Reflection 1 – Stop, Reflect, and Appreciate : What did my PhD boot camp and ALS have in Common

September 2010. I have just arrived in Irvine, CA to begin my PhD in Planning, Policy, and Design at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). As a new teaching assistant, we were expected to participate in a two-week boot camp before school begins. Its main purpose was to familiarize us with the process and help us succeed as new teaching assistants. One of the exercises we were asked to do was a ten-minute presentation on whichever topic we chose. We would then present our topics to our colleagues and receive feedback on our topics, presentation style as well as other dimensions. My main challenge, I felt, was choosing a topic that is both entertaining to me and at the same time appealing to others.

I had just listened to the explanation of the ayah, in which Allah says that if you were to count the blessing(s) of Allah, you won‘t be able to count it. The thing that really caught me was the fact that Allah did not say blessings but blessing, which makes a big difference. In other words, each blessing we have from Allah has an infinite amount of benefits that we can‘t count. Therefore, I decided to call my presentation “Stop, Reflect, and Appreciate” as an effort to convey this rather simple but usually forgettable message.

September 2016. I have been living in Qatar now for two years teaching at Qatar University in their Planning, Policy, and Development Department. Things have been good for me but overwhelming having to develop totally new courses in Arabic, publishing papers, and of course taking care of family obligations. I began developing very early symptoms of ALS without knowing. As I am teaching using my laptop in class, I began to realize that my fingers are slightly shaking when using the mouse. Moreover, I began having difficulty buttoning my shirt because my hand wouldn‘t remain still.

This is when a light bulb began startling in my head when I remembered the message I was trying to convey to my fellow PhD colleagues six years before. I had never realized the number of activities my fingers were involved in until they began shaking. It was at that time I began to comprehend the true meaning of the ayah that there are infinite benefits in a single blessing.