The Tuftonian Dream: The power to heal

When you were young, you maybe had a dream. You were going to fly to the moon, pass EC 5, cure cancer. Then, you grew up. You cut your hair, chose your major, changed your outlook. You changed a lot, but did you change your dream?

If sophomoreLeili Najmabadi fulfills her longtime aspiration of serving as a pediatric doctor, she will be helping the clinical population that she describes as “the most resilient group of people.” She has traveled from California to Boston to distant Rwanda, but before she discovered her calling, before she came to Tufts and before she saw the world through the hopeful eyes of young Rwandan children, she sought solace in the simple pleasure of a good book. She admits, “I didn’t always feel like I belonged anywhere. I had a really happy childhood, but the only time I really felt a purpose, felt like myself, was when I was reading.”

Leili envisioned becoming a writer so that she could give other people “similar experiences when they read” to the ones that made her feel like she could be herself. Until her ninth-grade biology teacher recognized her aptitude and encouraged her to attend a conference at Stanford’s medical school, she hadn’t considered a career in science, but after hearing various speeches about “medicine and how human it is, and how human it sometimes isn’t,” her open heart underwent a profound change. She explains, “I realized that my whole life, I just wanted to help people, and the only way I could see that translating into a career was through health.”

Leili wants to bring the “human connectedness factor” to medicine, and she doesn’t mind if her words have to be translated into foreign languages. She has decided that she wants to join the Peace Corps. Eventually, she hopes to work for UNICEF or Doctors Without Borders, but no matter how far she strays from her childhood home, she won’t lose sight of her childhood dream. She notes, “I feel like somehow, my previous dream of being a writer has made me want to be a better friend, a better citizen of the world, because it all comes down to being connected with people.”

This past summer, Leili journeyed to Rwanda as a member of the Tufts with Rwanda Fellowship. While there, 23 years after the onset of the country’s heinous, incomprehensible genocide, Leili encountered people who were “so different from anyone [she] had ever met in their power to heal emotionally, mentally and spiritually.” Their impossible fortitude impressed her so much that she remarks, “When I think of Rwanda, I think of miracles.”

In Rwanda, Leili rediscovered what she once found in a good book: a sense of connection, of purpose, of hope. She found a people still pulsing with life, and she declares, “There are a lot of issues in this world, but health is so fundamental to our existence that that is where I want to start.” Her path might be bumpy, but she concludes, “I hope to deal with anything that comes my way with grace.”