Sylvia's Journal

A restless night, compounded by intense rain and lightning storms, followed a long and wonderful day teaching. The topic was change, and lo-and-behold, several things changed. The students are pre-occupied with their team projects and communications with their team counterparts in Nigeria, Malawi and Cambodia. This shows that whatever you hold people accountable for (a compelling presentation to a professional audience next week), will drive energy (and anxiety). The changes that happened yesterday had to do with focus and beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. The change is also about coming together, as a team here in Boston, and as a virtual team with their overseas clients. When Paul in Nigeria referred yesterday to ‘our vision’ as opposed to ‘the vision that you have for us’ the team of students were excited. As I watch these developments I am also excited because the students are actually contributing to the field project staff’s thinking and management.

The only person who seems a little less preoccupied with the team projects is Nuha. She is constantly thinking about the application of everything that is being taught to her life’s mission as it is unfolding; with much work to be done back in Riyadh. I imagine her brain busily putting bits of knowledge and data here and there, storage for later, accompanied by a thousand ‘but what if’ and ‘how would I’ kind of questions. Most of these questions are being asked quietly inside her head but a few are beginning to slip out. She brings something to this class that she may not even be aware of: the messy and complicated real world in a place so very different from ours here on the East Coast. Nuha is sharpening her thinking about strategies and tactics for change and I am so very pleased to be part of her journey this week. I am less sure about how I am helping the other students because their focus is on the course, and pleasing the professors; a label that fits me like an uncomfortable dress.

At the end of the class we picked up Axel at the MFA and drove to Wolffy’s place in Lincoln where students and faculty came together to simply hang out and eat good food. It was a slow bumper to bumper commute, not far in distance but endless in time. The good thing was that I got to spend this time with Nuha who I had given a ride. I learned much about her challenge of being a young Saudi woman who is temporarily let loose in this American society that is in many ways the antithesis of where she comes from. Somewhere in the picture are enlightened parents and supportive uncles. But in the background is an ancient tribal society that has the strictest norms about marriage and choosing a mate and where the word dating has no meaning. The tribal traditions even trump the religious ones, as Islam does actually encourage one to marry someone who is not from the tribes (qabiila). This is relevant for a 26-year old who comes from a large and old inland tribe that is very much set in its ways and requires her to marry one of her own. I was acutely aware how different the lives are of Sita and Tessa, who are in the same age cohort, and who have a freedom to do right (or wrong) as they please that they take entirely for granted.

Nuha and I have some things in common that bind us in spite of all the differences that separate us; one of these is that we are both psychologists and intensely interested in why people behave the way they do. We are both passionate about changing the way people relate to one another for the better. We want to understand what keeps some from embracing such changes, why they think they stand to lose more than to gain, so that we can be better at doing what we both believe we are called to do.

I got up early this morning to write and then prepare today’s class about communication. Last night when Axel and I came home from Lincoln we were too pooped to do anything other than tumble into bed, even though it was still early. Axel was exhausted from a four hour neuropsych assessment at Beth Israel that left him exhausted and feeling low. Tests do that to you because they check your upper limit; and no matter how high or low that limit is, the intent is to find out where you fail. The test results will be contrasted with a similar test he took 5 years ago and provide the brain injury doc with some, we hope, useful data to inform the treatment plan that is currently in place.