But to me, the key is not to let this trust, our faith, lull us into the abdication of personal responsibility. When that happens, we fall into dull repetition, producing empty versions of what was made before.

The new tutor was different. She was relational, not gushy, but attentive. She intuitively understood you were working under the weight, the history, of a reputation— that it was “in the air,” waiting to be validated by your first frustration. She knew that any sign of a lack of confidence in your ability could send you into a churn of self-doubt and very likely kill your interest.

Second, these efforts should involve the participation of as many people as possible. When people feel they haven’t been heard they tend not to trust. But when their input is a regular, normalized part of how a setting functions, they’re better able to trust it even when they disagree.

The new study habits I’d learned from Pat gave me the same sense New Yorkers have about their stresses: that I knew what to do. I knew how to cope. The ambiguity lessened. My frustration lessened, and with it my sense of being under threat. A weight of race was lifted, even though Pat’s help had nothing directly to do with race.

The larger point is that the effort to foster trust in diverse settings— a university, a small business, a sixth-grade classroom, a new start-up, a medical office, a magazine— is likely to be incomplete without seeing, without, as much as possible, walking in the shoes of the people involved.