[uncensored]: Graduating Harvard

As salaam alaikum,

I have a feeling this entry is going to take a long time, so expect it to be in parts.

First of all, all thanks to Allah (swt), I graduated yesterday from Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health with my M.D. and M.P.H! All thanks to Allah (swt) for all of the support of my family, friends and the faculty who have supported me along the way. And thanks to you, my readers, my virtual Muslim family, some of you who have been with me from the beginning, for your support! You have helped me to furnish what has been a spiritual home for me when my own community has been quite lacking or honestly, nonexistent. I love you all!

There is a doctor in the house, but there is definitely a lot more for me to learn, and insha'Allah my residency program will take me there. Heads up, Seattle, this Muslimah is on her way!

This graduation was unlike any other graduation I've had before. I was very reflective of the past, prayerful for the future and mostly grateful for the present as it was. I sat amongst hundreds (thousands?) of graduate students with crimson hoods, listened to an undergraduate senior address the graduating class in Latin, and watched as old-world style ceremony played out before my eyes, including the happy mayor of Middlesex County banging his staff into the ground, calling the "meeting" into session.

It was so surreal to graduate from Harvard.

And this is coming from someone who has never been in awe of the institution. No, seriously. During undergraduate applications, I very purposefully did not apply to Harvard. When they sent their recruitment letter to me at my parents home when I was in high school, I never opened it. I applied and got into Yale and then ended up going to University of Michigan because I got a tuition scholarship there, and that was that.

I felt like even applying to Harvard was putting on heirs. I'm not sure why I was more comfortable applying to Yale, though. I think the real answer that I wasn't willing to admit was that Harvard intimidated me. It intimidated me and, after all, I just wanted to be a physician. I didn't need to go to the a school like that that was so expensive and so out of the league of anything anyone in my family had done just to fulfill a few pre-med requirements.

And so it was. I spent four happy and challenging years at the University of Michigan, and I will forever bleed blue...you know, in that not-really-a-sports-fan type of way.

But you come of age watching football by your heritage, hehe.

Anyway...

I ended up applying to Harvard for medical school on a whim. I had a few big-named medical schools that I somehow had the audacity to think I could get into...Johns Hopkins, Columbia...and most of all, University of California, San Francisco, the eminent UCSF. I fell in love with UCSF sometime at the end of my freshman year of college, learning that it was a university dedicated solely to the medical sciences. I formed myself at Michigan to be the type of competitive candidate for a medical school like UCSF. Everything from my grades, my extracurricular activities, my leadership roles...all was for, if God so willed, my admission to UCSF.

Harvard was an afterthought, a curiosity printed in crimson on a little postcard that was mailed to my parents' house one day in late spring, telling me that my MCAT scores were competitive, and that I should consider applying to Harvard.

Oh, really?

By this time, I had the MSAR, a book whose full name I forget but was basically the resource for all of the vital statistics of all accredited medical schools in the country. I had read over and highlighted key points about most of the medical schools that I had heard about, and a few others in choice locations. I hadn't really even considered the possibility of Harvard until I got that postcard. So, I checked them out, and to my surprise, the class of 2009 was 13% African American.

It doesn't seem like a feat, considering the United States is just under 13% black, but considering most medical schools have less than that much of a percentage of a black population and that this large of a black population was not seen in any medical school outside of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, HBCUs, (and I know this because I checked all of the medical schools in the MSAR), I was surprised. That was totally not what I was expecting from Harvard.

I interviewed at Harvard Medical School like it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, fully expecting not to be accepted, but taking in the opportunity. As friendly medical students helped me navigate the then-confusing quad and medical campuses to get to my off-campus interviews, I was pleased to see a humility that I didn't expect to see at Harvard, which I had previously considered to be home of the legacy and old-rich, a place where I wouldn't feel welcome.

And welcome they made me feel.

But even with all of this, I wouldn't know the half of it. I got into Harvard a little bit before I heard news from UCSF, my dream school. I went to Harvard's then all-underrepresented-minority weekend, Alliance Weekend, with little idea hat to expect.

I didn't know that it would be this weekend that would cement before me the path of my life to come.



So there's so much I can say about what it means to graduate from Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health. And not all of it is positive or glowing or even warranting of any of the flowery language I can occasionally concoct. I didn't get a chance to do my exit interview with the minority office, but I hear that they ask each student the question, if you had a chance to do this all over again, would you have chosen to come to Harvard and why or why not.

By the end of first year, the answer would have been a resounding, of course I would have! Second year, the answer would have been, maybe not, because I feel like half the stuff I learned I taught myself during board studying. Third year, I would have been like, do I even want to go into medicine? Fourth year, it's all about the Benjamins, baby...should have gone where I got more money...

But all joking aside, I know I wouldn't have done anything different, given a chance to do this again, and maybe I would have even made the decision more purposefully. Maybe, given a chance to do this again, I would have experimented more with the different professional hats that I can wear...

I don't know. I just graduated from Harvard finding myself wondering if I could have done even more while I was here, if I could have pushed myself more, if I could have sealed my professional trajectory even more with a stronger resume, with more projects, with research and papers, more work abroad...

And I found myself wanting to recall my years here and all I feel it means to graduate from this place. So I will, over the next few days, piece by piece, examine this all, what it means for me as a Submitter, a Believer, and insha'Allah what I hope for my future, given the words of wisdom of Dr. Dan Berwick, who addressed my class this year.

So much to say.

Nigerian Privilege?

As salaam alaikum,

This was one of the mornings I just stayed up after fajr. I'm so excited about moving to Seattle now and starting residency! In three short years, insha'Allah, I'll be a trained family physician, ready to save the world in my own little way. I'm so excited to (finally) have a strong panel of black patients while still getting to have my Latino patients, though yo viajo del caribe para México with my new patient population (I miss speaking Spanish!). And maybe I'll pick up a little Amharic along the way...

And then, one of my friends posted this article on his facebook page: Data show Nigerians most educated in the US. This was from a Houston periodical.

I posted this on my facebook page, to be met with three posts from one of my facebook friends, one of which was this article: Hidden Discrimination Against African Americans and Asians In Ivy League Admissions.

My friend posted two comments, one from a friend of hers and her own take, but she concluded something that was very troubling to me: that "non-slave descended success" was different from "slave descended success."

That comment tried to rip my identities asunder, man!

So, what is my success? I have a Nigerian father and an African-American mother? Was my 3.985 GPA in high school with 7 AP classes, graduating top 5% of my class and getting into all of the colleges I applied to more because of my slave or non-slave heritage? Was my graduating top 10% from my college and getting into Harvard for medical school slave or non-slave? My success at HMS? Slave? Non-slave? Was it more slave because I grew up around my mother's side of the family, and we are all slave-descended? Or was it more non-slave because I grew up with a Nigerian immigrant head of household, carry a Nigerian first and last name, ate Nigerian food but had nothing but phone contact with my non-slave descended family?

You see how ugly that sounds? I mean, I know what she's saying, but damn, can we find another way to say it? And seriously, where does that place me? With the Nigerian name, am I the product of Nigerian privilege? Did I come this far because I'm half Nigerian?

Okay, enough with the rhetorical. I don't think so, that's the answer!

Let's look at the African-American side of the family. My mother is one of 10 in a family that was part of the great migration. Her mother went as far as the 8th grade and her father got his GED and her father's education was interrupted by WWII. He served in Germany as an engineer and always aspired to higher education. They were sharecroppers in Arkansas. My Grandmother's side can trace their origins back to Harris Farm in Mississippi, the plantation where my ancestors came from. They moved from the village of Hensley, Arkansas to Detroit than Flint, MI, where Grandfather worked in the plant while Grandmother cared for their family. They were very poor, living in a two-bedroom house that was later demolished to make room for a highway in Flint. The boys slept in the living room. My mother and her siblings all attended some college, and several of them graduated with bachelors and a few with masters degrees in education, social work and administration. My mother was one who graduated with her Masters of Social Work. They were simultaneously the first generation to complete high school, college and graduate school education. If there was arriving to be had, my mother and her siblings arrived and then some. Because of their experiences with the Jim Crow south and racism, my grandparents would come to adhere to the Nation of Islam form of black nationalism, and took in with them all 10 of their children. In the late 1970s, the family converted to Islam, making possible the birth in 1985 of this Invisible Muslimah.

Let's look at the Nigerian side of my family. My grandfather was born in 1896 and remembers when "the white man" first came to his village. His mother ran away with him in her arms to try to escape. After a bout of smallpox in 1918 in which he felt himself healed by prayer alone, he converted from Anglican to Faith Tabernacle, a denomination that did not believe in medicine. He raised his family in the church, and their home was connected to the church. My father, the youngest, was born to him when he was in his 50s. They were not poor in Nigeria. They had a car, which was a sign of wealth, because as the head of the Faith Tabernacle church in Nigeria, my grandfather had to travel. The family later fled their home with only a few pictures after the war started. My father left his boarding school for a while and had to continue his education later. In the interim, he lost his mother to cancer. Biafra, made up of my father's ethnic group, which tried to secede from Nigeria, lost the war. He arrived to the United States in 1975 on a scholarship from the Nigerian government to pursue his university education here, after attending some university there in Nigeria. Excited to go to a school dedicated to technology, he stopped first at Michigan Tech in the UP before his cousin, a professor at the University of Michigan- Flint convinced him to matriculate at the Ann Arbor campus, for less snow. He got his masters degree in Chemical Engineering and met my mother, a fellow graduate student in the School of Social Work, and the rest is history.

