A Thousand Splendid Suns

I’m a little behind on the blogging; I wrote this a few nights ago, but for some reason it sat unpublished. My first post from Kabul!

It’s 9:53 pm in Kabul on a Sunday night, and I’m sitting in the office at the Counterinsurgency Training Center-Afghanistan. In the other room, LT B. is going over a presentation with an Afghan interpreter. Another group of US forces is coming through the training center tomorrow, and the interpreter is going to be teaching one of the modules. MAJ. R is packing up the last of her belongings, as she’s heading home, to Australia, for Christmas. LT A. is wandering around the large, open offices; he’s actually done with his work, and is variably catching up with the rest of the staff and picking on me.

It’s only my third day in Kabul, but things have fallen wonderfully quickly into place. And despite being thousands of miles away from home for the holidays, in the middle of a war zone (though Kabul, and Camp Julien, is kind of removed from the war), I am genuinely happy here. As strange as it may sound, I think I may have fallen in love with this little corner of Afghanistan. Yesterday, I was trying to explain to Eugenia exactly what it was that I was so enamored of, but I only managed to describe the sunrises – which are spectacular.

One of a thousand splendid suns rising over the ruins of the King's Palace (Darulaman, Kabul, Afghanistan)

It’s the small things, I guess. The warmth of everyone that I’ve met. Being embraced on all sides by the snow-capped Hindu Kush mountain ranges. The fast-paced intensive focus on counterinsurgency, which has earned CTC-A the nickname of the “Graduate School of Counterinsurgency.” The diversity of experiences and backgrounds. The 10 minute walk up to “chow”, which leaves me time to absorb and just reflect. The haunting singing five times a day that is the call to prayer. The brightness of the stars.

It’s the small things.

Like this morning. I headed up to breakfast at Camp Dubs, where a security guard was checking the ID of two of the Afghan interpreters. Since I was new and I didn’t think he’d recognize me, I asked him if he needed to see my ID as well.

He took a good look at me and responded, “No ma’am, you’re just coming home.”

And that stuck with me. As strange as it sounds, in that moment, it was true.

Winter Break Starts…Now

AHHHHH.  Though it’s just the beginning of finals week for most of my friends, today’s my last day on campus!

I board my first flight (to Newark, and then from there to London, to Dubai, and finally to Kabul) in a few hours, and I’m finally starting to get excited!  I’ve been so busy for the past couple of days with finals-studying and paper-writing that I’ve barely had time to even think about Afghanistan.

I mean, I’ve thought about it, rationally and logically and in terms of safety and preparation (Register with the US embassy? Check.  Getting war/terrorism insurance? Check.  Have everything packed?  Ermm…sort of.  I’m notoriously bad at packing…), but I haven’t really thought about it, on more than the detached, get-the-job-done, intellectual plane, you know?

But now that I am thinking about it – even though I REALLY need to concentrate on just finishing this anthro research paper first (on the merits of retributive vs. restorative justice in post-conflict Sri Lanka, in case you were wondering) – I’m getting that familiar elephants-in-my-stomach feeling, that giddiness, and that rush that I always get before traveling.  Of course this trip is unlike anything I’ve ever done before.  But still.

So happy holidays to all, congrats to all the ED1-ers who’ll be joining me on the hill next year!!!, and stay tuned – my next post will be coming at ya from the Middle East!

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[Disclaimer: Again, though the Admissions Office (and specifically, Dan, who we bloggers LOVE) thinks it's cool that I'm blogging about my experience in Afghanistan, because this blog is supposed to be about my experiences with global citizenship, I just want to stress that this trip is not in any way affiliated with Tufts University, and that I will not hold Tufts liable for anything that happens in country.]

President Bacow Is My Hero

There’s a list of suggested talking points for tour guides for the areas of campus that we pass, but not every section is about a location.  One, for example, is about a person: our very awesome and very beloved university president, Larry Bacow.

For my Sociology of Leadership class’s final project, my group decided to profile Bacow’s administration using some of the sociological frameworks that we had discussed in class.  I was just intrigued, I guess, by the cult of personality around the president and his wife, Adele.  Is this adulation normal?  Are we supposed to love our president so much?  (Examples of our Larry-love: t-shirts with his face and the word “Dope” a la the Obama “hope” posters, or the even cooler and more coveted ones, “Bacow is my homedog.”)  Or is it just a Tufts thing, another example of how we quirky Tufts kids are so ridiculously happy to be here?

According to the staff that we interviewed, which have included President Bacow himself, Provost Bharucha, former provost Sol Gittleman (who also wrote a great book about Tufts, Entrepreneurial University), among others, this isn’t the norm.  Not really.

In Bacow’s own words, “One of the really admirable qualities of Tufts that I like and that attracted me is that it’s a university without pretense.”

