Coming into this Fellowship, I took a great deal of pride in how flexible I am. Professionally and personally, I believe myself to be a very understanding person. I adapt to the needs of others, especially in cultures that are not my own, and I am not easily offended. This is a skill that has served me very well while living abroad and is something that I have long expressed to others as something needed for anyone who wants to work in the development space. However, lately, I have come to realize that there are limits to the benefits of flexibility. Sometimes, you need to advocate for yourself and while remaining culturally sensitive, stand up for yourself and your work.
My project is focused around developing a product that can be used by our beneficiaries. To accomplish this, my boss and I created a project-long timeline, stretching from October until the day that I leave India. We had it planned down to the week and the month. Having worked on various development projects before, I knew that this document was hopeful thinking. It was inevitable that we would fall behind and eat up some of the buffer space that we built into the timeline. As a result, I was not stressed when a few weeks into the project, meetings were pushed back due to Diwali celebrations, my own visa issues, and countless other problems. I was unbothered by this and continued to do the work that I needed to to push the project along.
Quickly though, these delays compounded. People would tell me that they were eager to meet or give ambitious deadlines for when something could happen, but when I did not repeatedly follow up, things would slip through the cracks. This all came to a head when we met with the partner who is developing our app, and they revealed it would take a full month longer than initially expected and would require a period beforehand to be redesigned, further causing delays.
This moment served as a wake-up call for me. In my mind, I was being flexible, adapting to the needs of the project and my coworkers, and working within the cultural context of India. In reality, I was being a pushover and was failing to advocate for myself and my work. Since that point, I have been more proactive, identifying issues that I expect to encounter, and advocating for myself and my project. I realized that the benefits of advocating for myself and my project extended beyond myself. My project is going to be used by our beneficiaries and is a tool that will help them. In order for this to be true, I sometimes need to push issues that I find relevant. I am still learning to find balance here, but I have been much more confident in bringing attention to my work while remaining understanding of things that are out of my control.