My success is neither slave or non-slave descended. My success, of course, is first by the grace of God. My parents were some of his agents. I grew up in a loving household with strong, opinionated and strict parents. When my father learned what we were doing in math, when he came home from work and on the weekends, he would teach me ahead in math from the time I was in first grade onward. My mother would read with me at home when she discovered that some of my reading skills were weak and encouraged me to write and expand my vocabulary. My parents made sure that my education was enriched with their own strengths as I went through a small, community, majority-black school. And when they sensed that the school no longer challenged me and would not suit my brother's special education needs, we moved to another school district. My parents taught me to work hard. My mother taught me as a black person, I would have to perform above and beyond in order to get what I deserved at base. My father taught me that there was no difference between me and my Asian classmates, that none of had two heads, and pushed me harder, to not accept the A- on tests even when it was an accelerated class and the grade was scaled up.

My success is neither slave nor non-slave. My mother's success is not slave. How limiting of ourselves it is to ever think of it that way! Yes, she and her siblings succeeded, overcoming her personal family history of discrimination on several levels, from the failures of Reconstruction for the black community to Jim Crow, from segregation to redlining. And non-slave is a grossly oversimplified way to express my father's success as a black African in this country, with the complex history of Nigeria that he lived in his lifetime, from independence to civil war, from dictatorship to corruption and ethnic strife.

Yes, there are ugly truths about the country and this very ugly social construct of race, but whether or not black people are getting into Ivy League schools where they do not receive adequate academic and career support anyway should not be the primary area of focus. Nor should black college admissions in general be the only area of focus. College admission is a shallow victory and, in my opinion, an inadequate measure of success. Successful college attendance and graduation is a better measure of success. We get to these schools and I can say first hand, no, you are not especially supported. I went to college and advised myself until my last year when I had a premedical adviser help me know that my MCAT scores were competitive and helped me with my personal statement, but that was it. If you are taking someone from a poor public school and placing them in a competitive college environment without intense guidance and mentorship, whatever Affirmative Action you have in place will most likely fail to achieve any intended outcomes.

So, in the spirit of my public health school education, what are solutions? I didn't even tough on the Asian-American discrimination piece...that is a problem that I know many of my Asian friends have felt when trying to get into prestigious schools...I must say, however, the issue with them is very different than the issue with African Americans. Most of my Asian and Asian-American friends got into great schools, even if they weren't Ivies. Few of my black friends went to these schools. Some did not go to college at all.

For Asians and Asian-Americans, I think California's race-free admissions policy is best extended everywhere, even if it means, yes, Asians will be grossly over-represented in higher education. They work hard, they deserve it. I don't think African immigrants will be hurt by this policy, because many of us also do well with grades, extra-curriculars and standardized testing.

For African Americans...what needs to happen is that Affirmative Action as it used to stand (as it is being largely abolished) cannot stand alone. Short of revamping the entire public educational system in the United States, intense mentorship and enrichment programs need to be put in place at the primary school level for black students in bad school districts. We need to cut the prison pipeline and get everyone in between the drop out to college continuum as well. The key is quality of education and whether our kids will be equipped to handle competitive college campuses, even if admissions relaxes grade and test score requirements to take into account the poor quality schools our kids are coming from.

For example, because of the rigorous education at my public school, I felt like college was easy. I also got a tuition scholarship because of my academic achievement, so I didn't have to worry about finding a job since my parent's income didn't qualify me for work-study so I could take 16-18 out of the max 18 credits per semester. I had supportive parents who enriched me and mentored me in elementary school and went to secondary school in a rigorous environment and pushed through even after guidance counselors told me that I probably had a low IQ but got good grades because I worked hard.

I celebrate the success of Nigerians as I celebrate the success of any African-descendant peoples in this country or around the world. I'm so proud of us showing that we can succeed in spite of the curse that this society placed on us because of our skin color, in spite of our bad reputation worldwide. To bicker about whether this success is worthy or not as if my lauding that success is functioning like, "See, black people, we're better than you," is short-sighted and a little bit insular. Nobody even said anything about that in the article! So it's like, what? One group can't acknowledge their success without us talking about failures in our community?

We need to get less sensitive and instead of basically taking away what I believe to be deserved merit from a group that has their own independent set of circumstances, we can see what we can learn from that group. The greatest thing having a Nigerian father did for me was something that an African American father in the same circumstance as my mother could have given to me. I will say, though, having the Nigerian name of my father and the religion of the mother often gave me a difference that gave me courage to break from the crowd and be the nerd I needed to be to get where I am today...

Anyway...those are my thoughts.

Delaying Motherhood for Education

As salaam alaikum,

I read this line in this article a few days ago, and I was livid!

Okay...maybe not livid, but offended, maybe? Put-off? I'm struggling to find the word that correctly describes the sentiment...irritated?

Anyway, here's the article: Fertility Math? Most Women Flunk, survey finds.

The article discusses that most women are not aware that your fertility drops markedly between the ages of 30 and 40, and they often do not seek fertility specialists until too late and then bear the frustrations of fertility treatments. Since I've been in medical school (and I think before this), this was not news to me. I knew that women had a narrow reproductive window between puberty and menopause. In medical school, I was told by one of my (female) professors that since the majority of the women in the class were over 23, we had passed the optimum age of childbearing. I was aware that amniocentesis becomes indicated for women at the age of 35, the age at which your risk of miscarriage with amniocentesis becomes equal to your risk of having a child with Trisomy 21 (Down's syndrome).

And I remember seeing the graphs showing the exponential increase in risk of having a child with Down's contrasted with the exponential decrease in a woman's fertility.

And I have come into my womanhood in a veritable state of horror as I watched each year pass...23, 24, 25, 26...

I will have celebrated five birthdays in medical school. I was a young, nubile 22 when I started, and I will be a nubile though not-as-young 27 when I graduate. I'd hoped that I would meet someone during medical school. And try as I might to secure something for myself, I was unable to.

And then articles like this rub salt into my wounds:

The trouble is, such thinking can cheat a woman out of her options, Collura says. It’s one thing to postpone children in order to pursue education or a career, fully knowing it might be more difficult to get pregnant later. It’s another thing to be surprised by infertility.

“This is not about empowering women and women’s rights,” she says. “This is about science and biology 101.”

That is precisely Holly Finn’s point. She wishes she had realized earlier the effects that endometriosis and age might have on her ability to conceive. If she had her way, she’d tell women ages 26 to 34 one thing: "Start having babies now."

So, I'm in that age group where this woman tells us to start having babies now. I don't know about other women in the 25-34 demographic (now that I'm no longer in the 15-24 demographic for nearly two years now...), but not all of us are in the position to conceive babies nor raise those babies in stable homes because of...

DING DING DING! You guessed it, lack of a partner!

And I'm not sure if it was my choice, rightfully, to postpone children in order to pursue my education or my career. It's not like eligible bachelors have been knocking on my door. Without griping about the quality of men--which I won't, because, genuinely, there are good men out there--suffice it to say that a man who fits into my life hasn't come along yet. Could it be because I've spent four years of college, four years of medical school and one year of public health school pursuing my education and am about to, insha'Allah, spend 3 years in residency, working towards my career?

I mean, because you could put it that way. If I had at least stopped in college and got a job, maybe it would have been easier for a man to fit into my life. Now, with all of the years of professional school, I'll have more letters behind my name than I'll have a chance to have children because my fertility window is narrowing...

I'm not sure if that's the message they're going for, but really, I think for most women, it's more complicated than a choice to have children earlier.

Married or otherwise partnered women who want to have children someday and are in their 20s and wait until their mid-to-late 30s to start trying to have children? Okay, maybe they are ones who you should tell, start having babies now...and even then, I don't know anyone like that. Most women who I know who are having children later are doing so because they were married or partnered later in life. I'm not yet 27, but I'm almost 27. That could be me!

I just get...defensive, yes, that's the word I'm looking for! ...I get defensive reading these things. No, I am not delaying childbearing to my mid-30s because of my career. I know the biology of fertility very well and, yes, with a family history of endometriosis and other unforeseeable elements that could limit my fertility, I want to have children sooner rather than later as will make sense in whatever my future relationship is. Don't wave a finger at me, faulting me for my later childbearing...

Because, for that matter, I could be a mother now. I almost had a high school boyfriend who would have been my first, the way he was interested in me, if I had not put him down because (1) I wanted to come into my Muslim identity and I didn't think he'd be supportive and (2) I wanted to focus on my studies. I was a sophomore in high school when we exchanged letters, back and forth, in which he told me I was the one. His touch was tempting, but I knew Islam was the way I wanted to live and I knew I wanted to go to college. There would be more boys later.

He was my last chance...for early childbearing. Since then, I've come into Islam and am coming into my own, graduated from college, completed my MPH and insha'Allah will graduate medical school. He graduated from college, too, and now has a toddler with a woman who would not have fertility problems because she was in her 20s. I had no other potential suitors until 25, but even then, I had adopted the "no children until 2015" model, the year I would insha'Allah graduate residency.

What do I say to this? Yes! Delay children, for sure, for education. Too many studies, here and abroad, point to children and families thriving more the more educated mom is. Can you come back and continue education after children? Yes! But should you rush into some relationship for the purpose of having children? No!

And I know, I know...the article is not calling on women to do that. According to the survey, women really do not know that their fertility declines so much as they age. Fair. Let them know that. But the tone just sounds like it's pooh pooing women for delaying motherhood for education or career.

