in helping them to deal with the day
to day stresses and aftershocks.

Discussion
Haitians have faced numerous traumas historically. In the aftermath of the 2010 earth-
quake in Haiti, academic and media sources described Haitian survivors as resilient.2,23
We addressed the questions of whether the patterns of resilience based on the literature
can be used to explain the experiences of Haitian survivors of the earthquake, providing
testimonials of Haitians interviewed in three phases of research between 2010 and 2011.
Our findings indicate that definitions of resilience in the literature do partially
describe Haitian resilience. Specifically, we found evidence that support Haitians’ open-
mindedness, discipline, low tolerance for unacceptable behavior in others, and hope.
We also found support for definitions of resilience as creativity, courage, and insight.
Moreover, the psychological effect of Haitians’ traumatic experiences and the ability
to describe them to others (another characteristic of resilience) were also evident.
Consistent with Werner and Smith’s definition of resilience, we found evidence in our
study sample of Haitian resilience as the ability to solve problems, and the capacity to
initiate and retain friendships (albeit primarily retention of friendships forged before

© 2023 College Board 35

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 599

the earthquake). We further found support for Haitian resilience in a spiritual stance of
faith and prayer or spirituality, although the relative importance of faith and spirituality
in relation to independence, courage, and personal integrity as an impetus for action
varied among study participants.
As important, there was a recurrent theme throughout the study of “reziye/resig-
nation.” Resignation appears to be a contextual resignation to survive as a matter of
choice—when there is no apparent action that the individual can take to mitigate the
occurrence or consequence of an adverse event. The 2010 earthquake was such an
adverse event. Resilience as resignation underscores that we did not find evidence of
Werner and Smith’s definition of resilience as a belief that they have control over what
happens to them. This is not to discount the allusions to faith and prayer that were
resonant throughout the three phases of our study.
Thus, although the testimonials of survivors in our sample indicate that the above
definitions as well as the American Heritage definition of resilience can all be used
when referring to Haitians as resilient, the individual definitions may not suffice to
encompass their myriad experiences since the earthquake.
Adding to concerns about difficulty finding specific support in our study sample
for resilience as the belief that they have control over what happens to them was that
we also could not find evidence for Masten’s definition of resilience as involving posi-
tive adjustment under challenging conditions.21 Reasons for that may be our failure to
define “positive” clearly prior to our analysis of our data and our not having more time
to observe those studied. Most evident from our findings were testimonials in support
of resilience as wisdom (recognition and management of uncertainty, integration of
emotions and cognition, and recognition and acceptance of human limitation).19 This
was evident in the Haitian proverbs used by our study participants to reinforce their
statements, cultural factors, and flexibility, which Nicolas and colleagues indicate are
essential to Haitians’ coping.
We discovered that being resilient does not mean that individuals are unaffected
by difficulties, but that they have the ability to draw maximally on personal beliefs,
behaviors, skills, and attitudes to recover from trauma rather than succumbing to its
consequences. Many resilient people have the ability to emerge from stressful situa-
tions feeling normal and sometimes stronger for having experienced a traumatic event,
but that is not always the case; resilience is variable as some individuals can appear
less resilient than they were prior to a traumatic event, especially when the individual
experiences the traumatic event at a young age.30
Limitations. Our study has some limitations. First, it does not address resilience
among Haitians in the Diaspora. In the aftermath of the earthquake, hundreds of
Haitians were transported to the U.S. and other nations for humanitarian reasons.
The additional challenges and traumas experienced by those remain to be studied.
Second, despite the contributions of the present work, the factors that promote and
sustain resilience among Haitians, especially in post-traumatic situations such as the
2010 earthquake remain elusive. Third, we did not conduct a longitudinal study, which
would have enabled us to document the long-term effects of the earthquake on sur-
vivors and on their families in relation to resilience; a longitudinal study would also
facilitate findings on the extent to which offspring of the earthquake survivors might

