A classroom of cultures

Today my teammate told me that Osama bin Laden has been killed.

What has surprised me most about studying in a classroom with so many cultures is that at least to me, there is no hatred, no terrorists among us, fighting to see each other or other cultures be brought down. Now my classmate in the April intake may have a different view having been in the same intake as Libyan leader Gaddafi's son. I can say that before coming here I assumed that not all nationalities would all get along. What I realized is that if you don’t get along with someone it’s not because of what is going on in perspective homelands, not knowing the person is probably reason number one, and reason number two is probably because someone’s a jerk (or in Michael's experience, indeed a terrorist).  The Lebanese and Israelis are on teams together, they work together, they support each other in the classroom, they drink together, they are both some of my favorite people here and I would not have guessed there is tension a couple thousand miles away between their countries..

Granted, group work is its own kind of torture - the expedited pressures brings out conflicts over expectations, quality opinions, participation (or lack there of), relinquishing control and learning how to get along with all personalities. In March, we had a day long feedback session and unfortunately a few of my classmates thought it was pointless, a waste of time or harmful. But I enjoyed my session with my group and we were one of the groups that didn’t have the most chemistry. The time we spent giving each other feedback was pretty remarkable, it gave us the opportunity to speak candidly - constructively and honestly to each other. One of my classmates Rashed from Lebanon said he too found the value in the experience, that the feedback was probably the most important part of this program, “that’s what we all came here for, right?”

It seems to me that the efforts that terrorists make are the exact opposite of what international programs like IE are promoting.