My position? Do what makes sense! As I have been exploring, we all find our mates at different times in life. Those of us who are married or partnered can make a choice about when to have children that is best for the pair. And we should not feel guilty if the desire for children was not great in our lives and then becomes stronger as we age. Those of us who are unmarried and single do not have that luxury, and we should not feel bullied, guilted or pressured into settling for men who do not make sense in our lives for the tick-tocking of a biological clock. As a Muslim, I know that God will provide.

Even if I were to conceive my first child at 39, with a 5% chance each month of getting pregnant and with a higher risk of Down's Syndrome, God will provide because such has been the substance of my prayers.

...

That being said, women, be smart! Especially "educated" women, educate yourself about your body, your fertility, so you know the risks of choosing to have a child when.

Single Invisible Muslimah, Part I

As salaam alaikum,

I don't know how I missed this article at AltMuslimah...it's totally what I needed to read, always.

"[...] as a community, we are so focused on grooming our women to be wives and mothers that we lose sight of the fact that this is not even our number one role.

"Servitude to Allah (swt) is our number one role. We need to use what He has given us, the means that we have at the moment we have, to worship Him in the best of ways."

Preach it, Sister! See the full article here: Wifehood and Motherhood not only ways to paradise.

This paragraph was also encouraging:

"God, in His Wisdom, has created each one of us differently and in different circumstances. Some recognize this, love any stage they are in, and develop their abilities to the fullest. Let us, too, use the time and abilities God has given us to maximize our worship to Him and work for the betterment of society and humanity as a whole. If wifehood or motherhood comes in the process, then at least we were using all of our ability to worship Him before it came and can continue to use the training and stamina we gained before marriage to worship Him with excellence once it comes along."

Ameen, sis!

The article starts out with a Muslimah aimlessly making her way through college, really just buying time until she finds a husband and marries so she can have children. In my heart of hearts, I felt like this was me.

No one else sees me this way, and when I talk this way, it seems incongruous with who I actually am.

I am the 12-year-old girl who helped her mother copy articles for her Auntie Florence's dissertation in Nigeria and aspired someday to attend graduate school. I am the 12-year-old girl that, in researching careers, was choosing not only between medicine and architecture, but considered specifically the specialty of OB/GYN. I am the 13-year-old girl who took two math classes in middle school so she could be in the advanced science-math track. I am the 15-year-old girl who participated in a conference and initiative to try to address the achievement gap with black American students. I am the 18-year-old girl who graduated in the top 5% of her high school class after taking 7 AP tests, all 4s and 5s, and had gotten into all of the colleges she applied to with a full tuition scholarship to the one she would eventually attend. I am the 17-year-old girl who definitively embraced Islam and decided to become more practicing once in college.

I am the 18-year-old girl who entered college toying with the idea of becoming an MD/PhD, focusing on genetics. I am the 18-year-old girl who fasted Ramadan for the first time. I am the 19-year-old girl that started to develop her social consciousness and the idea of entering medicine as a service career, serving Allah (swt) through serving fellow human being. I am the 19-year-old girl who found a dream medical school and began to develop myself in college to be able to gain admission there. I am the 19-year-old girl who decided to double major in Cellular and Molecular biology and Spanish. I am the 20-year-old girl who juggled her double major, working in the lab, volunteering in the Children's hospital, tutoring students in Spanish and helping Latino children and adults increase their literacy all the while delving into Islam head-first. I am the 21-year-old girl who began wearing the khimar, traveled abroad for the first time and applied to medical school all in the same year. I am the 22-year-old girl who graduated with a 3.9 and accepted admission at Harvard Medical School with aspirations to attain her MPH.

I am the 22-year-old woman who made the very hard decision to shed the khimar and find alternative ways to assume her Muslim identity.

I am the 22-year-old girl who thrived upon entering medical school. I am the 22-year-old girl who started writing her first novel, A Rose Much Desired, during anatomy class, where she sawed off a human leg. I am the 22-year-old girl who aspired to publish at least one work while in medical school. I am the 23-year-old girl who wrote her first story to be published, insha'Allah, which was renamed "The Hybrid Dance." I am the 23-year-old girl who co-directed a cultural show with her classmates that celebrated the African Diaspora and was musical director for her second year show, realizing the dreams of performance that she never allowed herself while studying through college. I am the 24-year-old woman who studied for and conquered USMLE Step 1. I am the 24-year-old woman who decided not to miss Ramadan because of tough coursework and fasted successfully through her OB/GYN rotation and still got her desired grade. I am the 25-year-old woman who survived third year of medical school. I am the 25-year-old woman who fell in love with family medicine. I am the 25-year-old woman who realized her aspiration and matriculated into the school of public health, studying family and community health and maternal child health. I am the 26-year-old woman who was an intern for a project to find solutions for homelessness of transition-age youth in Massachusetts. I am the 26-year-old woman who is applying to residency and interviewing across the country as I type this.

I am the 26-year-old woman who has made mistakes in the course of life but always has her home in Islam, alhamdulillah.

None of this is the mark of a woman who has been ambling through life, aimlessly waiting for her husband to come along. No. I don't know why I though that.

I don't generally like to lay out my life in this way, but for my own purposes, I had to. I had to slap myself in the face and see, in fact, that I've made some very purposeful decisions in my life, academic and leisure and otherwise, to achieve my goals.

As the quote above says so nicely, we are created differently and we are born into different circumstances. Some of us recognize this and love the stage we are in and develop our capabilities to the fullest. I think I recognize that we are born into different circumstances and I have developed my capabilities. What has not happened is that I have not loved the stage I am in.

I was constantly trying to be something else, be somewhere else. Thus the movement of I am more myself now than I have ever been.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Interlude: Where I Want to Be

As salaam alaikum,

When I was a child, for some reason, I wanted to be really spiritual. Before I even knew a lot about Islam, when my whole world was what my mother taught me, I wanted, from a young age, to be really spiritual, really as close to God as I could be. I wanted this before I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, before I began praying to be married someday. And I remember it clearly and I don't know why I felt this way.

As a teenager, I kind of strayed away from this dream of mine and began to search frantically for a spiritual home with all sorts of ideas about God that were not true. When it came time to decide whether to date a guy and what religion to mark on my college applications, the answer to both was that I was Muslim. I was Muslim, so no, I won't date you. I was Muslim, so I'll put Islam as my religion on my college applications.

And thus it would be. I would come to college, learn more about Islam, return to salat as I had with my mother, and this would be the way I would realize my desire of spirituality, closeness to God, and all else.

In short, the Islam that I encountered in college was much more difficult than I ever imagined. I had learned salat in both English and Arabic, but I learned about the importance of Arabic in Islam as the language of revelation. I learned about the importance of recitation. I learned Arabic words and phrases that I felt the need to punctuate my language with in order to make sense as Muslim, not just my parents' favorite and oft repeated, "Praise be to God." Now it was alhamdulillah. No more "God-willing." Insha'Allah.

And these were little things. What, when I was little, seemed like an organic process now seemed rigid and almost impossible for a girl like me to enter. I was just learning about Islam...and on the other side were sisters who could recite the Qur'an, those who had memorized part of the Qur'an.

I went through all sorts of changes. I wore khimar and then I stopped. I was intense in my learning about Islam and then I stalled. Somewhere in there I lost that desire I used to have, the desire to be so spiritually close to God, in the midst of being really confused about where I fit in Islam, as a Muslimah.

And then I went to medical school and a lot of things went to the wayside. And now, four years in, after getting my masters in public health and relating to non-Muslim men, I'm nearing the end of the 8th Ramadan I've practiced, hoping to make this one better than the last, better than all others. I made a pledge to God explicitly, something I've never done before and something I will uphold with the fear of my life here and the Hereafter. I needed to do it, or else things would quickly spiral out of control.

It's something that I choose to keep to myself.

I need to get back to where I wanted to be in life. Sometime in the past, I used to regret coming into Islam, because our burden of righteousness is greater because we have in our possession the final revelation and a clear guide to the straight way. It seemed harder for me than if I were just never exposed to Islam and I just believed in God and tried to do good work. This was a foolish regret that I always knew in my heart was wrong. In my heart, I've always known it was a blessing. That my mother found Islam, that my grandparents found Islam, that my aunts and uncles who still cling to Islam found Islam is a miracle of divine proportions. That millions of African Americans arrived at Islam after being part a spontaneously forming black nationalist organization in the United States is amazing.

That I chose Islam is the grace of God.

This is not supposed to be hard for me. When things get hard, I will take a step back. But I will approach this all with humility and patience, insha'Allah, but also I will approach it organically. The innocence of the child I was makes everything simple, but a child is not always wrong to simplify. I think we make things harder than they have to be, and I often made coming into Islam harder than it had to be. It can be as organic as I imagined spirituality to be as a child...

...and if I don't fulfill this desire, I'll only be hurting myself, that innocent self that exists within me, somewhere, that expected, as my mother says, "with open eye," to live this life a certain way. I'm following this because I know we come here submitting ourselves to God, and as a child I must have been close to that, so I must have known.

But ultimately, where do I want to be? I want to truly submit myself to God in a way that I haven't been. God has granted me with the gift of consciousness of Him from an early age, and I need not let the distractions of this life cloud that consciousness. I want that consciousness and my submission to permeate through everything that I do and all that I am, from my being a family physician, insha'Allah, to my being a wife and mother, insha'Allah. I want to find a community as well. No more of this being invisible.

No one around me right now understands me. I'm trying to find a way to be with little context. I need to find a home for myself, a way for me to make sense. That's where I need to be, and all else will flow forth more smoothly.

May May May

As salaam alaikum,

The month of May has been so frickin' long! Oh my gosh!

