Abushaar described a pivotal classroom moment that captured everything Harvard meant to her. In a negotiations class, the professor set up a scenario about a war between Ecuador and Peru, then stopped her mid-response and said, 'Tell the president what to do' — and in walked the actual Ecuadorian president. For someone who grew up in a country where expressing political opinions could land you in prison, the experience was revolutionary. The moment Harvard made her feel that her voice mattered to a head of state was the moment she reclaimed the 'sense of infinite possibility we have as children' — the same impulse to think big that had been crushed by the spying walls of her childhood in Syria.