© 2023 College Board 36

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

600 Resilience and Haitians

learn traits and attitudes of resilience from their parents. Fourth, our study does not
provide knowledge on how resilience develops and is strengthened among Haitians or
on how resilience develops among Haitians.
We caution that flippantly referring to Haitian survivors as resilient because they
are observed to return to “business as usual” is a potential detraction from focusing on
individual, community-level, and covert long-term infrastructure disorders that must
be addressed. Future studies should explore the manner in which resignation interacts
with the other facets of resilience discussed here (hope, creativity, insight, faith/ spiri-
tuality, wisdom). Future studies can also investigate gender differences, developmental
differences and class differences in resilience among Haitians.
The Haitians interviewed in this study have determined that while they hope in
their government, centuries of the same thing result in their losing faith and becom-
ing “bouke/tired to the point of weariness; at one’s endpoint/limit.” The international
aid agencies were timely and consistent in providing relief in the forms of food, water,
and other basic necessities. The question remains of where to begin in order to achieve
sustainable change that will equip the survivors to go beyond coping to thriving emo-
tionally. Future studies could also use Masten’s contribution that resilience involves
positive adjustment under challenging conditions and explore how resilience develops,
is strengthened and contributes to personal growth among Haitians. Moreover, future
studies can examine traits that mitigate the occurrence of severe physical and psycho-
logical distress among survivors of trauma in relation to the prognoses and functioning
of disaster survivors in Haiti. As important, such efforts should incorporate the use of
Haitian proverbs, which are a “natural” resource of popular wisdom and a framework
for making sense of their experiences, as evidenced by the fact that the majority of those
interviewed used a proverb to summarize the points they made. The use of metaphors
that are part of Haitian proverbs as contextual evidence for engaging Haitian clients
has been suggested.31 This would enable people to contribute to their own contextually
grounded interventions.
The understanding of resilience among Haitians can strengthen resilience where it
exists and provide key factors that are important in health and reconstruction. Hence,
the understanding of resilience in that context can inform health practitioners, policy-
makers and international aid organizations on how to use their input as key informants
on what constitutes resilience and reconstruction for them.

Acknowledgments
The larger social capital study discussed herein was supported by a grant from the
National Science Foundation (RAPID1034818).

References
1. Bellegarde-Smith P. A man-made disaster: the earthquake of January 12, 2010—a
Haitian perspective. J Black Stud. 2011 Mar;42(2):264–75.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021934710396709
2. Montas M. Haitian resilience? [Web blog post]. 2010. Available at: http://livefromhaiti
.blogspot.com/2010/06/haitian-resilience.html.

© 2023 College Board 37

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 601

3. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language. Resilience. Orlando, FL:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, 2015. Available at: http://www.ahdictionary
.com/word/search.html?q=resilience&submit.x=25&submit.y=19.
4. Rutter M. Resilience concepts and findings: implications for family therapy. J Fam
Ther. 2002 Dec;21(2):119–44.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-6427.00108
5. Hepworth DH, Rooney RH, Rooney GD, et al. Direct social work practice: theory
and skills (8th ed.). Independence, KY: Brooks Cole Publishing Company, 2009.
6. United States Geological Survey (USGS). Earthquake information for 2010: January
12, Haiti region. Reston, VA: USGS, 2012. Available at: http://earthquake.usgs.gov
/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/2010/.
7. Yehuda R. Risk and resilience in posttraumatic stress disorder. J Clin Psychiatry.
2004;65(Suppl 1):29–36.
PMid:14728094
8. The World Bank. Republic of Haiti—interim strategy note for CY2012: chair-
man’s summing up (English). Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2011. Available
at http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2011/12/15528643/republic-haiti
-interim-strategy-note-cy2012-chairmans-summing-up.
9. United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The Americas and the Caribbean: Haiti.
New York, NY: UNICEF, 2010. Available at: http://www.unicef.org/har2010/index_haiti
.php.
10. Mukherji A, Ganapati NE, Rahill GJ. Expecting the unexpected: field research in
post-disaster settings. Natural Hazards. 2014 Sep;73(2); 805–28.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11069-014-1105-8
11. Rahill GJ, Ganapati NE, Clerisme JC, et al. Shelter recovery in urban Haiti after the
earthquake: the dual role of social capital. Disasters. 2014 Apr;38(1):S73–93.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/disa.12051
PMid:24601933
12. Corbin J, Strauss A. Basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures
for developing grounded theory (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications,
2007.
13. Agar M. Getting better quality stuff: metholodogical competition in an interdisciplin-
ary niche. J Contemporary Ethnography. 1980;9(1):34–50.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/089124168000900102
14. Oliver DG, Serovich JM, Mason TL. Constraints and opportunities with interview
transcription: towards reflection in qualitative research. Soc Forces. 2005 Dec;84(2):
1273–89.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sof.2006.0023
PMid:16534533 PMCid:PMC1400594
15. Muhr T. ATLAS/ti: computer aided text interpretation and theory building (2nd ed.).
Berlin: Scientific Software Development, 1994.
16. SPSS Inc. SPSS for Windows, version 16.0. Chicago, IL: SPSS Inc., 2007.
17. Bangert-Drowns RL, Wells-Parker E, Chevillard I. Assessing the methodological
quality of research in narrative reviews and meta-analysis. In: Bryant KJ, Windle M,
West SG, eds. The science of prevention. Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association, 1997: 405–29.
18. Asante MK. Haiti: three analytical narratives of crisis and recovery. J Black Stud. 2011;
42(2):276–87.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021934710395589