I mean, alhamdulillah, for me it's been full of blessings...seeing so many of my wonderful friends get married and celebrating the marriage anniversary of another, graduating from public health school (today - not walking, though, watching HMS graduate instead), visiting my parents, my family, grandparents, babies, preggers included...and everyone is alive and moderately well, whole, with all of their possessions in tact. I'm taking control of my future family life and getting out there and looking for a mate, hah...and my ex saw me earlier this month and realized he was a fool for letting me go (I don't know that for sure, but I think that's what went down).

So it's been a crazy productive month that doesn't seem to ever end! And at the end of the month, I'll be going back to medical school, starting with an Emergency Department rotation. I'm not as aprehensive of getting back to clinical stuff as I had been previously--I think I'll be able to do it.

Graduation ceremony for HMS is at 2pm, Nigerian graduation party at 5:30pm, friend's graduation party at his girlfriend's house at 7:30pm...and I went shopping for food for the first time in my new place!

Tomorrow is my friend's marriage reception celebration...thing. Then, on Saturday, one of my friends from undergrad is performing in Cambridge, so I'll have to make sure I go. Then, another friend is getting married on Sunday in Maryland...

And much of May has been like this.

July promises to be similarly busy. I'll have my sub-internship, and then that last week, I may try to swing by home to take family pictures with my fam, go to the family medicine conference, and attend my cousin's wedding (my first full-out nikah!). One or two of those things may not happen, but I'm definitely going to my cousin's nikah! I just don't know where I'm flying from yet...Boston, Kansas City or Detroit...whoo!

This year, I'm never going to stop! Because I'll start applying to residencies in September, start interviewing in November, may try to go abroad in October and November, if not then next year...essentially, May is just a foreshadowing of things to come...my life is not going to stop from here on out.

This is all insha'Allah, of course...

Then, I'll continue interviewing in December and January...I'll start planning going to Reveillon (New Years) in Brazil now, see if anyone wants to go (that's a trip on my wish list!), then I submit my Match list in February, then I match in March (and may alternatively be going abroad March-April), then I finish medical school by May next year. Insha'Allah, I graduate May 24, 2012!

And then in June and July, I start preparing for residency! I'll move to a new state or new residence (if I'm still in Massachusetts or if I decide to go to Michigan), I'll make new friends, I'll begin my career in earnest!

And internship is an undertaking in itself...

And who knows what else I'll be doing, whose weddings I'll be going to (insha'Allah, somewhere in there will be my own to some unknown character who is somewhere, wasting time!).

And all of this craziness began when moving out of my place coincided with deadlines for my practicum project and my friend's wedding. I just have a feeling that I'll be pretty busy for the rest of my life...

...but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Alhamdulillah!

[uncensored]: God Bless the Mothers

As salaam alaikum,

Alhamdulillah, I'm all done with public health school! I'm at home right now, enjoying some time with the family, and avoiding these men from the online dating sites. Yes, avoiding...I've got some live ones who want to talk to me all the time. I don't know what they think this is!

Anyway...

Yesterday, my best friend here who got married a couple of weeks ago came to visit me on Friday! It was great to see her...she said I was the first of her friends that she saw since the wedding. So that was sweet.

She's hilarious...she is so traditionally a newlywed. Unlike these newfangled folks, she actually really really waited until marriage. She's Christian and very personally conservative, and she and her then fiance didn't go very far at all, saving everything for wedding night...which was...not quite what she expected, haha! She's told me that it requires a lot of communication, not beating yourself up if you're not good, and willingness to know that it'll get better with time.

I guess she never thought about it before...hehe. She said it was great waking up next to somebody, but that she was not anticipating morning breath.

She must watch the wrong kind of television shows...a lot of people make fun of morning breath!

Anyway, she's excited now that she has some advice to give another one of our friends who is getting married in May. And I'm like, "What advice? You've been married, what, less than two weeks?"

And then she said proudly, "Twelve days, but the time [friend's] wedding comes, it will almost be a month!"

Haha, she's so innocent, it's funny! And such a newlywed...and so serious about it.

She's like, "I'm really excited for [friend's] wedding. I love marriage--I recommend it to everyone."

Tsk tsk, man! Typical coming from someone who is blessed enough to get married, a newlywed and temporarily blinded to the fact that not everyone is so blessed with a happy marriage or marriage at all. No, I do not recommend marriage to everyone...some people aren't ready, some people will never be ready. I don't recommend that people rush into marriage or marry because, through this venue, you'll be able to have sex.

And I hope that when I'm a newlywed, I don't utter such things!

Anyway, she's also tired, felt a bit nauseated and was peeing frequently. I teased her, like, "Uh-oh!" She was going home to take a pregnancy test, and I haven't heard from her since, so really, it could be anything. I let her borrow my contraceptives book. She really doesn't want to take birth control (and I'm like, okay, well, be prepared to either use condoms or just not have sex, two things that I think may not happen...or, be prepared to be pregnant all the time!), but she's using a method now...

And I woke up the next day and thought, wait a minute...and did some math.

I speculate that she wasn't using her current method for long enough to be protected. Man!

For those who don't know, I am Queen Contraceptive! The type of consult I like the most, no joke, is counseling women and girls on their birth control options. I first did it in the pediatrics clinic with my teenagers...they usually just got Depo Provera. My women usually got the Mirena IUDs...which, after placing a few of those (it's one of my favorite procedures...very satisfying), I know that I'll only get one of those after having my last child, post-partum, while my cervix is more patent...seriously, I placed some in some nulliparas, and that mess seemed painful...

Sorry for the jargon...I'm excited to be back to medical school!

Anyway, so, as Queen Contraceptive, I know a lot about the various contraceptive methods. Right-to-life or pro-choice? I'm pro-women using appropriate family planning methods so they never, ever have to make such a hard decision. I'm also pro-improvements to child welfare services for orphans and maltreated and neglected children, because we're giving children the right-to-what kind of life? Too many right-to-life people no longer care about the baby after it's no longer a fetus, apparently, because those same people endorse a party that jokes about Welfare Queens and wants to cut social programs that support those babies in the name of avoiding socialist policies, so I don't label myself, because it's all bullshit.

I don't usually get political, but I feel like contraception is a very politicized topic...

So as Queen Contraceptive (I keep derailing from the story), that's why I figured if she hadn't had a withdrawal period from her method yet, she didn't start using it in time enough before first intercourse, and so if she's fertile enough, yeah, she really could be pregnant...well, at least it's her year off!

So we'll see.


But I don't know what happened to me yesterday. I wrote this thing on the plane (really smooth plane ride...I was able to write!) that I'll pretty much paraphrase here, but it was from the heart. It happened in two parts. The first part happened when I watched the Surgeon General, Dr. Benjamin, speak last week, realizing that she was a strong, powerful woman doing great work, but she wasn't married, was never married and had no children. I realized that women who have big aspirations like that sometimes forgo marriage and childrearing to get the things they need to done, because men and children zap a lot of your potential energy...

That being said, I indicated that's not what I desired for myself.

The second moment happened in the airport. I was watching this woman, probably in her thirties, wrangling with a toddler who was able to sense when his mother was distracted to take the opportunity to sprint away from the gate. The woman, who was on the phone with a relative about some pressing issue, would cradle the phone on her shoulder, run after the toddler and bring him back, kicking and screaming. She had an older daughter, maybe about 4, who seemed oblivious to this maternal stress and was constantly trying to show her mother stuff that she was doing, commenting on seeing the plane land, things like that. In order to go change her son's diaper, she had to strap him into his little stroller, put on a backpack, wheel luggage, and make sure her daughter was in tow.

At one point, I heard her say, "Maddy, you've already dropped your hippopotamus. I think I'm going to keep it so I don't loose it."

And then the child screeched, "Nooo!"

As all of this transpired, I laughed and shook my head. I imagined a woman like myself, a professional woman who diagnoses patients, who delivers babies, who cares from everyone from infants to the elderly as insha'Allah I will as a family medicine physician...coming home to a willful little tyke who does not understand that he can't simply do what he wants and a little darling who wants to carry her stuffed hippo around with her always, even at the great risk of losing it and against my advice.

And that's when I realized...children are their own little people, just like I'm a big person, with their little desires and their little agendas. A lot of the time, they don't know that they're children, or at the very least, they don't know what their being a child means...that they don't have freedoms yet and why it's important to be told what to do, to be controlled, to be raised. They don't know so much yet but they, like big people, want to do what they want to do.

And though they are small, at some point they learn to run fast and from a young age they can scream loudly.

I looked at that mother and I admired her no differently than I've admired nearly each mother I've seen around, especially those with more than one little one. That is a shitload of work.

I just watched this video my mother made when she was pregnant with me, so pre-mom days, back when she was a social worker at the University of Michigan, talking about what it is like to be a professional woman of color. We then looked at a video from 1990, which would be one year after my brother's diagnosis and right before my mother left her job. The professional woman who was talking about submitting a proposal and considering her own promotion was now dressing her daughter in Halloween costumes, engaging five-year-old banter and most importantly, wrestling with my 3-year-old, willful, hyperactive brother with autism.

One part of the video captures it all. My parents were putting up our little artificial Christmas tree, and I'm walking around with my pudgy self (at five) trying to help. It was me who instituted the practice of Christmas in my house three years prior when I offered to move out of the house to have my own apartment so I could have a Christmas tree. Anyway, I was trying to help, and asking my parents if I was doing things right...I was asking a lot of questions and looking for affirmation, and I was being ignored.

