From an ION Paper Pad: Reflections post-Day 60

From an ION paper pad:

“Day 52

My time in the city of endless day is coming to a close. Tomorrow, I will be leaving Alaska for my journey home.

It’s really hard to answer the question of “what have you learned this summer?” from parents, family, and friends. I could give a endless retell of my days here in response to “what did you do this summer?”- but the word “learned” is always weighty. 

In the scientific arena: the cryosphere; arctic technology; alternative energy; extractive energy (methane gas hydrates and natural gas from coal seams), etc. 

In the skillset arena: I know how to “make use” of meetings and events. How to follow-up on a good brainstorm? Actionable items. Could learn this in business school, but workplace taught me this summer. 

In the other stuff arena: native issues, rural economy of scale issues, how different workplace structures work, how to create and sustain a network, different network structures, how to make funds grow. The idea of the pristine, again."

Frankly, I have only a vague recollection of sitting at work on my last day and jotting all of that down. What I remember of my last two weeks in Alaska consists mostly of watching Harry Potter twice, trying the amazing Ahi at Bear’s Tooth with Ali and Michael, and having a juicy, glazed chicken breast at the Spinnard Road House, doused with asparagus and saffron. I also vividly remember the halibut cheeks and oysters- the backdrop of me getting to know Ali’s family. It seems like a lot of what I remember about Alaska was food. This may be because food adventures and on-foot adventures were my main experimental outlets. Right now, I am an hour away from breaking my fast (I am fasting the month of Ramadan), and my food adventures seem to be the more tantalizing choice to reflect on.

There was also, of course, fabulous weather, sitting in the back porch- colors were vivid. I distinctly remember trying to take a picture, and being disappointed that it didn’t show up the way I thought it looked. This might be attributed to bad photography, but I decided to put my phone down and sat there looking for a long time. This was the same reason I could not blog every day. Between work and Alaskan adventures, there would have been plenty to fill a daily entry.  I was worried that over-sharing would mean under-living

I remember asking Ali, Merlin, and Henry “If someone sailed to the horizon in front of us, would they hit a sky-colored wall?”

I watched The Truman Show as a child, and that scene stuck with me the most. I know that what I valued most about Alaska was its complete embrace of the un-superficial. In Bahrain, people do embrace and indulge, but it is mostly in the superficial. I am not immune from over-indulging in the constructed, but I have been very convinced of setting minimalism as a ground-rule for life. Minimalism in material goods, but also in speech, plans, food, and activities. Minimalism especially in the amount of resources we put into the creation of anything. This must not be confused with laziness, because by minimalism I mean “doing something well with the least amount of resources”, I don’t mean heavily compromise on your quality of life, education, and food.

After my summer in Alaska, I think I have a stronger vision for what I want my career to be. I want to be part of an institution that has clearly grounded values like ION. That way, no matter what projects I end up working on, they will echo the values I would like to live by. ION showed me the importance of applicability, and granted me a strong affinity to the actual applicability of issues. While most of the topics had a scientific background, the issues were relevant to projects going on in the Senator’s office, in the community, and the Obama administration. This meant acquiring a comfort and know-how with everything related to environmental engineering and policy in Alaska. I told my father that I wasn’t sure if my ION experience narrowed what kind of job I wanted, but it made me more interested and more knowledgeable in how environmental engineering impacts the real world- how design can go from increasing functionality to changing social norms and demographic tensions. I knew what he would say. He's told me before: “don’t get a job, make a career, be an expert in a certain field, work on your inner  ثقافة and mental richness. Be an expert”. I agree with him. I don’t want “Economics and Environmental Engineering” to be a branding I give myself; I want it to be a foundation for a career in the real-life applicability of resources, design, and human behavior. 

Alaska and ION have both given me a lot. I will take the ideals of subsistence and minimalism with me, and the skills of resource and urban development. That being said, I will probably live most of my life in a place where life moves a little bit faster, and is a little bit more artificial (it’s hard to find many places as un-artifical as Alaska). But, I will miss smiling strangers on the street, and my neighbor’s daily tea and coffee set up outside his home for the neighborhood. Perhaps many areas of the world just need an alternative design for their resource usage, and then we'll have more smiling, communal-living neighbors.