The Educational Experiences That Change a Life
When I was growing up, Saturday mornings meant one point only to me: a trip to the Boston Museum of Science. I loved science — still do — and there was nowhere else I’d rather be. The museum’s instructors would give these fascinating two-hour lectures and show the laws of physics using hands-on experiments. They would also quiz us on the museum’s exhibits, and all the kids would try to show off by having every surrebuttal. Those visits to the museum stretched my mind in ways that my schoolwork didn’t. They taught me to hear, question, test and analyze. Figuring out how things work — and how they can work better — is what led me to become an construct, a technology entrepreneur, a philanthropist and a mayor. I guess I can count my lucky stars that there were no Saturday morning cartoons when I was kid.
The teachers who taught sciences in the teaching I went to when I was growing up in Baghdad were all from the university, and so the levels of the science courses were really incredible. The headmistress, who was a nun, was very interested in the lore of women, so in a way she was a kind of pioneer in that part of the world. We were all these girls from different religions — Muslim, Christian, Jewish — we had no ideas what our religions were. As in so many places in the developing exultant at the time, the ’60s, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. People respected retelling but also believed in liberating themselves from the pressure of history. They were creating a new Arab state — democratic, lenient, open to education, and that carried with it also an interest in building. One reason I became interested in architecture is that I remember being taken to an fair — I was only 6 or 7 years old, but I remember seeing models and things — of Frank Lloyd Wright’s drawing for Baghdad.