© 2023 College Board 38

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

602 Resilience and Haitians

19. Flach F. The resilience hypothesis and posttraumatic stress disorder. In: Wolf ME,
Mosnaim AD, eds. Posttraumatic stress disorder: etiology, phenomenology, and treat-
ment. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1990:36–45.
20. Linley PA. Positive adaptation to trauma: wisdom as both process and outcome.
J Trauma Stress. 2003 Dec;16(6):601–10.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:JOTS.0000004086.64509.09
PMid:14690359
21. Luthar SS, Cicchetti D, Becker B. The construct of resilience: a critical evaluation and
guidelines for future work. Child Dev. 2000 May–Jun;71(3):543–62.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00164
PMid:10953923 PMCid:PMC1885202
22. Masten AS. Ordinary magic. Resilience processes in development. Am Psychol. 2001
Mar;56(3):227–38.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.227
PMid:11315249
23. Nicolas G, Schwartz B, Pierre E. Weathering the storms like bamboo: the strengths
of Haitians in coping with natural disasters. In: Kalayjian A, Eugene D, eds. Interna-
tional handbook of emotional healing: rituals and practices for resilience after mass
trauma. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2010:93–106.
PMCid:PMC2798691
24. Tugade MM, Fredrickson BL. Resilient individuals use positive emotions to bounce
back from negative emotional experiences. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2004 Feb;86(2):320–33.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.320
PMid:14769087 PMCid:PMC3132556
25. Verner D, Heinemann A. Social resilience and state fragility in Haiti: breaking the
conflict–poverty trap. En brève. 2006 Sep;94:1-4. Available at:
26. Werner E, Smith RS. Overcoming the odds: high-risk children from birth to adult-
hood. New York, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
27. National Center for Victims of Crime. Reach in. Reach out: finding your resilience.
Washington, DC: National Center for Victims of Crime, 2005. Available at: https://
www.victimsofcrime.org/docs/2006%20Kit/resilience-brochure-%28web-ready%29
.pdf?sfvrsn=0.
28. Wolin SJ, Wolin S. The resilient self: how survivors of troubled families rise above
adversity. New York, NY: Villard Books, 1993.
29. Bellavita C. Changing homeland security: what is homeland security? Homeland
Security Affairs. 2008 Jun;4(2):1–30.
30. Werner EE, Smith RS. Vulnerable but invincible: a study of resilient children. New
York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1982.
31. Rahill G, Jean-Gilles M, Thomlison B, et  al. Metaphors as contextual evidence for
engaging Haitian clients in practice: a case study. Am J Psychother. 2011;65(2):133–49.
PMid:21847891
32. N’Zengou-Tayo MJ. ‘Fanm se poto mitan: Haitian woman, the pillar of society. Fem
Rev. 1998 Summer;(59):118–42.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/014177898339497
PMid:12294236
33. Roysircar G. Disaster counseling: a Haitian family case post January 12, 2010 earth-
quake. In: Poyrazli S, Thompson CE, eds. International case studies in mental health.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc., 2013:155–80.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452240589.n10

© 2023 College Board 39

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Rahill, Ganapati, Joshi, Bristol, Molé, Jean-Pierre, Dionne, and Benavides 603

34. Belizaire LS, Fuertes JN. Attachment, coping, acculturative stress, and quality of life
among Haitian immigrants. J Couns Dev. 2011;89:89–97.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2011.tb00064.x
35. Lundy G. Transnationalism in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake: reinforcing ties
and second-generation identity. J Black Stud. 2011 Mar;42(2):203–24. Epub 2011 Jan
27.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021934710394444
36. Stewart MR. Autobiographical narratives of Haitian adolescents separated from their
parents by immigration: resilience in the face of difficulty. Indiana, PA: Indiana Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, 2009.
37. Yarvis J, Sabin M, Nackerud L, et al. Haitian immigrants in the United States: inter-
generational trauma transmission, adaptation and ethnic identity. Caribbean Journal
of Social Work. 2004;3(1):57–73.

© 2023 College Board 40

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

The Dark Side of Resilience

By Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Derek Lusk
August 16, 2017
From Harvard Business Review

Resilience, defined as the psychological capacity to adapt to stressful circumstances and to