And even in researching for this project, my group members and I have definitely found this to be the case.  Tufts is just so…friendly.

Even the university administrators, who you’d think would be too busy to have time to meet with undergraduates without a whole lot of red tape, are very accessible.  Bacow literally responded to our email request for an interview within ten minutes.  When Bharucha had to cancel our meeting last minute because of actual work  that came up, his secretary emailed me twice, called and left a message three times, and finally texted me – to make sure that I knew of the change in plans.

It kind of gave me warm and fuzzies inside.

Sorry for the sickeningly sweet I-heart-Tufts-ness, but I swear, it’s all true.  (Except for when I’m waist-deep in work for finals.  Then my Jumbo love temporarily dissipates.)

(LiveBlog) Confessions of a Major Procrastinator

That I’m even writing this blog entry is another testament to my special knack for procrastination.  A week before I leave for Afghanistan, and after my post-Thanksgiving week of  doing absolutely nothing,  I have now began the week from hell.  Two exams, two papers, two presentation, a website to design,  a fundraiser (for Tufts Capoeira) to promote, and, of course, PACKING for Afghanistan.  Despite doing it so many times, I am still terrible at packing.  FML…

07.15 – Alarm goes off.  Somehow muster the will to not hit snooze.  Crawl/fall out of bed.

07.40 am – Make it to Dewick for breakfast, determined to get an early start on my work…only to find that it doesn’t even open until 08.00!  WHAT?! Clearly, the cosmic powers do not appreciate my attempts at being productive.

08:00 – Dewick opens! They have delicious blueberry pancakes today…

08:20 -  Finish eating in record time, and am now in an eerily empty, and silent, reading room.  Time to get down to business and write that anthropology paper.

09:17 – Have yet to start cracking on that anthro paper.  Have instead been distracted, for the past hour, by the promotional packet for the Field Exercise on Stability Operations (FIELDEX) that I’m planning for ALLIES.  It’s time for anthro, for real this time…

10:40 – On a facebook break.  Thankfully my friends are boring this morning, and I can get back pretty quickly to anthro.

10:45 – I have 10 minutes before I have a meeting with President Larry Bacaw for my Sociology of Leadership paper/presentation.  To work or not to work? That is the question…

10:49 – Decide that I can’t get anything done in 10 minutes anyway.  Give up.  Decide to catch up with my GoogleReader.

Procrastination ensues.

New Directions, Personal Growth

Last night I was catching up via gchat with an old friend, and we were inevitably talking about where we were in our lives and where we saw ourselves going.

I told him about my winter break plans, which have officially shifted from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan, and that I see myself eventually working in peace building and post-conflict reconstruction either as part of a provincial reconstruction team (PRT), the newly formed Civilian Response Corp (CRC), or through the UN or an NGO.

He expressed his surprise,  “I have to say, I would’ve never thought that that’s what you’d end up doing when I met you.”

I quickly typed in my response – “Me neither”.

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They say that college (like life) is a journey, and looking back at my year and a half on the hill, I marvel at how far Tufts has brought me. Coming out of high school, I was always shy and a bit unsure of myself, especially around new people, but at some point during college, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and got over that shyness (or learned to hide it, at least!).  I’ve always been very independent and very stubborn, but I’ve also learned to reach out and ask for help and, just as importantly, to offer it when I can. And by doing so, I’ve gotten some extraordinary opportunities.

But even so, there were some things that I saw as beyond my reach and traveling to Afghanistan to conduct research, as a 20 year old college sophomore, was one of them.

But in two weeks, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing.  On Dec 16, I’ll be flying out of Logan Airport to Kabul (via Newark, London, and Dubai first – two whole days in the air), where I will be a research assistant at the Counterinsurgency Training Center-Afghanistan (CTC-A).  For that month, I will be interviewing and interacting with some of the world’s foremost counterinsurgency experts in the aid of a fellow Tufts grad’s research on the importance of company level intelligence in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations.  (I mentioned this in a previous blog post…)

And if this is what Tufts has given me in just a year and a half, I can’t wait to see where else Tufts will have brought me by graduation

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[Disclaimer: I am going to Afghanistan independently, and will not be affiliated with Tufts or any institutions therein while I'm there.  I am the sole individual responsible for my safety, and will not hold Tufts or internal institutions liable for anything that may or may not happen in country.]

Home

I got back to campus this afternoon after a lovely and much needed Thanksgiving break with my mother in Jersey.  Tufts was grey and drizzly and absolutely dreary, and I had to race back to my house with my bags, drop them off downstairs, and then hurry to sociology – for which I was already late – so my homecoming was stressful and frazzled.

