“Four days,” Qusay Hussein tells me, echoing an experience many in Austin and across the state went through in mid-February when an overloaded electricity grid failed amid a winter storm. Four days without electricity, waiting for the world to spark back to life with the flick of a switch.
Between Sunday and Thursday, Hussein, a senior who graduates this spring with a double major in psychology and social work, padded around his off-campus apartment in the dark, cooking food and checking on his friends.
In some ways, Hussein is a typical undergraduate student at Texas. He’s eloquent and intellectually curious, an international student who has quickly adapted to a new culture. He’s an ambitious person and learner, with plans to soak in everything he can until he earns his PhD in psychology. But most graduates set to virtually walk across the stage this May aren’t 32 years old. Most aren’t refugees escaping war-torn Iraq. And certainly none have navigated getting their degrees after spending three years at a Doctors Without Borders hospital as their face was put back together.