bounce back from adverse events, is a highly sought-after personality trait in the modern
workplace. As Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant argue in their recent book, we can think of
resilience as a sort of muscle that contracts during good times and expands during bad times.
In that sense, the best way to develop resilience is through hardship, which various philosophers
have pointed out through the years: Seneca noted that “difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor
does the body” and Nietzsche famously stated “that which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”
In a similar vein, the United States Marine Corps uses the “pain is just weakness leaving the
body” mantra as part of their hardcore training program.
But could too much resilience be a bad thing, just like too much muscle mass can be a bad
thing — i.e., putting a strain on the heart? Large-scale scientific studies suggest that even
adaptive competencies become maladaptive if taken to the extreme. As Rob Kaiser’s research
on leadership versatility indicates, overused strengths become weaknesses. In line, it is easy to
conceive of situations in which individuals could be too resilient for their own sake.
For example, extreme resilience could drive people to become overly persistent with unattainable
goals. Although we tend to celebrate individuals who aim high or dream big, it is usually more
effective to adjust one’s goals to more achievable levels, which means giving up on others.
Indeed, scientific reviews show that most people waste an enormous amount of time persisting
with unrealistic goals, a phenomenon called the “false hope syndrome.” Even when past
behaviors clearly suggest that goals are unlikely to be attained, overconfidence and an unfounded
degree of optimism can lead to people wasting energy on pointless tasks.
Along the same line, too much resilience could make people overly tolerant of adversity.
At work, this can translate into putting up with boring or demoralizing jobs — and particularly
bad bosses — for longer than needed. In America, 75% of employees consider their direct line
manager the worst part of their job, and 65% would take a pay cut if they could replace their
boss with someone else. Yet there is no indication that people actually act on these attitudes, with
job tenure remaining stable over the years despite ubiquitous access to career opportunities and
the rise of passive recruitment introduced by the digital revolution. Whereas in the realm
of dating, technology has made it easier for people to meet someone and begin a new relationship,
in the world of work people seemed resigned to their bleak state of affairs. Perhaps if they were
less resilient, they would be more likely to improve their job circumstances, as many individuals
do when they decide to ditch traditional employment to work for themselves. However, people
are much more willing to put up with a bad job (and boss) than a bad relationship.
In addition, too much resilience can get in the way of leadership effectiveness and, by extension,
team and organizational effectiveness. In a recent study, Adrian Furnham and colleagues
showed that there are dramatic differences in people’s ability to adapt to stressful jobs and
workplace environments. In the face of seemingly hopeless circumstances, some people
resemble a superhero cartoon character that runs through a brick wall: unemotional, fearless,
and hyper-phlegmatic. To protect against psychological harm, they deploy quite aggressive
coping mechanisms that artificially inflate their egos. Meanwhile, others have a set of
underlying propensities that make them act a little differently when under stress and pressure.

© 2023 College Board 41

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

They become emotionally volatile and scared of rejection. And consequently, they move away
from groups, put up walls to avoid being criticized, and openly admit faults as a way to guard
against public shaming.
Even though the resilient superhero is usually perceived as better, there is a hidden dark side
to it: it comes with the exact same traits that inhibit self-awareness and, in turn, the ability
to maintain a realistic self-concept, which is pivotal for developing one’s career potential and
leadership talent. For instance, multiple studies suggest that bold leaders are unaware of their
limitations and overestimate their leadership capabilities and current performance, which leads
to not being able to adjust one’s interpersonal approach to fit the context. They are, in effect,
rigidly and delusionally resilient and closed off to information that could be imperative in fixing
— or at least improving — behavioral weaknesses. In short, when resilience is driven by self-
enhancement, success comes at a high price: denial.
Along with blinding leaders to improvement opportunities and detaching them from reality,
leadership pipelines are corroded with resilient leaders who were nominated as high-potentials
but have no genuine talent for leadership. To explain this phenomenon, sociobiologists David
Sloan Wilson and E.O. Wilson argue that within any group of people — whether a work team
or presidential candidates — the person who wins, and is therefore named the group’s leader, is
generally very resilient or “gritty.”
However, there is something more important going on in human affairs than internal politics,
and competition within groups is less important than between groups — such as Apple going
head to head with Microsoft on technological innovations, Coca-Cola trying to outmaneuver
Pepsi’s marketing campaigns, or, in evolutionary terms, how our ancestors fought for territory
against rival teams 10,000 years ago. As Robert Hogan notes, to get ahead of other groups,
individuals must be able to get along with each other within their own group in order to form a
team. This always requires leadership, but the right leaders must be chosen. When it comes to
deciding which leaders are going to rally the troops in the long-term, the most psychologically
resilient individuals have a miscellany of characteristics that come much closer to political savvy
and an authoritarian leadership style than those needed to influence a team to work in harmony
and focus its attention on outperforming rivals. In other words, choosing resilient leaders is not
enough: they must also have integrity and care more about the welfare of their teams than their
own personal success.
In sum, there is no doubt that resilience is a useful and highly adaptive trait, especially in the
face of traumatic events. However, when taken too far, it may focus individuals on impossible
goals and make them unnecessarily tolerant of unpleasant or counterproductive circumstances. ...
Finally, while it may be reassuring for teams, organizations, and countries to select leaders on
the basis of their resilience — who doesn’t want to be protected by a tough and strong leader?
— such leaders are not necessarily good for the group, much like bacteria or parasites are much
more problematic when they are more resistant.