But as soon as I actually stepped into my bright and colorful room, my bad mood lifted.  I was hit by this sudden feeling of familiarity and warmth (and not just what radiated from the never-off-ancient-heater): I was home.

Advisor Adventures

I declared a major in anthropology today!  When I drop the form off at Dowling this afternoon, I will officially be an international relations/anthro double major

I had a nice long chat with my new advisor, Professor Rosalind Shaw, with whom I’m currently taking “Anthro 185: After Violence: Truth, Justice, and Social Repairs” and I have to say, I was very pleasantly surprised by how…helpful it was.  Actually, to be honest, it was the first time that I had that such a great advising experience at Tufts (officially, at least.  I’ve had a LOT of really great unofficial mentors.)

So, lessons learned on advisor selection?

1) Take a class with him or her first, if at all possible, and go to office hours!  I can’t stress the last part enough.  You want to choose an advisor that’s going to be available outside of classes and easy to get in touch with and that you actually get along with.  Going to see your advisor should not be a chore, but something you look forward to doing.

2) Make sure you share academic interests.  Professor Shaw’s areas of focus are conflict and post-conflict environments, the role of different individual, state, and organizational actors (including child soldiers) in combat, as well as some more specialized regional focuses, which very closely allign to my own interests.

3) Take your time and don’t be afraid to switch advisors.  Your advisor should genuinely care about you and your academic and personal progress.  Don’t settle for less.

Tufts Men

So a short post that’s not really about globalism/active citizenship, but needs a shout-out nonetheless -

I went over to my friend Brandon’s house for dinner tonight.  I was cooking with him and his housemates, though to be honest the guys were doing pretty well without me.  Anyways, The Clash comes on, and everyone’s rocking out, singing along, and playing air guitar – while chopping carrots and stir frying vegetables etc – which was kind of awesome.

But what was even better was that the next song that played was “Gaston” from “Beauty and the Beast”.  I expected them to change the song or to protest that the song was added to the Ipod by one of their sisters, but instead, they proceeded to belt out (Tim in a convincing Gaston’s baritone) “When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs…”

Rock on, Tufts men, rock on. <3

Two More Reasons To Fall In Love with Tufts

I think I should have lunch at Dewick by myself more often, because every time that I do, I end up running into friends and acquaintances that I don’t normally see and having wonderful conversations.

Yesterday, that happened with P*, an Afghan student that was in my counterinsurgency seminar last year.  There’s nothing quite like discussing Afghan politics with someone not only from Afghanistan, was in country during the elections, but who also covered said elections for the New York Times, under a pseudonym!  (Yep, Tufts students are just THAT cool.)

In the course of our lunch, I found some more reasons to fall in love with Tufts (as if you – or I – needed them ).

1.  The R.E.A.L. (Resuming Education Adult Learners) Program – I didn’t realize just how unique REAL is, but P cited it as probably the biggest reason why he ended up at Tufts.  It’s a special program for students that aren’t coming to university straight from high school; a lot of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans that attend Tufts do so through REAL.  I love having them on campus – the experiences and diversity that they bring are amazing, as P proves.

2. Dining services are very accommodating.  I always knew that they had great kosher and vegetarian options, but they also apparently accommodate Muslim students keeping halal.  Even though that’s not a service that directly benefits me, it gives me warm and fuzzies just to know how responsive the administration and the different departments within the university are.  We’re kind of spoiled – at Tufts, undergrads are kind of the center of the world.

(Random side note: Went to an awesome lecture last week at MIT, “Sri Lanka after the LTTE”.  Met a Tufts freshman who was on one of my tours last year.  First of all, he remembered me, yay!  He apparently thought that I was either very, very well paid or obsessively excited about Tufts.  Just FYI, Tufts tour guides aren’t paid – I really am this happy about the school more or less all the time.  He now understands why.)

*Name withheld for privacy/security reasons.

The World is Flat

Ah, the wonders of technology!

In case you haven’t noticed, we at Tufts are huge fans of all the new innovations in keeping connected.  I mean just at the Admissions Office, we have numerous student and staff blogs, a Facebook group, an active presence on chatrooms such as College Confidential, and a Twitter account.

That connectedness definitely adds to Tufts’ globalism.

In preparation for my Sri Lanka trip (which has been postponed…though that’ll be a subject for another post), for example, I’ve been skyping with Sri Lanka experts, following both human rights organizations and the defense establishment’s twitter accounts, e-mailing NGOs on the ground, and (OK so this is a little old school) calling and teleconferencing with with contacts hundreds of miles away.

And I love being able to do all of this from the comfort of my dorm room!  I love that with all of these handy technological aids, even a mere college sophomore like me can be connected to experts and practitioners in their fields, and can play a part – however small – in the unfolding of events thousands of miles away.   The world is flat indeed.