Synopsis: Captain Freeman takes the engineering staff on a therapeutic retreat while the lower deck shifts try to game the system to win a lottery for vacant room assignments.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of neurodiversity, and how having a different way of relating to the world isn’t wrong, it is just different from neurotypical.
In “Room for Growth” after the engineering crew has been working overtime and is suffering from high stress levels, Captain Carol Freeman decides to take them on a therapeutic retreat aboard the Dove. When they board the vessel, the engineers do not seem to respond to the relaxation techniques in the way Freeman expected, and she becomes overly stressed, to the point that the leadership aboard the Dove believes that they might need to send her back to Earth for treatment. However, the engineering team works together to create a relaxation chamber that relieves all Freeman’s stress. Meanwhile, on Cerritos, the Beta Shift and Delta Shift crew members try to make sure their teams win the lottery for vacant room assignments, until the Beta Shift realizes that only one vacant room is available and that they do not want to split up. However, when the Delta Shift wins the room assignment, they decide to all move in together, something that the Beta Shift had not seen as an option.
In both these scenarios, we see different ways to look at the world, or universe. In the case of the engineers, Freeman is angered and stressed by their inability to relax in a way that she believes that they should. Even after they find a way to treat her stress, she does not understand why they cannot see the world as she does until Chief Engineer Andy Billups explains that what relaxes engineers is for them to be able to engineer themselves a solution to a problem. Meanwhile, aboard Cerritos the Beta Shift realizes that there was another way to look at the opportunity for how to use a room vacancy, they all could have moved in together, as the Delta Shift did when they won the lottery for the room. The engineers and the Delta Shift both had different ways to react to a situation that was not standard, or typical. This can be compared to how a neurodivergent or Autistic brain perceives the world in a way that is different from neurotypicals. Not lesser than, just different.
mydailysoultrek 