As a child of Foreign Service Officers, traveling and moving has been a normal part of his life, and he has often struggled with the question, “Where are you from?” Born in Arlington, Virginia, Hayden has moved every three years of his life since birth. His time at Penn will be the longest time he has ever lived in one place. While attending international schools in Serbia, Turkey, Costa Rica, and Mozambique, he identified himself and other people identified him primarily as an American. Within the United States, he struggles to single out one place as his hometown or home state. Returning to live in the United States for university, and taking part in the Slow Dialogue Project, has led him to wonder: What does it mean to be an American? What is the place of the United States in the world?
Hayden studies History at Penn. One of the values of AISM, his high school, was to teach students how to “flourish in an ever-changing world.” As Hayden continues to encounter and learn from the histories of people, dead and living, he wonders: How have people throughout time found community amidst upheaval? What constitutes a good life, or a life well lived?
Growing up learning Serbian, Turkish, Spanish, and Portuguese, and then taking German classes at Penn, he values exposure to multiple languages. The book he read in Proseminar I, Babel, remains with him as he thinks: How do people communicate understanding and misunderstanding through language?
At Paideia, Hayden has found a close community in which he can express his differences and yet remain a part of a program of people dedicated to dialogue, humanity, and each other. How can we have conversations in which we share what matters most to us, in respectful and helpful ways?