© 2023 College Board 42

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

The Meditations of the Emperor

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,
Book IV
Translated by George W. Chrystal
1902

1. The power which rules within us, when its state is accordant with nature, so acts in every
occurrence as easily to adapt itself to all present or possible situations. It requires no set material
to work upon, but, under proper reservation, needs but the incitement to pursue, and makes
matter for its activities out of every opposition. Even so a fire masters that which is cast upon
it, and though a small flame would have been extinguished, your great blaze quickly makes the
added fuel its own, consumes it, and grows mightier therefrom.

2. Let no action be done at random, nor otherwise than in complete accordance with the
principles involved.

3. Men seek retirement in the country, on the sea-coast, in the mountains; and you too have
frequent longings for such distractions. Yet surely this is great folly, since you may retire into
yourself at any hour you please. Nowhere can a man find any retreat more quiet and more full
of leisure than in his own soul; especially when there is that within it on which, if he but look,
he is straightway quite at rest. And rest I hold to be naught else but perfect order in the soul.
Constantly, therefore, allow yourself this retirement, and so renew yourself. Have also at hand
thoughts brief and fundamental, which readily may occur; sufficing to shut out the discordant
clamour of the world, and to send you back without fretting at the task to which you return.
For at what do you fret? At the wickedness of mankind. Recollect the maxim that all reasoning
beings are created for one another, that to bear with them is a part of justice, and that they
cannot help their sin. Remember how many of those who lived in enmity, suspicion, and hatred,
at daggers drawn, have been stretched on their funeral pyres, and turned to ashes. Remember
and cease from your complaints. Is it your allotted part in the world’s destiny that chagrins
you? Be calm, and renew your knowledge of the alternative, that “Either providence directs the
world, or there is nothing but unguided atoms;” and recollect the many proofs that the Universe
is as it were a state. Do the ills of the body still have power to touch you? Reflect that the mind,
once withdrawn within itself, once grown conscious of its own power, has no concern with the
motions, rough or smooth, of the breathing body. Remember, too, all that you have heard and
assented to concerning pain and pleasure. Are you distracted by the poor thing called fame?
Think how swiftly all things are forgotten. Behold the chaos of eternity which besets us on
either side. Think how empty is the noisy echo of acclamation; how fickle and how scant of
judgment are they who would seem to praise us, and how narrow the bounds within which
their praise is confined. All the earth is but a point in the Universe; how small a corner of that
little is inhabited, and even there how few are they and of how little worth who are to praise us!
Remember then that there ever remains for you retirement into the little field within. And, above
all, be neither distraught nor overstrained. Hold fast your freedom: consider all things as a man of
courage, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal. Readiest among the principles to which you
look let there be these two: Firstly, things external do not touch the soul, but remain powerless
without; and all trouble comes from what we think of them within. Secondly, all things visible
change in a moment, and are gone for ever. Recollect all the changes of which you have yourself
been a witness. The world is a succession of changes: life is but thought.

© 2023 College Board 43

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

4. If mind be common to us all, the reason in virtue of which we are rational is also common;
so too is the power which bids us do or not do. Therefore we have all a common law; and if so,
we are fellow-citizens and members of some common polity. The Universe, then, must in a
manner be a state, for of what other common polity can all mankind be said to be members?
Wherefore it is from this common state that we derive our intellectual power, our reason, and
our law; or whence do we derive them? For that which is earthy in me is derived from earth,
my moisture from some other element, my breath and what is warm or fiery from their proper
sources. And therefore, as nothing can arise from nothing or return thereto, my intellectual part
has also a source.

5. Death, like birth, is a mystery of nature; the one a compounding of elements, the other a
resolution into the same. In neither is there anything shameful or against the nature of the
rational animal, or contrary to the law of its constitution.

6. It is fate that such actions should come from such men. He who would have it otherwise would
have figs without juice. This, too, you should remember: that in a very short time both you and
he must die; and a little after not even the name of either shall remain.

7. Suppress the thought; and the cry “I am hurt!” is gone. Suppress “I am hurt!” and you suppress
the injury.

8. What makes not a man worse than he was, makes not his life worse, nor hurts him without
or within.

9. The law of utility must act so.

10. All that happens, happens right: you will find it so if you observe narrowly. I mean not only
according to a natural order, but according to our idea of justice, and, as it were, by the action
of one who distributes according to merit. Go on then observing this as you have begun, and
whatever you do, let your aim be goodness, goodness as it is rightly understood. Hold to this in
every action.

11. Think not as your insulter judges or wishes you to judge: but see things as they truly are.

12. For two things be ever ready: First, to do that only which reason, the sovereign and legislative
faculty, suggests for the good of mankind: Secondly, to change your course on meeting any one
who can correct and alter your opinion. But let the change be made because you really believe it
to be in the interest of justice or the public good, or such like, and not with any view to pleasure
or glory for yourself.

