Reflection 4 – How Did the Sustainability Initiative at UCI Impact my Understanding of How to Deal Positively with People?

Egyptians love jokes and sarcasm (and who doesn’t!). Growing up in such a culture meant that by time one gets to be normalized (or desensitized) towards different types of people and issues as long as they make you laugh. Embedded in this sarcasm phenomenon is the notion of critiquing others whether in the workplace or in various aspects of our daily lives. Some of us do it genuinely assuming they are benefiting the person being criticized while others do it with a flavor of sarcasm. Another very common dimension of this is belittling people’s efforts.

Fast forward to my PhD years; I am amazed of how professors and other fellow students are very keen to emphasize the good in any work done by others. Any effort is being highlighted and a positive vibe is surrounding anyone. I remember once being in a class where each one of us was supposed to briefly explain the topic of their potential group project. One girls starts addressing the professor talking about her topic (however, I can‘t exactly recall it). Anyway, as soon as I heard her topic my instant feeling was how idiotic it was. To my surprise, the professor acknowledged it, encouraged her, and gave her some suggestions for improvement. That time I began to realize how odd I was in this positive culture. But it‘s never too late. My PhD years began to alter my thinking and I tried to suppress the prevailing “stinky” culture.

As I matured in my PhD, I began to try to get engaged in activities that are not strictly related to my academic work but that were concerned with topics of interest; of which was environment. Having realized the interconnectedness of environment with all various aspects of life and the crucial role (and totally forgotten) it has in Islam, I decided to join a Sustainability Initiative taking place at UCI headed by Abigail Reyyes. She had a solid law background from UC Berkeley and a great passion and commitment for the environment at large and in specific those people affected by it. This initiative was supported by a number of both undergraduates and graduates alike with an aim to assess ongoing sustainability efforts and how to improve them whether at the course level or on-campus. For this, we had meetings headed by Abigail to discuss our work.

Two things stood out for me in specific that Abbey did. First, she would always ask us at the end of our meeting to list one good and one bad thing in our meeting that we can improve. This in turn made us think critically and laid out the good seen by everyone while at the same time paving the way for improvement. Second, and more important, is what she said during one of our meetings when one of us was critiquing and blaming some of the work done by some departments at UCI and trying to name and shame those involved. This is when she interrupted and said that it is very easy to call people out and much more difficult to call them up. I left the meeting thinking

how many times did I easily call people out (wife, kids, family, friends) and rarely was I equally interested to call them up. Can I blame my culture? Upbringing? Honestly, I don‘t have a definite answer but surely Islam does not promote such a rotten attitude!