Meanwhile, my brother loudly comes in, flapping and doing his characteristic sound effect, here approximated as "IIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE," and my parents turn their attention to him, asking him what he's doing, trying to get him to do something he didn't want to do, trying to redirect him. Meanwhile, I continue trying to help and ask questions. Eventually, I decorate myself in the tinsel and ask my mother, "Do I look pretty or what?" And my mother gave a half-hearted response, to which I replied, "Thank YOU!" I was a smart kid...even then I perceived that I was being ignored and tried hard to get that attention. After the tree was set up, my brother (who would not be fully potty trained until 8 years old) needed his diaper changed. It was apparently a big load, as my mother counted herself having used 6 baby wipes, as my brother tried to escape the changing station on the floor. He was all cleaned up, but before my mother could get the pull-up on him (because he was already too big for diapers, and my mother would struggle to find pull-ups the correct size for years), he stood up, naked, and started playing with the tree again. My mother protested, and he ignored. She finally got the pull up on him, pulled up his pants, and he resumed playing like nothing had happened.

At the end of that, my mother gathered the two of us, telling us it was time for salat...

Hahahahahahaha! Welcome to my childhood!

But from a professional woman talking about her joy of social work, a woman who never wanted to have kids, to a woman who is changing the diaper of a three-year-old, who will change diapers for five more years. I mean, to this day, my brother, at 24, still calls his feces "good jobs" sometimes because we called them that for years because...can you imagine what a relief it is to not have to change diapers or clean soiled underwear after 8 years? Subhan'Allah!

So Heaven is at the foot of mothers, huh? Heaven is at my mother's feet, then, insha'Allah.

So yesterday, I had a revelation...an epiphany, if you will. I was just sitting there in the terminal, and I suddenly thought, "Nothing means anything [in this world]." And for the first time in my life, I began feeling like the thing that I had always wanted, the thing that I thought would be the biggest part of me, marriage and childrearing, was maybe not something I wanted anymore. Not because it was a lot of work (because it is, and I've always recognized it), but because people fool themselves about love.

Yes, love exists, but falling in love, someone finding you, laughing across a crowded room, dropping out of the sky and into your lap...it's all smoke and mirrors, trickery. I think people count too much on romanticism and this imagery, and when the regular day-to-day realities of union kick in, people want to bail because it can't mean anything if that love as before isn't there...

So I guess, in that respect, I recognized that I'm not going to force myself to relate to a man that I don't feel like relating to. This online business has shown me, once again, lest for the upteenth time I don't realize it, that I'm not unattractive. As a matter of fact, at any given time, several men of different races and ethnicities will be very interested in me because, as one said, "I am a spectacular person." And I'm like, why thankee.

But I'm flattered and then annoyed/overwhelmed with the attention. People wanting to call me all the time. I'm like, aaahhh! I don't have time for this, clearly...I told you I have exams and papers!

But I'm not going to settle for someone who is not on the same spiritual plane as me, or settle for someone who I am not attracted to just because they are attracted to me. And I know what I'm attracted to now...I can't usually put it into words. I have a type, but it's not a physical type, save for the fact that I like men who are taller than me. But it's more of a Renaissance Man type thing (not the movie, if there is one...I don't pay attention to these things)...but a man that is good at a lot of things. I also like boisterous social butterflies or quiet non-brooders.

So, for example, one of the guys is multilingual, has lived in tons of places in the continent, and has this awesome, generic West African-British accent with Igbo overtones. And he introduced me to music! And he knows Elis Regina and Djavan! AWESOME!

But wow, I've digressed.

Anyway, if someone like that guy doesn't come along, I'm not forcing myself into a relationship like one-size-fits-all when it doesn't. In the end, I need someone who is going into it for the sake of and with the constant guidance of God, no matter what religion he calls himself, because it was my Muslim uncle who precipitously divorced his wife for no real reason...the religious label in the end means little these days, I'm finding.

As I said, nothing means anything in this world.

These guys trying to call me, calling me spectacular, wanting to get to know me...that doesn't mean shit. They're just words. The proof is in the pudding, and actions speak louder than words, if I may use two hackneyed terms that I found especially true in my last relationship.

So it may be that I continue to reject every man that crosses my path. Oh well. I trust my judgment. But I no longer want marriage or burst. I would love to have children, but not at the cost of bringing them up in any sort of instability. So, alhamdulillah, that's where I have arrived!

But seriously, God bless the mothers! My age-mates talk about childbearing like you get to play with a cute baby and that's it. I realize that I don't realize, even with what I saw my mother doing, how much work it will be and is...

Big Beautiful

Salaam,

I've wanted to post for a long time, but I've been really busy. Leave it to public health school to sock it to me in the last couple of days. I have two exams and two papers left to go...those will be all done in the next few days. I'm not stressing anymore, though...the toughest has passed. The exam that I'm studying for Friday is annoying, though, since it'll be a total cram-fest to study for, but thankfully that will be the LAST EXAM I TAKE UNTIL STEP 3!!!!!!!!!!!! LAST EXAM PRE-MD! ALHAMDULILLAH!

Yes, that's how excited I am. Do you realize that not a year has gone without me taking some sort of test or exam since I was in the first grade (six years old)? I have been taking tests for the last 20 years of my life. To have more than a year where I don't have some sort of exam...excellent. Projects? I will have projects for the rest of my life. Exams? I'll have exams for the rest of my life, too, but they'll all be standardized and few and far between...like, every 10 year licensing exams. This is what I signed up for. I want my patients to thrive. No big deal.

So I've been doing that and I haven't had time to write what I wanted to write about...one entry that I plan to write at some point when I'm not totally fried is called "Christian Women." But that will have to wait for the following epiphanies...

I think it happened before and right after I talked to my mother this afternoon. She told me that she had talked to my aunt, who my uncle suddenly dealt divorce papers without explanation or discussion. I was livid when I heard the details of this. Livid to the extend that I said something along the lines of, "And he calls himself Muslim." Astaghfirullah! God is Judge, so it wasn't my place to say that, but I was angry because of all that my aunt means to me and all she's done for the family.

The first thing I realized from this whole story is that what B did to me was so minuscule as compared to throwing away 25 years of marriage with three children (now adults) as my uncle did. I was in a relationship for five months. I am so happy that he did what he did exactly when he did it, actually, no sooner and no later. It taught me a lot of lessons that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. And it saved me from getting any more involved and then being dumped. Like, if B had started with that weight stuff in the midst of wedding plans, after I was pregnant with his child, while our children were in school, any other time would be horrible timing...

So while I still think he was a fool, my uncle is the real fool...doesn't know what a good woman is!

And I guess that's the main epiphany...I am really a good woman, just the way I am. I may want to lose at least 10 pounds, okay. But besides that...I was looking at myself in the reflection of my dead laptop in class on Monday (man, I hate these crappy laptop batteries!) and I looked prettier than I thought I would. I had just washed my hair and still have not twisted it, so it's up in braids and in a scarf as I usually do while my hair is drying. I threw on a shirt that kind of bore my stomach (it's been a bloaty month), threw on some jeans, my jean jacket and ran to class because I decided to go at the last minute.

Let me tell you, it's so different walking to class everyday instead of taking the shuttle. I kind of like it, and it's inspired me to map out my own running route.

Anyway...

I've been noticing for the past couple of days that I'm always prettier in the mirror than I expect myself to be. And I watched myself walking past windows today and I thought to myself, huh, I'm actually kind of cute...

And I just decided today, you know what, I'm gorgeous!

And I say this all very tentatively now, because I've always tried to be wary of being vain and I always thought humility is the best practice...but not when it comes at the cost of your well-being! Not when your self-esteem falters as a result!

So I have to put humility aside for a second until I find a less dysfunctional way to conceive of it. So humility aside, Lady-MacBeth-unsex-me style, but in the name of God instead! (So maybe not at all like Lady MacBeth...oh well, I just find her particularly gangsta.)

I am beautiful! I am big, beautiful me. I am beautiful, intelligent, accomplished, all of those things people have told me in the past and I always dismissed for what? The sake of humility. I used to look in the mirror and be ashamed of looking at myself in the mirror, thinking it was vain, for what, humility. It's only natural to look in the mirror and thank Allah (swt) for the gifts he has granted you, but maybe I didn't, in the name of humility.

And maybe I agreed to be with someone who was clearly beneath me, and I should have tried for better but I didn't because of what?

Well, really, beggars can't be choosers mentality, but I wasn't actually a beggar. I'm waiting around for someone to my level, someone who deserves me.

I'm beautiful just the way I am, and someone out there will see it and realize it, recognize it, whether I am 10 pounds heavier or 10 pounds lighter, or 40 pounds heavier or 40 pounds lighter...whatever I do with my hair. I'm me. I wake up every day and God blesses me with my face, my body, all intact...and I pray that it continues. And I have all of my faculties about me. I'm good.

I'm fine.

So that was my epiphany. It does not do me any good to be down on myself, because I'll accept any sort of BS and end up with someone who will leave me on any sort of BS because he's a fool. I don't have time for that at my age. On to the next one!

Moved Out! New Lease...

As salaam alaikum,

I meant to post yesterday, but I was so tired, there was no way that was happening.

Yesterday, I moved out of my place of the last 2 years and 3 months.

Well, it's complicated, because I'm there right now. At my old place. I couldn't move into my new place because the girl's current roommate cannot move into her new place until May 1. I moved my stuff in so I could go to my friend's wedding in STL on May 1. And then I'm using today to clean. My floor is covered in crap, some of which I may want to keep the rest that is going into the trash. I also have to go sign my new lease tonight, which will be the opportune time for me to drop off my office chair...which I somehow neglected to pack onto the truck yesterday.