13. Have you reason? I have. Why then do you not use it? When it performs its proper office what
more do you require?

14. You exist as part of a whole. You will disappear again in that which produced you; or rather
you will change and be resumed again into the productive intelligence.

15. Many grains of frankincense are laid on the same altar. One falls soon, another later. It
makes no difference.

16. Within ten days, if you return to the observance of moral principles and to the cult of reason,
you will appear a God to them who now esteem you a wild beast or an ape.

© 2023 College Board 44

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

17. Order not your life as though you had ten thousand years to live. Fate hangs over you.
While you live, while yet you may, be good.

18. How much he gains in leisure who looks not to what his neighbours say, or do, or intend;
but considers only how his own actions may be just and holy, looking not, as Agathon says,
to the moral example of others, but running a straight course and never turning therefrom.

19. He who is careful and troubled about the fame which is to live after him considers not
that each one of those who remember him must very soon die himself, and thereafter also
the succeeding generation, until every memory of him, handed on by excited and ephemeral
admirers, dies utterly away. Grant that your memory were immortal, and those immortal who
retain it; yet what is that to you? I ask not, what is that to the dead? But to the living what is the
profit in praise, except it be in some convenience that it brings? And you now abandon what
nature has put in your power in order to set your hopes upon the report of others.

20. Whatever is beautiful at all is beautiful in itself. Its beauty ends there, and praise has no
part in it. Nothing is the better or the worse for being praised; and this holds also of what is
beautiful in the common estimation: of material forms and works of art. Thus true beauty needs
nothing beyond itself, any more than law, or truth, or kindness, or honour. For none of these
gets a single grace from praise or one blot from censure. Does the emerald lose its virtue if one
praise it not? Can one by scanting praise depreciate gold, ivory, or purple, a lyre or a dagger,
a flower or a shrub?

21. If our souls survive us, how, you ask, has the air contained them from eternity? How, I
answer, does the earth contain so many bodies buried during so long a time? Just as corpses,
after remaining for a while in the earth, change, and are dissipated to make room for others; so
also the souls, liberated into air, remain for a little, and then are changed, diffused, rekindled,
and resumed into the universal productive spirit; and so give way to others who come to take
their places. This may serve for an answer, on the supposition that the soul survives the body.
But we have not merely to consider the number of bodies thus buried in the earth. There are also
all the living creatures eaten day by day by ourselves and other animals. How great a multitude
of them is thus consumed, and as it were buried in the bodies of those who feed upon them. Yet
there is ever space to contain them, owing to the changes into blood, air, and fire. What, then, is
the key to this enquiry? Discrimination of matter and cause.

22. Swerve not from your path. In every impulse render justice its due, and in all thinking be
sure that you understand.

23. I am in tune with all that is of thy harmony, O Nature. For me nothing is too early and
nothing is too late that comes in thy good time. All is fruit to me, O Nature, that thy seasons
bring. From thee are all things, thou comprehendest all, and all returns to thee. The poet says,
“O dear City of Cecrops!” Shall I not say, “Dear City of God!”

24. “Do few things,” says the philosopher, “if you would have quiet.” This is perhaps a better
saying, “Do what is necessary, do what the reason of the being that is social in its nature directs,
and do it in the spirit of that direction.” By this you will attain the calm that comes from
virtuous action, and that calm also which comes from having few things to do. Most things you
say and do are not necessary. Have done with them, and you will be more at leisure and less
perturbed. On every occasion, then, ask yourself the question, Is this thing not unnecessary?
And put away not only unnecessary deeds but unnecessary thoughts, for by so doing you will
avoid all superfluous actions.

© 2023 College Board 45

 AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

25. Make trial how the life of a good man succeeds with you, the life of one who is content with
the lot appointed him by Providence, and satisfied with the justice of his own actions and the
benevolence of his disposition.

26. You have seen the other state, make trial also of this. Avoid perplexity; seek simplicity. Has a
man sinned? He bears his own sin. Has aught befallen you? It is well; for all that befalls you is an
ordained part in the weaving of the destiny of all things from the beginning. In sum, life is short.
Make the best of the present in reason and in justice. Be sober in your relaxation.

27. The Universe is either an ordered whole or a confusion. But, although a mixture of phenomena,
it is certainly an ordered whole. Or, do you think that there can be order in you and confusion in
the Universe, and that too when all things, though diffused and separated, are all in sympathy,
one with another?...

...

29. He is a foreigner, and not a citizen of the world, who knows not what the world contains; and
he, too, who knows not what happens in it. He is a deserter who flies from the reason that rules
this polity. He is blind, whose intellectual eye is closed. He is a beggar, who needs the gifts of
others, and has not from himself all that is necessary for life. He is an excrescence on the scheme
of things, who withdraws and separates himself from the reasoned constitution of the nature in
which he shares, by discontent with what befalls. That same nature which produces this event
produced thee. He is the seditious citizen who separates his particular soul from the one soul of all
reasonable beings.

