The sudden shutdown of the pandemic was a staggering blow for everyone, but catastrophic for someone like Matt, whose very future depended on up-close, personal interactions with therapists, providers, and a welcoming community. Just as his momentum was building, we were driven to dig deeper to find alternative avenues—if any—that could keep pace and sustain his upward trajectory.

So many aspects of daily life had been abruptly altered, forcing us to overhaul our entire routine on the fly. Speech therapy appointments and church services migrated to virtual screens—a poor substitute for human presence, but a necessary lifeline. Sadly, other vital outlets, including the Brain Training group, dance lessons, and volunteer work, vanished overnight. In an instant, most of Matt’s world shrank to the confines of our household, stripping away his chance to converse regularly with people beyond his family. Refusing to let his hard-won progress wither in isolation, we rallied to pivot, developing creative home endeavors and intellectual lifelines to fill the void.

As April 2020 came to a close, our primary objective was to engage Matt more deeply with the advanced concepts of his field. We were thrilled when a trusted ally, Dave—his Cornell adviser and friend—offered weekly, hour-long Friday chats about computer engineering. This took the pressure off me while helping Matt find and dust off his analytical “brain files,” verbalize his background knowledge, ask questions, and tackle difficult problems. They identified two relevant textbooks to use as a springboard for their discussions. At the same time, I contacted Phil, a former student of Matt's at Lafayette College, who generously agreed to call Matt every Wednesday night. The shared background among these men served as an ideal anchor for dialogue outside the unrelenting work at home, and we were profoundly grateful for their commitment and care.

On the first Wednesday, Phil and Matt spoke for thirty minutes on the phone. Matt was excited and animated as they spoke. Phil certainly did most of the talking, while Matt appropriately replied with “uh-huh” or “yup,” making only an occasional comment. Remembering Professor Watkins advising him on the rigors of graduate school compared to undergraduate life, Phil shared details about his Ph.D. thesis. It would be four to five weeks before Matt could collect his thoughts and interject them into the conversation with any real confidence. In the months to come, however, Matt began to dominate the dialogue more and more. Poor Phil had to take a backseat and do his best to understand Matt, who still struggled with enunciation, spoke too quickly, and slurred some words. Fortunately, Phil didn’t seem any the worse for wear.

The Zoom meeting dynamics with Dave worked better than Phil’s phone calls because of the added visual cues. Both men were incredibly patient with Matt, who frequently repeated himself during a single conversation and from week to week. Most often, he simply could not remember what he had already told them. His exuberance for making beer and wine and the specifics of his research outline were always on the tip of his tongue—yet never the daily grind of getting better. 

Beginning in June, during Dave’s weekly meetings, Matt chose to discuss a published paper he had previously written, a professional article he had just read, or a topic Dave selected. Attention to detail, practice, and repetition were required before each session. Initially, he sounded robotic, reading verbatim from each slide with intense concentration. Over time, he began adding brief supplementary comments, learning to focus on the presentation’s flow and connect his thoughts using complete sentences rather than isolated bullet points.

Practicing these lectures targeted every dimension of his developing speech and language skills: enunciation, consistent volume, voice projection, natural intonation, and concise terminology. Perhaps the greatest benefit of these sessions was discovering an activity Matt genuinely valued. He thrived on preparing and sharing his knowledge, receiving well-earned accolades, and feeling securely back in the classroom of his mind.

As the summer progressed, language skills and cognition remained the centerpiece of our time and attention at home, while physical performance received less emphasis. Even with our background in neurophysiology, Mike and I found it difficult to fathom the sequence of steps required to reboot the brain. Tasks that seemed relatively easy were sometimes just as much of a stumbling block as highly complicated ones—a paradox that frequently defied conventional logic.

Rebuilding a shattered brain is less like flipping a single power switch and more like tuning a massive orchestra. As individual systems gradually came back online, they had to learn how to play in harmony again. In the beginning, that meant tackling the low-hanging fruit—re-establishing basic speech patterns, noun-verb structures, and fundamental social scripts.

Jessica shed some light on the matter. She explained that learning language skills and executive functions follows a natural progression, whether in children or recovering adults, and that rebuilding those neural pathways is entirely possible. First, one learns basic nouns, then verbs, followed by connecting and descriptive words; complete sentences come later. Early language development centers primarily on immediate needs and wants without taking broader situations or other people into account. Furthermore, expressing opinions, emotions, and personal preferences is a much higher-level skill set. Therefore, she was thrilled that Matt was participating more in family discussions at the dinner table and beginning to express his preferences—such as not wanting to volunteer at the food bank or the summer lunch program, but being perfectly willing to help at his dad’s church. And although Matt's occasional sharp verbal reactions to being corrected felt disrespectful to us, they reflected a milestone in cognitive independence and gave us a genuine reason to celebrate.

After almost two years of outpatient speech therapy, in July 2020, Matt opted to stop formal treatment because he believed he no longer needed it. In his own assessment, he spoke “beautifully,” grading himself at a roaring 9 compared to the more realistic 4 or 5 that Jessica, Mike, and I felt was accurate. Jessica supported his decision and, as always, praised Matt for his incredible hard work and all he had accomplished. His gains were extraordinary; it is rare for a therapist to see the kind of sustained growth Matt displayed well beyond the first-year mark.

Leaving formal outpatient therapy behind meant that our home—and Matt's weekly engineering sessions—became the true proving grounds for his cognitive independence. His growing executive function flared to life in unexpected and sometimes brilliant ways. In mid-July, when I asked if he had a meeting scheduled for the upcoming Wednesday or Friday, he offered an incredibly astute, logical workaround: he wasn't entirely sure of the day, but figured if he signed into Zoom on Wednesday and Dave wasn’t there, it simply meant the meeting was on Friday. To his mind, there was absolutely no reason to waste energy making a phone call to clarify, since he had already assessed the probabilities and made an educated calculation.

To foster Matt’s momentum, Dave, Phil, and I set clear short-term goals for their future interactions, targeting advanced electrical and computer engineering problem-solving, concise use of domain terminology, and encouraging Matt to confidently drive the dialogue rather than passively respond to prompts.

By mid-August, Matt and Dave were dissecting the conclusions of Matt’s 2010 doctoral dissertation. As Dave read each bullet point and paused to request additional details, Matt successfully recalled and summarized the material in almost every single instance. He didn't stop there. He then led a discussion on a custom class curriculum he had authored, published, and presented at a conference back in 2018. Matt outlined his published paper, practiced his delivery—and, with a bit of external scaffolding to pull the final pieces together—delivered a polished twelve-minute presentation on two separate occasions: first to Dave, and then to Kathy. He handled the subsequent analytical Q&A sessions like a seasoned pro.

The true benchmark of this deeply rewarding achievement came when we realized he'd completed the entire task in just one week, a stark contrast to the grueling eight-week prep time required for his first endeavors. This rapid turnaround was a massive leap forward, well beyond typical clinical expectations. Matt’s steady, upward progress was undeniable.

Matt’s sights were firmly set on teaching again—if not now, at least soon. But despite all of his improvements, he still had a mountain of work ahead of him to master not only fundamental speech skills, but the higher level of cognitive and communicative flexibility required of an educator, such as the ability to adapt when interrupted by questions or to dynamically build upon an unexpected discussion point raised by a student. If only his self-awareness would kick in, allowing him to accurately assess his baseline abilities and pinpoint what he still needed to conquer. But in his mind, he was ready. Believing he had already crossed the finish line, he deemed our concerns invalid and resisted the very plan of attack designed to get him back into the classroom.

© 2026, Sarah Watkins