I was basically up working at 6:30am and did not stop until we dropped off the truck at 5:30pm. My feet really hurt when I was done. All that is left in the house is my trash and a few nick nacks that I forgot that I plan to drop off in my new place this evening at 6:30pm when I go to sign the lease.

I also feel like I have a new lease on life, too, during this time.

Time was, I would have crumbled under the stress of everything I have to do. I am really stressed out, though...next week, I have four presentations, and the week after that, I have three papers due and two exams. My friends wedding is this weekend and I'll miss a day of class because of it. I have an assignment that is due on Monday as well, lest I forget. I basically don't stop until the last day of class May 13...and even with this, I'm okay.

I mean, it may also be due to the fact that my MPH grades don't matter for anything. But I do need to do all of this stuff to pass and get my degree in the first place...but...

I don't know. Now that I know what I want to do with my life, I'm comfortable with the stress. Before, it was more or less going through the motions with the future being a level of uncertainty that just brought more stress. I think that part, having clear aspirations towards my career, has put everything into perspective for me and I'm more than willing to endure the tough to get to where I want to be as a clinician and a public health practitioner.

The other thing is that I think yesterday I finally came to terms with the fact that B is a jerk. I don't care what he used to be anymore...that's irrelevant. He is a jerk. My friend who helped me move told me so, simply, succinctly in a way that only guys sum things up. "He's a jerk. Don't worry about it." Everyone reacts the same way to the story. Did I need a critical mass for me to recognize that it was true? I guess so.

But even before I made that realization, I've long moved on. How have I moved on? Well...I've rejoined the world of online matrimonials/dating for the past three weeks or so, with tremendous yield! I think I'm more ready for it than I was a couple of years back when I tried and I didn't feel as if it were halal for me to be talking to so many men at once. Hah, for a lot of reasons, I no longer have that feeling anymore...

And I'm tired of every month of PMS getting to me, me ending up somewhere lamenting my perpetual single life and wondering who I will be able to marry. This is unhealthy, and this is how I let B happen. Not saying that I regret B coming into my life or what went on between us...no, it taught me some important lessons and solidified for me my own morals. But if I were in the place that I am now, for as "nice guy" as he was at the outset, he wouldn't have made the cut.

Insha'Allah I have a lot of years of life left. I've worked so much for my career, that which I always said would be second to family life, and yet, I was not doing anything active toward attaining that family life until I met B, and I don't want that to end with him. So, forward I go.

I'm set to meet a couple of the eligible bachelors, but as with B, I won't mention them or name them until they actually actually become a part of my life. I say it like that because there are a few promising ones. I have two favorites for sure, two more that are like runners up.

Oh yeah, and then I found out that MTQ is not actually really married yet, and that really confused me. And then for some reason that gave me more fuel to go forward and take care of my business and find myself someone who makes me feel the way TQ used to make me feel about him...and not settle for less any anymore.

I'll be moving to a new place with a purple bedroom that I may paint a pale green if I'm so inspired. Insha'Allah I will put my own hand into finding my husband instead of expectantly waiting for "the one" to drop out of the sky. I handle stress better now because I am in control of the parts of my life that I can have control over, though ever cognizant of my God and that at the end of the day it's His will that reigns...

[uncensored]: The Song I'll Stop Singing

As salaam alaikum,

Sometimes, there are songs that I start off singing and then I decide to stop singing because I either no longer like them or I just can't get with the lyrics.

An example are the following lyrics to this song that used to come up on my Pandora from Toquinho: "As vezes quero creer mas não consigo. É tudo uma total insensatez. Aí pergunto a Deus, 'Escute, amigo. Se for pra desfazer, por que que fez?"

Which translates: "Sometimes I want to believe but I'm not able to. It's complete nonsense. Then I ask God, 'Listen, friend. If it tends towards entropy, why did you make it?"

It's a question a lot of us encounter on either side of the believing pole as we develop spiritually, but I can't bring myself to sing lyrics such as these. While as part of my spirituality, I don't cut out the music, I am media literate and spiritually literate...I don't take things into my body that are more harmful for me than good, and that includes music with lyrics that are "not edifying," as my parents told me.

So while I am a believer alhamdulillah and while I don't cognitively shake when I hear lyrics like that...why would I take it into my body?

Allah (swt) made us so wonderfully...we make associations. Towards the end of my relationship with B, I started hearing the song in my head, "Silly fool, how'd you lose such a good thing," lyrics from Teddy Pendergrass, in reference to him, and also "Next Lifetime" by Erykah Badu when I started to realize that he wasn't the one. Our minds make associations like that, and since I listen to a lot of music, I make a lot of musical associations.

So I don't want to be going through a trial in life or witnessing the hardship of others and hear, "As vezes quero creer mas não consigo..."

But that's not the type of song I'm talking about. The type of song I'm talking about is like the one I wrote about in one of my chapters of RMD (it's been a long time!), a Desirée chapter called, "The No-Sex Violators." It goes a little something like this:

   No sex before marriage. At fifteen, this was just another song that Desirée heard her parents sing. It wasn’t one of their favorites yet, but Desirée knew it soon it would be.

The school is Godless was Desirée’s mother’s favorite tune these days. If her mom could, Desirée knew that she would forbid her from tenth grade health class because of the way they taught sex outside of the context of God. If her mother knew about the whole putting the condom on the banana thing, she’d probably be appalled. Desirée appreciated her teacher’s respect for her ability to make her own decisions, at least, with the safe sex curriculum. It was all in principle, though—a different principle than the one that made her refuse to put the condom on the banana she was given. She felt as if she were being mocked. In reality, she didn’t know what she stood for as she dodged the condom water balloons made by the guys in her class and made her way to Western Civ during passing time.

 No sex before marriage didn’t mean much to her because marriage at that point seemed so far away. It seemed a near impossible feat. She couldn’t even get a boy who was worthwhile to like her, so marriage and, she guessed, sex, were far away.

Oh yeah, putting the condom on the banana in health class...haha, Desirée chapters at some points were more autobiographical than fiction. This was one of the points. I didn't tell my mother until years later about putting the condom on the banana...and I did not participate. I figured I wouldn't be having sex any time soon...

...though as my roommate maintains, I just avoided having a teenage pregnancy. And it's true...I was a bit of a boy-crazy little girl. I had a different crush every year from the time I was five until I was 12. That last one, seventh grade, was a heavy one because the estrogen had kicked in...I had been menstruating for two years and puberty was behind me. I was ready. Me and this boy were going to get married at 20, move to Detroit and I was going to have a boy that I would make his junior. Yeah. I also got propositioned for the first time at 15 while at a conference in a hotel away from home. I knew nothing about birth control and was not that concerned that I didn't know. Teenage brain alert!

The little boy tried, too. He was 16...had his eyes set on me. I felt validated, as a teenage girl would, but I think what happened was this other guy who liked me, who was 14, kicked the other guy out of my room, telling him to, "stay away from [his] woman!" Yeah. Shenanigans.

But I digress.

So songs are powerful, whether they're actual songs or figurative songs, our own personal refrains that we repeat at intervals, that we're known for...

My mother's picked up her grandmother's: "Be thy labor, big or small. Do it well, or not at all." I'll pick up my grandmother's...no, not "I'll beat your ass until you shit," but maybe the, It'll be alright, "Eat a little shit, won't hurt," refrain. Me gusta.

But from here on out, actually, I vow to stop singing the following songs: Guys are all full of crap, men aren't worth two craps, the quality of men is zero right now, there are no good men out there...and all variations. Chose your favorite. I personally like the two craps one.

Why am I going to stop doing that? Because I realize what I've always known...it's not true!

I know it's not true, because if I didn't know it was true, I wouldn't be so frustrated by so many of the men who are before me...I would be resigned. If I didn't know it was true, I would have given up long ago. If I didn't know it was true, I wouldn't have been willing to take the L with B and taken the chance in that relationship...

It is not true!

I'm also going to stop singing, "All the good ones are already married" song, because that's also not true.

I look at this guy in my global reproductive health class. He's a really smart OB/GYN from Nigeria (Igbo kwenu!) and I'm really inspired by the work he's done and the perspective that he brings to the table. He's one of the good ones, yes, and he's already married, yes.

But then, there's this other guy. I've gotten to know him in the course of my year here...I think he was in my roommate's ethics class. He's a funny guy, usually sits with us during lunch and distracts us from work telling us stories about what it's like in Nigeria...he has one of those personalities that pops, really. I've gone to a couple of public health school parties and people have commented about us together...our interactions and whatnot. And at first I dismissed it, like, oh, that was just us acting silly. But now, the tone has changed now that he knows I'm no longer with B...who he met when we went out for the first time to Harvard's celebration of the 60th anniversary of Nigeria's independence...gala...I know, that's a long name. Anyway...

He's a physician in Nigeria, he's going to go back to Nigeria to complete his training after he's done with the MPH, and we're all done in about 3 weeks. I'll be his facebook friend, so we'll keep in touch. I've purposefully kept myself at bay because I feel like he may like me and I don't want to encourage him, but I'm to this event that the Nigerian student organization (that mysteriously I was not invited to join) is putting on this evening...

...and I was coming home to eat after an interview this morning and I just had to stop myself and reflect...wait, this is a good guy. I don't see him in class because he's in a different major, but he probably has a lot to offer. He's funny, he's kind...haha, he reminds me of a short, young, Nigerian Santa Claus, haha. He's shorter than me. And here I am, doing what I know how to do best...keeping myself aloof and avoiding.

He's actually not unattractive...you know, besides been a little short-n-stout, but you know...there's also the thing of him going back to Nigeria soon...and me thinking of him more like a cousin than someone I'd be interested in...more like a friend.

