Posted by Cadet Alex Winters (Doctor) in Counselor’s Office - Alex Winters’ Boarding Assessment

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Janusz Korczak (Counselor)

Posted by Cadet Alex Winters (Doctor)

Out loud, she said earnestly: « I haven’t met the Captain yet, sir. I doubt he has any opinion of me at all. As for the biography by way of introduction: experience has taught me that most people appreciate openness, even if it is a little wordy, over having to keep up a conversation with someone who’s reluctant to contribute any genuine thoughts. Especially those in jobs like yours. Sir. »

Cadet Alex Winters, Doctor

Korczak looked at her and a smile formed on his face. “Well, I will tell you that a biography recited to me isn’t something I would consider ‘genuine thoughts’.”
and he cocked his head to the side slightly while he looked at her.

Alex blinked. She’d never thought about it quite that way. But she supposed, to someone who didn’t live in her head, it could sound as if she was reciting a rehearsed speech. “Perhaps it didn’t sound genuine to you,” she conceded. “I understand. But I can tell you, the intention behind it is a genuine desire to make a connection. Through humor, if nothing else.”

“Tell me about your relationship with your grandfather.”

Korczak, CNS

Alex closed her eyes for a moment, imagining her grandfather as he’d often sat in the companionable silence of their shared cottage: bent over a sheet of intricate calculations for some medicine he happened to be working on, or reclining in his high-backed chair with a book, lit only by the open fire in the hearth.

“My grandfather was a man of few words,” she said. “We spent most of our time at home reading, or working on some project in silence. For him, it was usually something pharmacological. Me, I was mostly into tinkering with machanical things, and what little electronics we had, when I was young.” She paused as it occurred to her, for what may have been the first time ever, that if Starfleet Medical had been a day or two slower in answering her queries once she got back to San Francisco, she may well have ended up an Engineer instead. She remembered the antique radio her grandfather had brought with him from Earth, and how she’d spent many a childhood hour taking it apart, carefully studying every part of its intricate innards in detail, and then putting it back together again. It had been very outdated technology on Earth even when her grandfather had been a boy. On Niol, it was literally useless. Nobody on the planet was broadcasting anything it could have picked up on, and the Elders greatly discouraged contact with passing space ships. But it had been an object of endless fascination to Alex. And in the end, it was what had gotten her off Niol, once she’d determined that what she wanted was to go back to Earth.

“It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly,” she said. “The silence, I mean. My grandfather spoke when he had something to say, and when he did, it was usually spot on. He taught me a great many things. We would take long daily walks on the beach, almost from the time that I was old enough to stand. He would point out to me all of the plants that could have medicinal uses. He also possessed a great collection of books on a wide variety of subjects. When I was young, he would read from them to me every night. Watching over his shoulder as he did so is how I began to learn to read for myself.” Like many a four-year-old, Alex had been one of those kids requesting the exact same bedtime stories over and over again, only to inadvertently learn them by heart, and then start correcting her grandfather when he made mistakes, or skipped a few paragraphs in the interest of expedience. Unbeknownst to Alex at the time, though, the bedtime stories read to her had been rather unusual. They weren’t ‘the adventures of Flotter’, nor even the religious parables that the Elders considered an indispensable part of a good and wholesome upbringing. They could range from fragments of biographies of great men and women in history such as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Zefram Cochrane and Stephen Hawking, to popular science publications by various philosophers, sociologists, geneticists and the occasional mathematician, and even a few straight-up textbooks. As a small child, Alex had mostly preferred the biographies. But when she got older, her interests shifted. The repeated readings by her grandfather from some of the more obscure texts in his collection ensured that she knew where to go looking for more things to learn.

“When I got a little older, I would go with my grandfather on his rounds, and watch in silence as he treated people’s wounds or birthed their children. Those people were grateful to us, but we weren’t … popular … exactly, with those who held the power in our village. So it was mostly just the two of us most of the time, and my grandfather was rather the contemplative type. It could be … I guess I’d call it lonely, at times. Perhaps that’s how I came to be the one who usually does most of the talking.”

She looked at the counselor, figuring she’d said enough for now, but knowing she could easily get lost going down memory lane, and talk about him for hours on end.

Cadet Alex Winters, Doctor

Korczak took a few notes as he spoke, but mostly simply sat and listened with an expression that was simultaneously emotionless and still engaged with her. No judgement, no shock, no surprise showed on his face; just simple listening and hearing what she said. When she finished, he made a few more notes and then said “Tell me more about your village. Where did you grow up?”

Korczak, CNS