What's Been and What's Ben

There I stood in the National Portrait Gallery looking at the famous portrait of George Washington. I was about to hand in my final papers for KAUST. This February 2008 and I had to make a decision. So I turned to my hero – 90 degrees to the right – where in the entryway to the bathroom stood the painting of Stephen Colbert. He told me it was the right thing to do because there was money in it. I laughed to myself, returned to the hotel to hand the interim president my papers.

Yesterday I was started by the KAUST communications director – who looks like the guy with glasses from the TV show Heroes. He had some reporters with the New York Times with him. It felt a little restraining to have him standing behind me. I was glad to have a news agency doing something other than recycling KAUST press releases. That interview in tandem with watching four hours of Ken Burn’s National Park documentary last night has made me feel in the reflective mood.

Engineers are naturally pessimistic. We are trained to find flaws in plans or else space shuttles blow up, pencil tips break, and bridges fall down. I was reminded of this every day last summer when I would bicycle over the Mississippi River from my apartment on the U of M campus to see the mangled remains of the 35W bridge laid out on a field below the banks. I realized When I applied for KAUST that I would probably not have the same experience at another university. Only through luck was my sub-field of solid-state optics (crystals like LEDs and laser pointers) added to the curriculum a few months ago. My purpose in coming to KAUST was partially just to make sure incompetent people didn’t cause it to come tumbling down. If things fall apart, the administration is at fault for believing they know about academic matters better than the faculty they hired. Our text books sit in customs houses for weeks when I would have hoped that the Saudi government would allow them fast passage through.

Unfortunately, because the labs I would like work in will not be up until 2011, I must look elsewhere. Instead of taking a leisurely (research intensive) two year track for a masters or staying on for a PhD, I will go back to America. My mother will sleep better at least. I must admit that I never intended to have KAUST be my terminal degree. I see it as a spicy foreign delicacy in the sandwich of my life. This weekend I need to decide because of the time sensitive nature of these decisions where I want to go afterward. My choices are industry, PhD, and Park Ranger. My current thinking is to try for Berkeley, University of Minnesota, University of Colorado: Boulder, and maybe Northwestern.

I am happy. My academic problems are just a thorn in my paw. The people here are awesome. Most meals take at least an hour – if not several.