So no, there are good guys around! I'm friends with many many of them, and most of them are not attracted to me, but sometimes, they are...and I'm the one who doesn't respond. I pass them by because, realistically, someone better will come along for these guys, someone who shares the passion for them, someone who fits into their lives...but they are good men.

I'm just not going to like all good men, and not all good men will like me. That's fine.

But the more I've sung the song about no good men being around, the more I've come to believe it, being blinded to the fact that most of my guy friends are good men...including the brother friends, these are good men who, if they were so interested and if I were so interested, I wouldn't mind...I guess, going forward toward a nikah?

Haha, I'm still not sure what to do in terms of courtship with Muslim men...I think it's all a very individual path.

But yes, let me stop believing that so I can see more all of the good men around me, so maybe next time I'll pay more attention when there is obvious interest.

So I'll stop singing that song.

Woman in this World

As salaam alaikum,

Is there more trying a role than being a woman in this world? I don't think so.

And I'm not talking about me. No. For all of the pain of heartbreak, disillusion and dysmenorrhea, no, I count myself among the most blessed, like the top 0.1% of the world, if not a percentage less than that. Because not only do I have all of the comforts of the world wherever I go, not only am I pursuing a career that I know will please God, but I believe in God. I'm working on believing Him, but I believe in Him, and He told me that as long as I continue on this path, of believing, of striving, of doing good deeds, that I'll be all right.

And I have a comfortable bed, constant water to drink and in which to bathe, and comfortable and clean sanitary products. I have clothes on my back and food to eat, and no where that I go do I want of these things.

I can't say so much for my sisters, though. My sisters in what? Not just my sisters in Islam, but my sisters in this world.

Women. Women in this world.

Since I'm in public health school, I hear more about the horrors that women and girls face in this word than I ever did before, although many of them I knew about. My sisters are in danger from the moment their sex becomes apparent in conception to the time of their deaths. I'm talking female infanticide, genital mutilation, rape, rape in the time of war, rape anywhere, rape just because, physical violence, psychological abuse, sterilization, intimate partner abuse...the list goes on.

And all I have is a little heartbreak. I'm sitting here on my soft bed, looking out of an apartment with a view of the river and I've been crying all day because a man who said with so many words that he loved me suddenly had no more feelings for me, and told me so. I was ready to change my life to fit his in so many ways, and though it was a blessing that things went no farther, it still hurts.

Will I deny my pain because there is obviously greater hurt than this? No, I will not deny my pain. It still hurts.

And even privileged women suffer in this world. In this country, and not just the poorer among us. Like all humankind, we have Satan in front and behind us, to the right and the left of us. We are relegated by our partner gender (and each other) from in front and behind, from the right and to the left. Our mode of dress is the easy example. Are we naked and sexy to show the world our beauty or are we in all black to guard our modesty from those voracious men?

But even in what we expect in the men in our lives...we are relegated. I've lived and sometimes I live both sides, sometimes simultaneously, so I can say it to be so. On the secular side of things, men expect to be able to have sex with me in short time. On the religious side of things, I'm not considered good enough for Muslim after Muslim man. I don't have a Muslim name, I don't wear hijab, I'm black, whatever, I'm not good enough.

I wouldn't care, and people tell me I should just go on with my life and not worry about men, but unfortunately, it's through men that I may be able to achieve what I want most in life, and always have...partnership in Islam and life, family, motherhood, children.

But because I'm relegated, I'm never enough. Never good enough. Not the pious wife one wants. Frigid, a prude, doesn't give it up.

Who lives a life like the women in this world?

God is God, but I can't help feeling in this life that so much is at the mercy and whims of a man, or more than one man. And I don't understand God's will enough to rest assured that I won't hurt again, for the mistakes I made and the trust I put in a man. I don't understand God's will enough to rest assured that I'm going to marry, that I'll be with someone who actually loves me for His sake, who appreciates me, who will be a great husband and father to my children.

So as I spend the day crying, more disillusion than heartbreak this time, I think of my sisters around the world with hurts worse than mine, who called on the name of God and don't understand why they had to suffer as they did. My pains are small in comparison. I am blessed, nor am I using their pain in vain, to whip myself into a frenzy, to try to count my plight with theirs. That is not my aim.

But to be a woman in this world...I don't know.

God knows what I don't.

Just Crazy

As salaam alaikum,

This has been the song of the day. It pretty much explains my reflection right now. Simple. Succinct. Not overly emotional, just sentimental enough. Repetitive like the thoughts are, captures the quiet astonishment. Dori Caymmi, "Só Louco."




Just crazy
He loved like I loved
Just crazy
He wanted the good that I wanted

Ah, foolish heart!
Why did you make me suffer?
Because to understand love
It's necessary to love?
Why?

Just crazy...

Amei! Hahaha, literally!

In other news, I sent B a final email, and I vowed not to contact him for a while, because I don't think it's actually helping me as I thought it would. However, I said everything I wanted to say, and I think that's sufficient for now. He's read it, no doubt, but he's not going to respond. I think weeks without seeing each other will be a good thing, not only so he understands what it's like to not have me in his life anymore but for me to be able to get back to a good baseline completely without too many residual feelings.

My hands are really dry. I need lotion.

In other, other news...Rep. Peter King? I haven't had energy to follow that fiasco. Achoo! I'm allergic to posturing. I will inform myself by catching up with the Daily Show and Colbert tomorrow, after I finish my last exam of the quarter. Two and a half months and I'm back to medical school...

And the struggle continues.

Cooking! Now I'm tired...

As salaam alaikum,

I decided to cook for the week on Saturday. Wow. I think I have enough food for the week. It took me five hours, which my roommate thought was excessive...but then again, I've never seen her spend more than 5 minutes preparing food. My other roommate usually spends an average of 15 minutes on meals, whereas I spend anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours usually because, ahem, I'm actually cooking from scratch.

Anyway, come to dinner! The menu consists of:

Burritos with chicken, butternut squash and brown rice, served with a homemade black bean salsa

Tuscan vegetable soup, with a medley of spinach, tomatoes, carrots and zucchini, served with Parmesan cheese

Mango barbecue chicken, served with my homemade, tangy mango sauce

Tropical fruit lassi, sweetened with light agave nectar, over ice

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The three recipes I have foodnetwork.com to thank for. I have a normally narrow repertoire that consists of fried rice, jollof rice, rice and stew, foo foo and soup, cabbage soup (the American kind), vegetable korma, tandoori chicken, mango lassi, fried chicken, baked chicken, pasta salad and quesadillas. Put those foods in rotation, and I get tired of them really quickly.

...I guess that's not the narrowest of repertoires, but whatever.

Oh yeah, and also Dominican rice and beans, tostones and fried plantains with mmmm batidas de lechoza (papaya) y piña (pineapple), just like I had in the DR. GOSTOSA!

Okay, so I'm not a slouch. My poor woman's attempt Indian food, my Nigerian food a la my father, Dominican standards and my very American standards and bastardizations of other peoples food. Not bad.

But I want to expand my repertoire of poultry and vegetables so that will give me greater impetus to cook food that I can carry with me and eat at school and, later, at work. I had started regaining weight...well, after a week in which my downfall was characterized by such act as eating a whole bag of jelly bellies in a day...

Womp womp womp.

But last week, I cooked on Monday and my food lasted until Friday afternoon. It was glorious! And I'm pretty much back to the weight I should be.

So, it's back in the kitchen...hmm, maybe next time I won't spend 5 hours cooking, but it took that long because it always takes a long time to cook something for the first or second time as you get used to the recipe and do things inefficiently.

However, standing on my feet for five hours without respite made my feet tired. If I'm ever the matriarch of a big family insha'Allah, I will bring a chair into the kitchen and keep idling interlopers out!

As I told my roommate, being in a relationship means my biological clock has come to a complete halt. Eerrrrrkkkk! No babies! It's like those commercials from the 90s for furniture stores. "No payments, no interest until 1998!" Okay. No babies until 2015! At least, seriously...

But I do look forward to having my own little family of cuties. :) I went to a spirituals concert last night with my public health mentor and her family. Masha'Allah she's got an adorable little family...three kids, 11, seven and three. The baby was at home and the seven-year-old was falling asleep by the end of the concert. She's an OB/GYN, clinical director of Women's Health at Children's/BWH and she works in community health centers (what I want to do, insha'Allah!). She helps me see that it can be done.

She had her first baby at 33, I think. That's a good age to start...the earliest I'm considering is like, maybe the last year of residency (thus 2015...I'll be 30...aaaaaahhhhhh!), since I want to do fellowship. Then, there would be a gap, and maybe I'd have one after in the second year of my practicing (2017-2018), so I could, like, get actual maternity leave.

That all depends on if, you know, I'm married by then, haha! B knows I'm a schemer...he'll be alright. He already said that he wanted four. He asked me how many I wanted. I said three or more.

My roommates, like my cooking time, think that four children is excessive. So do they also probably think that the meticulousness with which I cleaned the house was excessive. I do look forward to being the matriarch and sharing these responsibilities with my husband...until the kids are old enough to take over, muahahaha!

Seriously, who needs a cleaning service when you have children! Trick them into helping when they're young, and you've got service until they move out! That's my plan, anyway...

Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.


I sent B a message telling him that one day I should cook dinner for him (I already made him breakfast one day), or we should cook together. Together, we can make a poor couple's attempt at Nigerian food. Together, we can rule the world...muahahahahaha!

Just kidding.

Anyway, back to work today...sitting for hours instead of standing!

