Published 11/6/2024 by Praniti Gulyani
It is 9 p.m., and I am at my on-campus job as Residential Safety Ambassador in the UC Berkeley Residential Halls. I have a class at 9:30 a.m. the following morning, and as I struggle to get an assignment done, I tell myself to be resilient and power through the night. As I push my chair back and straighten its back, I begin thinking about the nuances of this complex emotion called resilience.
What if resilience had a name and a voice of its own, I wonder. How would it sound?
That’s when the door opens and a group of people walks in.
A young woman with a bright smile walks in. “I’m Kim. I’m an RSA (Residential Safety Ambassador) too,” she says, shaking my hand. “Where are you from?” I ask her almost automatically, struck by the vibrance of her personality. “Lebanon. I’m an international student, like you,” she adds. Almost instantly, I introduced my We Are Cal column to Kim, and that’s all it took for the conversation to begin.
“I was born in Lebanon and lived my entire life there,” begins Kim. “I attended a French high school in Beirut, which is the capital of Lebanon, so I was used to studying everything in French. When I moved here, it was a complete change for me. Since Lebanon is a very varied country with multiple religions and schools, I learned everything in French and Arabic,” she says. “But you speak such good English. How did you manage to accomplish that?” I ask. I don’t usually interrupt my interviewees, but there’s just something about Kim’s demeanor that fills me with a desire to cross-question her vibrant dialogue. “I learned English by practicing and speaking, just one hour a week,” she answers, a humble smile occupying her face.
Intrigued by Kim’s trilingual abilities, I deliberately shift the spotlight of the conversation in that direction. “In Lebanon, we use three languages as if they are one,” she explains. “For example, we use two words of one language, and one word of the other language. We are able to switch super easily, and this is something that Lebanese people are specifically known for,” she adds.
“Is there a scientific term for the ability to speak three languages?” I ask Kim, and she responds with an affirmative nod. “Yes. It’s called translanguaging. The more languages that you communicate in, the more parts of your brain get connected together,” she says. “It also helps me interact with more people. For example, if I hear someone speak in Arabic, I’m able to respond. I can say the same for English and French. This makes networking a lot easier,” she adds. “It must’ve taken a lot of resilience to master these three very distinct languages,” I interject, going back to my initial contemplations over the intricacies of this complex yet essential emotion. “Yes, and it makes me very unique too!” she laughs.
As I ask Kim about her life back home in Lebanon, she talks about the people of her land— her eyes soft and nostalgic. “We are party animals, and there’s a prominent duality inside us. Lebanon is a very resilient country, and the people are fun loving, but equally resilient as well. We’ve survived war, we’ve survived inflation, and we’ve survived an economic crisis. No matter what happens, we always rise with resilience,” she says.
It is this affection for resilience that has helped Kim navigate through her life at UC Berkeley, and engage with her major, Cognitive Science, at a deeper level. “In scientific terms, resilience is defined as the practice of using the right resources to solve a problem. It also refers to your confidence in being able to solve these issues, and I think that is my homeland’s greatest legacy to me,” she says.