Skeikh Zayed Grand Mosque
Author: Adam Lorio | Major: Broadcast Journalism | Semester: Summer 2023
My Organic Chemistry II course was especially intense, involving two-hour classes four days a week (Sharjah utilizes a 4-day work week), plus one additional hour-long time slot allotted for weekly midterms. We covered roughly two chapters a week, which, particularly in organic chemistry, is highly rigorous. In a class that revolved heavily around conceptual understanding combined with immense memorization, success demanded extremely high levels of studying and preparation outside of class. Fitting the entirety of Organic Chemistry II into just five weeks and twenty lectures is no small task, but because of the arduous nature of the course, I feel I have a greater grasp on this course than any class I’ve ever taken.
On Top of the Burj Khalifa
My photography course, on the other hand, was the perfect complement to my chemistry endeavor. Everything that OChem II was, Intro to Photography was the opposite; creative freedom, emotion, and ambiguity complemented the memorization, rationale, and certainty of chemistry. In Photography, our professor assigned a project (eg: landscape, portrait, photo essay) with little constraints, and it was exclusively our responsibility to conceive our project. The professor, Dr. Zinka Bejtić, has a Ph.D. in educational psychology, and her teaching style was instantly indicative of someone passionate not only about her students, but also about the qualities and behaviors that meaningfully impact students’ intrinsic motivation. She’s even given a TedTalk about it. She was an exceptional professor.
However, what absolutely made my experience more than anything else, was the friends I made. After a week of awestruck loneliness, I was adopted into a friend group of locals who treated me as one of their own from the moment they met me. They introduced me to their other friends, their favorite spots to eat, hang out, take pictures for my photography course, and of course, showed me around one of the most beautiful countries in the world. In an extremely diverse country, many of this friend group came from all over the Arab world, and their openness and my curiosity produced some of the most educational and perspective-giving conversations I’ve ever had. We initially bonded over our similarities, like our love for football (soccer) and card games (They taught me Arabia’s favorite card game–Hokm–which is a seemingly simple game that becomes much more fun and complex the more you learn about it). We had similar music tastes, movies, and travels, but eventually thoroughly discussed our differences, like religion, culture, language, and pretty much any question I could think of. We laughed, we were honest and vulnerable, and it was a goodbye that I never would have imagined could have been so hard.
3/4 = Adoption into an Emirati Friend Group
It’s likely that I’ll never be back in Sharjah. It’s likely that we’ll never play football together again. It’s likely that I’ll never play Hokm at Saqr’s meelas at 3 a.m. while laughing with my unlikely friends, and although I may not ever see Saqr, Khalifa, Hamoud, Musah, Yassine, Hadif, any of the 5 Omar’s and 10 Muhammad’s ever again, we have each other’s contacts and plan to stay in touch. Their culture demands a level of hospitality, but what I experienced went so far above and beyond that. Emirati hospitality is unmatched.
I honestly can’t put into words how incredible this experience was. I expected to incur an inevitable globalization of perspective during the program, but I experienced more than that. I made friendships that could last a lifetime if I lived in Sharjah, and I learned more about myself than anything else during my time abroad. I can’t thank the University of Arkansas Honors College enough for giving me such an extraordinary experience.