New Me

As salaam alaikum,

So, Mubarak may step down in the next 24 hours? Once again, I get my most updated news from facebook status updates which refer me to news sources, and not the news sources themselves. Insha'Allah, whatever the announcement will be, and whatever the outcome of the announcement is, the outcome will lead to true steps towards democracy and do right by the people and their demands.

EDIT: Hah, well, never mind...

Maybe my last entry didn't do justice to how truly I am inspired by the young people, people my age, in Tunisia and now Egypt, especially, in bringing their grievances to the attention of a dictator. I realize, as I will be 26 in less than a week now, that I'm still young and the power of my youth in seeing others like me across the Atlantic doing something big and meaningful to their daily lives and their liberties to pursue their personal purposes of life.

Adorei.

Taking this back to the national front, I've been reading articles that are talking about how the face of the US youth is going to be drastically different from the aging population...at least, in terms of race. In the New York Times especially, from their "Race Remixed" series to other articles about children in schools, it seems that soon enough, the school population is going to be majority non-white, with Latino children making up the largest minority. Articles have also talked about an increasing mixed-race population in schools and the fact that one in seven new marriages are interracial or inter-ethnic (yes!). My google calculator tells me that's more than 14%.

Amo!

These two facts, in synthesis, have helped me remember who I was, and helped me redefine myself. Let's go back to six years ago, when I was 19 and about to turn 20. I was a sophomore in college. Unlike now, I did not doubt the relevance of my youth. I was confident in my God-given beauty and talents and the fact that I was going to be a catch for anybody. Of course the men stopped and gawked and whistled at me...I was young, I was well put together, and though I didn't flaunt it, it was apparent.

For me, this was the time to do everything.

I used to want to be a young...you name it. I wanted to be a young writer, authoring my first novel as an adolescent, I wanted to be a young activist, though I did not have a cause. I wanted to be a young wife, as I had my eyes on the type of man I wanted to marry, potentially a younger mother than my mother was. I wanted to be young and religious. I didn't want to wait a lifetime to be spiritually evolved. I didn't find it necessary to bother through trials that could teach me something that, with maturity, I could know now.

I was young, I felt it, and I wanted to do everything now, now, now. I'd been this way since I was about twelve, when I decided that I wanted to become one of the most spiritual people on earth at a young age. I think my mother's shows on young people who had experienced near-death experiences and came back knowing the truth of things and spiritually evolved didn't help...

Fast forward to now. It's six years later. By my previous definitions of what I wanted for myself, I am a failure. I have not published my first novel, I was not an activist in youth because I never did find that cause. I am not a wife and I am unlikely to be a markedly younger mother than my mother was, who had me at 30. I'm learning that there is no substitute for experience when it comes to spirituality and though I was mature for my age, I recognize that the life Allah (swt) has granted me is building my faith in a way I could not arrive at spontaneously or through any specific religious endeavor.

But six years later, and though I feared feeling it for years, the feeling that I was failing has dissipated. And thankfully, because I was never anyone's failure. Taking maturity up a notch, because of the experiences I have and continue to have, I imagine more things about myself and tempering what was a youthful, erotic view on life to a more seasoned, romantic view of life.

At almost 20, I was in the generation that was going to change the world. I had graduated '03 from college, a year recited since I was 8 years old, and I just knew that our year, big things were going to happen. I imagined us rallying for our invisible causes, turning the world on its head. I was ready, for whenever the cause came about, I was ready for the revolution. I was going to do my part. I believed in several things, including interracial marriage. Especially as a Muslim woman, I wanted to marry someone not my own race to help promote multiculturalism in Islam, to do my part to help blur racial lines so that we could be brothers and sister in Islam without much regard to ethnicity and subsequent hierarchies.

At almost 26, I am in the generation that is changing the world and will continue to do so, as youths in solidarity, as youths in protests, as adults in leadership roles, pushing out the grandfathered refuse of those who came before us. As a future physician with training in public health, I will begin my practice at community health care centers with an eye for openings in leadership positions in my community, such as for medical director. I will make sure that the community health care center includes social programs that fit with my new community's needs. And later in my career, if it comes to it, I will be an advocate for community health centers, involving myself in political processes to make sure that they expand to cover the needs of even more uninsured and under-insured people in the US, residents, immigrants, documents or not. But for now, while I'm still a student, there is much for me to do. I'm completing my education. I'm reading the news, keeping myself informed. My passion lies in health for minorities, immigrants and the low-income among us. They make up are our real majority.

And while, if it were in my future, I would marry someone outside of my race, I recognize that this is not the only way and maybe not always the best way to promote multiculturalism within the Muslim community.

That's what I mean between the differences between eroticism and romanticism. I don't consider myself more jaded at almost 26, I just consider myself less lusty than almost 20. Eroticism has the passion but is superficial, in the moment with poor foresight, feeling justified in its existence but clouded with a sense of urgency and immediacy that blinds one to alternatives of the moment. Romanticism is the passion with more depth, more foresight, still idealistic but with hopes to touch the sky because of the idea that it is possible, not hope to touch the sky because it being possible is so hott.

At almost 20, I was a black American Muslim sophomore premed in college, majoring in Cell and Molecular Biology and Spanish, living in Ann Arbor, MI. At almost 26, I am an Igbo Nigerian-black American Muslim graduate student in public health concentrating in Family and Community Health with a focus on Maternal Child Health and a fourth year medical student living in Boston, MA. Because of my intended, I'm more Nigerian than I've been since our family friends moved away when I was 11. Because of my training, I know a lot more what I want to do with my life and my career, saving my activism for causes I'm most passionate about. Because of my change in locale, I've been exposed to a more beautiful and diverse setting and it lets me know that there's even better out there.

And because of these six years of learning, my spirituality means more to me and is more efficient.

Say hello to the new me.

Out in the Rural

As salaam alaikum,

My most recent career aspirations, specifically working in a community health center for some part of my career, were inspired by this film, entitled "Out in the Rural" (1970), about one of the first community health centers in the country.


Out in the Rural from Luis Manriquez on Vimeo.

For more information about the CHC movement in the United States, visit the NIH's "Against All Odds" exhibition, specifically the section of community health, subsection "On Common Ground."

I'll include below the email that I sent to family about it, which gives a little bit of background about Dr. Jack Geiger, who also is one of the founding members and former president of Physicians for Human Rights, and how he became involved in this movement. Seriously, masha'Allah!

A little background...

Dr. Jack Geiger, as a medical student, traveled to South Africa and was part of a rotation in a small clinic in a rural, Zulu tribal reserve called Pheola in Natal, based in the only medical school in the country at the time that would train blacks. Headed by two South African physicians and founded in the 1940s, years before the Apartheid government would shut it down, it employed what its founders called community-oriented primary care (COPC). These centers were set up to be care for the people, by the people, run by the people...taking communities and focusing not only on their needs and their assets, empowering them to be able to run their own health center, thus encouraging education and entrance of the youth into the very lucrative health field. It also addressed many of the social determinants of health, including poverty and racial discrimination, through programs within the center.

Geiger came back to the United States and completed his training, writing a thesis about this COPC model and deciding that this should be put in place in the United States.

In this world where so much depends on opportunity, right place and time, his interest and work in community-centered care coincided with Johnson's War on Poverty, and Geiger's model for providing health care for the poor was what was used to begin the community health center movement (CHC) in the United States.

With my classmates, I visited the first CHC in the United States, which was set up at the Columbia Point projects in Boston, MA in 1965. It is now called Geiger-Gibson after its founders and after Columbia Point was torn down. Columbia Point were projects built on a landfill where low-income blacks were separated by highway from low-income whites, very much in Boston fashion. Large trucks hauling trash sped up and down Mt. Vernon Street to the nearby dump at the time, resulting in the death of a little girl who was attempting to cross the street. Just as the community banded together, mothers hand in hand to stop the trucks from running their streets, the community was able to band together and make up an essential part of their community health center, including the clerical staff and practitioner staff, many people coming back to be medical assistants, nurses and physicians in the center in their old neighborhood.

The one featured in the film followed a similar model of home-grown staffing, in addition to a variety of needed social programs.

Community Health Centers still exist. Here's a link to the National Association of Community Health Centers: http://www.nachc.org/.

Here in Boston, there are 25, and I think more than 50 statewide. These not only provide health care for the uninsured and underinsured, but it provides quality, comprehensive primary care for anyone in the catchment area. I visited 7 different centers in Boston, and each have social programs in place as well. One had an obesity program for young people. Another had a special diabetes program. Yet another had an affiliated charter school for the black youth of Boston (who make up the majority of Boston Public Schools), whose college graduation rate is 7.4%. The school had a college graduation rate of 73% and a high school graduation rate of 100%.

I'm very excited to share information about these centers with you. These things have been around now for more than 45 years and have survived various challenges, including the Reagan administration, to be a social project that has unwavering bipartisan support. At a time when my generation barely knows what activism is, these centers were born in the time of and facilitated by the Civil Rights movement that is only taught indirectly and blandly in schools. The people who started these things are still running these things and are looking for new leadership.

So, here we come...

I also showed this documentary to B, and he was inspired by Dr. Geiger, especially in his thoughts for what he wanted to do with his career. I was, too, very much so, in a similar way. He's going to be at Tufts for the Physicians in Human Rights student conference in February. For several reasons but mainly because of time constraints on commitments, I haven't really done anything with PHR, but considering Dr. Geiger is aging and has cancer and this may be one of the few times I can hear him speak in person, I may put down $40 and haul myself over to Tufts and hear him and the other speakers. I don't know.