30. One acts the philosopher without a coat, another without books, a third half-naked. Says one,
“I have not bread, and yet I hold to reason.” Says another, “I have not even the spiritual food of
instruction, and yet I hold to it.”

31. Love the art which you have learned, humble though it be, and in it find your recreation. And
spend the remainder of your life as one who with all his heart commits his concerns to the Gods,
and neither acts the tyrant nor the slave to any of mankind.

32. Recall, for example, the age of Vespasian. It is as the spectacle of our own time. You will see
men marrying, bringing up children, sick and dying, warring and feasting, trading and farming.
You will see men flattering, obstinate in their own will, suspecting, plotting, wishing for the death
of others, repining at fortune, courting mistresses, hoarding treasure, pursuing consulships and
kingdoms. Yet all that life is spent and gone. Come down to Trajan’s days. Again all is the same;
and again, that life, too, is dead. Consider, likewise, the records of other times and nations, and see
how, after their fit of eagerness, all quickly fell, and were resolved into the elements. But most of
all, remember those whom you yourself have known, men who were distracted about vain things,
men who neglected the course which suited their own nature, neither holding fast to it nor finding
their contentment there. And, herein, forget not that care is to be bestowed on any enterprise only
in proportion to its proper worth. For if you keep this in mind you will not be disheartened from
over concern with things of less account.

33. The familiar phrases of old days are now strange and obsolete; and, likewise, the names of
such as were once much celebrated now sound strangely in our ears. Camillus, Caeso, Volesus,
Leonnatus; after them Scipio and Cato; lastly, Augustus, Hadrian, and Antonine - all are forgotten.
All things hasten to an end, shall speedily seem old fables, and then be buried in oblivion. This
I say of those who have shone with the brightness of their fame. The rest of men, as soon as they
expire, are unknown and forgotten. What, then, is it to be remembered for ever? A wholly empty

© 2023 College Board 46

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

thing. For what should we be zealous? For this alone, that our souls be just, our actions unselfish,
our speech ever sincere, and our disposition such as may cheerfully embrace whatever happens,
seeing it to be inevitable, familiar, and sprung from the same source and origin as we ourselves.

34. Willingly resign yourself to Clotho, permitting her to spin her thread of what yarn she may.

35. All things are for a day, both what remembers and what is remembered.

36. Observe continually that all things exist in change; and keep this thought ever with you,
that Nature loves nothing more than changing what things now are, and making others like them.
For what now is, is in a manner the seed of what shall be. Therefore, conceive not that that alone
is seed which is cast into the earth or the womb, for that is the thought of ignorance.

37. You are presently to die, and yet you have not attained to simplicity or calm, or to disbelief
that you can be hurt by things external. You have not learned to be kindly to all men, or to count
just dealing the whole of wisdom.

38. Scan closely that which governs men; see what are their cares, and what they pursue or shun.

39. That which is evil for you exists not in the soul of another; nor in any change or alteration
of the body which surrounds you. Where, then, is it? It lies in that part of you by which you
apprehend what evil is. Stay the apprehension, and all is well. And though the poor body to
which it is so closely bound be cut and burned, though it suppurate or mortify, yet let the
apprehension remain inactive: that is, let it judge nothing either bad or good which can happen
equally to the bad man and to the good. For that which befalls equally him who lives in accord,
and him who lives in discord with Nature, can neither be natural nor unnatural.

40. Ever consider this Universe as one living being, with one material substance and one spirit.
Observe how all things are referred to the one intelligence of this being; how all things act on
one impulse; how all things are concurrent causes of all others; and how all things are connected
and intertwined.

41. “Thou art a poor soul, saddled with a corpse,” said Epictetus.

42. There is no evil for things which subsist in change; and there can be no good for things which
subsist without it.

43. Time is a river, a violent torrent of things coming into being. Each one, as soon as it has
appeared, is swept away: it is succeeded by another which is swept away in its turn.

44. All that happens is as natural and familiar as a rose in spring, or fruit in summer. Such are
disease and death, calumny and treachery, and all else which gives fools joy or sorrow.

45. Consequents follow antecedents by virtue of a special and necessary connexion. This relation
is not that which exists in a mere enumeration of independent things, and depends merely on
some arbitrary convention. It is a rational relationship. And just as things now existing are ranged
harmoniously together, so those which come into existence display no bare succession, but a
wonderful harmony with what preceded.

