16
MEMorandum
Friends with Benefits
Dedicated to my two roommates: Jim Carrey Moscars award recipient and Chilean native, Cristobal Ramirez Espinoza; Shining star Moscars award recipient and Algerian native, Amine Bounoughaz. You are the light of our apartment, (btw electricity bill is due).
One of the main reasons I attended the Duke MEM program was a yearning to learn from my professors and my peers. I had no idea how much of my learning would occur as a result of interaction with the latter. Putting aside all of the things I have learned about international culture (caste systems, local cuisines, bollywood, chinese character derivations, one-child policies, Indian national history, chilean football, Algerian taxis, Mustafa Kemal, cricket and Sachin, dirt-cheap Venezuelan gasoline), I’ve also learned what it takes to be a successful professional. It means trusting your peers to contribute to a common goal, and not violating the trust that others have in you. It means trusting yourself. It means being on time and setting a standard, but understanding that no one is perfect, including yourself. It means understanding that sometimes your lowest priority might be someone else’s highest. It means realizing you’re not always the smartest person in the room and being thankful for it. Ultimately, it takes surrounding yourself with friends and colleagues who wish to see you succeed in what you are most passionate about.
There are great people here. From the start of orientation, my first weekend on campus, the Duke MEMP men offered me an 11-on-11 game of soccer (football) that I’d never been able to manage in all my four years of undergrad. I knew it was the start of something beautiful. What I did not know was how close I would come to be with many of the people playing on that field.
Let’s take the MEM Photography club. It is run by talented MEMers who love photography and tend to be pretty great at it. What I find interesting, though, is that the main focus of the club is not to simply gather experienced photographers and take pictures, but rather it is to teach the art to MEMers who wish to learn. Even more interesting, is that there are MEMers who are not only curious enough to learn but are also trusting enough of their peers to be taught by them. This sense of respect in collaboration, in which we can trust and rely on our peers to enrich our lives, has defined my experience here.
Richard Dansoh
Candidate
MEMP, May 2014