Reflection 48 – This One Is For You… Nina

Today is a special day! I woke up to a very heartwarming message from my previous Professor, Mentor, and PhD Committee Member, Dr. Nina Bandelj. Couple of hours later I received a message from a previous Qatari student pursuing her PhD at Queen’s University Belfast. In fact, a week earlier another Qatari student informed me that she has recently began her PhD in Public Policy at Oregon State University. For both of them, I am extremely proud and very happy to have crossed lives for several years in which both of us got to interact and benefit from each other. Teaching, I’m always convinced, is a dual process. On another note, the last couple of weeks have been very extra-special to me as I began to meet with my previous AUC students in very fruitful and rewarding gatherings.
Several students came up to me thanking me for the courses they took with me especially in the field of development, but more importantly how happy they are with the exposure and impact they got out from these courses. For some, it helped as a motive to proceed in graduate studies while for others it enabled them with various job opportunities related somehow to the field of development where I met most of them. I am simply HUMBLED by their words because all of them can‘t fully recognize how fulfilling this is to me. In other words, it means the world to me to see the fruits of my work ripe and hanging on different trees getting ready for their next steps in life. But as much as I get happy hearing those nice uplifting words, it would be dishonest from my side to claim this success alone. The coming paragraphs I would like to dedicate to my role model and mentor during my PhD journey; Nina Bandelj.
Awkwardly enough, Nina is a sociologist and thus was not in my same department. We crossed paths early on in my PhD years. As I was shopping for an elective course in Winter 2011, I came across her Economic Sociology course. Well, I was an economics graduate and at the same time very interested in sociology but had NO IDEA what will come out of these two terms when put together but her course syllabus looked very interesting. My gut feeling was right and I had an amazing course with her. More importantly, we got to know each other more on a personal level and I began to share with her my initial ideas for my PhD dissertation. She began guiding me slowly into that process although she was not my PhD supervisor nor was she on my PhD committee yet! She was just being the GOOD she that she simply is! The more we interacted, the more common research interests we were able to find and subsequently discuss and she later would become THE core fundamental member in my committee. I utilized couple of my independent study courses working with her on tons of data and econometric models for my dissertation. We spent hours upon hours upon hours working and re-working all these models to get the most accurate results and more importantly to make sense of these results. Never had I seen someone as shrewd as Nina in dealing with numbers. But she taught me other (important) life lessons without her noticing probably.
I wasn‘t really sure how to summarize these traits until I today coincidentally came across a motivational speech by Denzel Washington, in which he mentioned the key success to life goals are discipline and consistency. Nina has it ALL! Since I knew her (already 12 years now!), I can say that she has an amazing work discipline (and I’m pretty sure that this discipline applies to other facets of her personal life). I was always amazed by her ability in teaching and the time she devotes to her students as well as having a very solid publication record. I left UCI in 2014 but visited couple of times
afterwards. She didn’t change. The same way she would get back to my email in speed light time these last days, she would do exactly the same 12 years ago before even knowing me! Having been an instructor myself in the last several years, I fully recognize how much time – and effort-consuming such a process is! As a student, one might have maybe 3-5 professors per semester to communicate with, but on the other hand the professor usually has hundreds of students. Every student might feel special in some way and therefore expects a speedy reply from their professor. Maintaining this consistent attitude is extremely difficult ; but disciplined professors like Nina do it!
So whenever a student comes to me praising me, I want to really tell him /her (usually it‘s a her ), it‘s because of Nina and the likes of her who I was truly blessed to have as supervisors and mentors during my PhD journey.
Thank you Nina and thank you all for all your support!
PS: The first picture is Nina, myself, and my elder son Ibrahim (who had just graduated from KG2 at that time) during my graduation ceremony. The second picture is my PhD committee members from left to right: Prof. Luis Suarez-Villa (PhD supervisor), myself, Prof. Richard Matthew, and Prof. Nina Bandelj. There is one missing from the picture, Prof. David Smith.