46. Remember always the sayings of Heraclitus: that the death of earth is to become water, the
death of water to become air, and the death of air to become fire; and so conversely. Remember
in what a case he is who forgets whither the way leads: that men are frequently at variance with

© 2023 College Board 47

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

their close and constant companion, the reason which rules all: that men count strange that which
they meet every day: that we should neither act nor speak as though in slumber, although even in
slumber we seem to act and speak; nor yet like children learning from their parents, with a mere
acceptance of everything just as we are told it.

47. If some God were to inform you that you must die tomorrow, or the next day at farthest, you
would take little concern whether it was to be tomorrow or the next day; that is if you were not
the most miserable of cowards. For how small is the difference? Wherefore, account it of no great
moment whether you die after many years or tomorrow.

48. Constantly consider how many physicians are dead and gone, who frequently knitted their
brows over their patients; how many astrologers, who foretold the deaths of others with great
ostentation of their art; how many philosophers, who wrote endlessly on death and immortality;
how many warriors, who slew their thousands; and how many tyrants, who used their power of
life and death with cruel wantonness, as though they had been immortal. How many whole cities,
if I may so speak, are dead: Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others past counting.
Tell over next all those you have known, one after the other: think how one buried his fellow,
then lay dead himself, to be buried by a third. And all this within a little time. In sum, look upon
human things, and behold how short-lived and how vile they are; mucus yesterday, tomorrow
ashes or pickled carrion. Spend, then, the fleeting remnant of your time in a spirit that accords
with Nature, and depart contentedly. So the olive falls when it is grown ripe, blessing the ground
from whence it sprung, and thankful to the tree that bore it.

49. Be like a promontory against which the waves are always breaking. It stands fast, and stills
the waters that rage around it. “Wretched am I,” says one, “that this has befallen me.” “Nay,”
say you, “happy am I who, though this has befallen me, can still remain without sorrow, neither
broken by the present nor dreading the future.” The like might have befallen any one; but every
one would not have endured it unpained. Why, then, should we dwell more on the misfortune
of the incident than on the felicity of such strength of mind? Can you call that a misfortune
for a man which is not a miscarriage of his nature? And can you call anything a miscarriage
of his nature which is not contrary to its purpose? You have learned its purpose, have you not?
Then does this accident debar you from justice, magnanimity, prudence, wisdom, caution,
truth, honour, freedom, and all else in the possession of which man’s nature finds its full estate?
Remember, therefore, for the future, upon all occasions of sorrow, to use the maxim: this thing
is not misfortune, but to bear it bravely is good fortune.

50. It is a vulgar meditation, and yet very effectual for enabling us to despise death, to consider
the fate of those who have been most earnestly tenacious of life, and enjoyed it longest. Wherein
is their gain greater than that of those who died before their time? They are all lying dead
somewhere or other. Cadicianus, Fabius, Julian, Lepidus, and their fellows, saw the corpses of
multitudes carried to the grave, and then themselves were carried thither. In sum, how small was
the difference of time, spent painfully amid what troubles, among what worthless men, and in
how mean a carcase! Think it not a thing of value. Rather look back into the eternity that gapes
behind, and forward into the other abyss of immensity. Compared with such infinity, small is the
difference between a life of three days and one of three ages like Nestor’s.

51. Run ever the short way. The short way is the way according to Nature. Therefore speak and
act according to the soundest rule; for this resolution will free you from much toil and warring,
and from all artful management and ostentation.

© 2023 College Board 48

AP® Capstone Program Stimulus Materials

Credits
College Board acknowledges all the third-party content that has been included in
these materials and respects the Intellectual Property rights of others. If we have
incorrectly attributed a source or overlooked a publisher, please contact us.
Page 5: “Urban evolution: How species adapt to survive in cities,” by Eric Bender.
2022. Published in Knowable Magazine (from Annual Reviews). Used by permission.
Page 13: From Long Walk to Freedom by Mandela, Nelson, © 1994. Reprinted by
permission of Little, Brown, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Page 15: “How to Build a Resilient Future Using Ancient Wisdom,” TED Talk
by Julia Watson.
Page 16: Lange, Dorothea, photographer. Destitute pea pickers in California.
Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. United States
Nipomo San Luis Obispo County California, 1936. March. Photograph.
https://www.loc.gov/item/2017762891/.
Page 17: Rahill, Guitele J., N. Emel Ganapati, Manisha Joshi, Brittany Bristol,
Amanda Molé, Arielle Jean-Pierre, Ariele Dionne, and Michele Benavides.
“In their Own Words: Resilience among Haitian Survivors of the 2010 Earthquake.”
Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 27:2 (2016), 580-603. © 2016
Meharry Medical College. Reprinted with permission of Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Page 41: “The Dark Side of Resilience,” by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and
Derek Lusk, from Harvard Business Review. © 2017, Harvard Business Publishing.
Used by permission.
Page 43: Public Domain.

© 2023 College Board 49