5 posts tagged with "Personal"

I'm tired. Existentially.

As a senior engineer with nearly 13 years of professional experience, I've reinvented myself countless times. I've seen more technologies than I can count or remember come and go. I've seen bubbles form and burst. I remember when the latest flop was supposed to be the next big thing. I've spent countless hours learning new skills and honing my craft in a knowingly futile effort to stay up-to-date with technology. I've seen layoffs and downturns. Trust me, I understand that the macroeconomics of the tech industry has peaks and valleys. After all, I wrote my first Hello, world! in high school shortly after the .com crash. However, something feels different this time. I'm starting to feel deeply disillusioned about the future of AI.

Goodhart's Law and Vestigial Structures​

I will refer to the concept of Goodhart's Law a few times throughout this post, so I'll quickly define my interpretation. It states that:

Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

Or, in layperson's terms (which I strongly prefer):

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

I think about this adage almost every single day. It's no secret that Amazon is one of the most data-driven companies on the planet. During my tenure at AWS, I wrote numerous docs overflowing with quantitative evidence to support my claims and proposals. As a customer-facing solutions architect, data was integral to guiding my customers on the right path and measuring the efficacy of my work. That said, Amazonians are also expected to balance the data with anecdotes. Like Jeff Bezos famously said back in 2018:

The thing I have noticed is that when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There is something wrong with the way that you are measuring it.

I remember my professors at university telling stories of how programmers back in the day used to have their productivity measured by various arbitrary metrics like program execution duration, lines of code, etc. When these metrics become targets, other arguably more meaningful metrics like code maintainability quickly suffer.

Exhibit A:

const add = async (first: number, second: number): Promise<number> => {
    const sleep = (millisecondsToWait: number): Promise<void> => {
        return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, millisecondsToWait));
    };
    // waste five minutes of runtime
    await sleep(300000);
    return first + second;
}

Exhibit B:

// replace
// condition ? truePathReturn : falsePathReturn
// with extra lines
// add comments for even more lines
const ifWithExtraLines = (condition: Boolean, truePathReturn: object, falsePathReturn: object): object => {
    // check condition
    if (condition) {
        // return true path object if condition is true
        return truePathReturn;
    }
    else {
        // return false path object if condition is false
        return falsePathReturn;
    }
}

You get the idea. These code snippets are terrible, but if developers' targets are runtime or the number of lines, this is the type of software that is incentivized. Individuals will always index on their targets.

As the tech industry has narrowed its focus and investments on AI lately, I can't help but feel less human. I'm constantly bombarded on social media with the sensationalized idea that developers will soon be replaced. Programmers will become vestigial structures, casualties of the rise of AI agents, and ironically, the very source of data that will lead to our own demise. While I am skeptical about just how close humans are to AGI (artificial general intelligence), there's no doubt that we are approaching a critical juncture in technological history. I'm also not convinced that we're considering the right metrics.

I'm not going to masquerade as some genius economist, but let's consider a stock price as an example of a target for a moment. Everyone can agree that this is a meaningful target, but I argue that this is a short-term target. Why are some executives paid primarily via stock? So their focus is to raise the stock price, of course. Typically, vest periods of a few years ensure no short-term stock manipulation. However, they have a clear target and timeline. Other leadership now indexes on this as well. Many other metrics, such as the company's long-term performance, employee satisfaction, etc., are often less of a focus because they impact their target far less. Goodhart's Law in action. Now, most employees are constantly laser-focused on short-term growth in perpetuity. Not all companies are like this, but this example illustrates the point. However, I fear this myopic mentality honing in on short-term profitability and adoption, instead of ethics and considerations of socioeconomic impact, is prevalent in AI.

Developer Productivity Is Not for You​

With the advent of large language models (LLMs) and AI agents, there are typically two value propositions: hire fewer developers and/or materially augment their performance. While we can debate just how much the productivity gains are, tools like these undoubtedly help developers like me ship features faster than ever. But have you ever asked yourself who benefits from these productivity gains? In theory, these productivity gains mean more features. More features correlate to more revenue. More revenue sways the market. The market support bolsters the stock price. So simply put, your employer and its shareholders benefit from your increased productivity as a developer. Developer productivity is not for you.

While I use these tools daily for tasks like explaining code I did not write, I have no idea how this will impact my skills and cognitive sharpness in the long term. This is a nuanced question about human psychology. Having an LLM available to generate code for me can make me far less motivated to do my own thinking and research, especially during project crunch times when I am under massive pressure to deliver. These tools certainly make me more productive, but may not make me a better programmer. That is the key distinction because one benefits my employer, and the other benefits me as a skilled worker.

We Gave Away the Knowledge for Free (Under MIT)​

I also won't parade myself around as an open-source purist. The lion's share of the software I've authored resides under the lock and key of my megacorporate employers' private repositories. That said, I never imagined that all the code I (and much more so the actual open-source contributors) published freely on the internet would benefit a select few companies later, back when I signed up for my GitHub account over a decade ago. While access to these models is democratized for a fee, creating these massive models is limited to the select few corporate titans with the means of production (mountains of GPUs, barring revolutionary advancements in the vein of DeepSeek).

While these technological advancements are truly remarkable, I still struggle with the ethics of using these large models at times. Without namedropping any company or model, you can find countless lawsuits from creators who have coaxed significant portions of their works from LLMs and diffusion models without the proper licensing. These cases are ample evidence, in my opinion, that the macroeconomic corporate stance is to ask for forgiveness, not permission, for what content is acceptable to train models on.

Ultimately, we gave away the knowledge for free, but now we have to pay for access to its application. When we look at the jobs that are most at risk of being replaced by AI (or rather by its perceived value), they are mostly well-paying jobs in a rapidly vanishing middle class (e.g., developers) or creative fields like graphic design. To quote the brilliant tweet of @QuinnCat13:

We could automate menial jobs so people have time to make art and music, but apparently, we'd rather automate art and music so people have time for menial jobs.

Software like Glaze, which adds minor modifications to images that are imperceptible to the human eye but makes it more difficult for models to train on, gives me hope for checks, balances, and enforcement in AI ethics. However, these powerful models already exist. Remediation is much more challenging than prevention.

SaaS Is Not Going to Save Us​

One trendy take I've seen from the indie hacker influencers on Twitter and LinkedIn is that instead of working for a corporation, you should quickly build your own products using LLMs and IDEs like Cursor. This way, you own your intellectual property and generate revenue directly. However, I see several problems.

I do not want to gatekeep how we define a programmer, so I'll use artistry as an example. I have zero experience in Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. I am not a graphic designer or illustrator by any stretch of the imagination. However, I can now throw a sentence or two into a diffusion model and produce imagery. Am I now an artist? I argue not. If any modifications need to be made to the output, I am utterly incapable of handling them unless I can do so via prompt engineering. The rendered art will also be soulless, lack perspective, and solely regurgitate existing works of actual artists. Similar problems exist for purely AI-generated codebases by inexperienced programmers. I won't namedrop and pile on to them, but you can find numerous examples of security breaches and unexpected cost spikes due to issues in AI-generated code.

Another key issue is the concept of differentiated value. This is a common argument for using cloud service providers like AWS. You can run your own data centers, manage your own virtualization, build your own provisioning automation, etc. However, if AWS can do it out-of-the-box with better economies of scale than your company, why waste time on work that does not set your product apart from its competition? A common approach is to limit undifferentiated work. If AI primarily writes your SaaS product, then the differentiated value of your business is effectively a set of prompts. While I predict that LLMs have and will continue to plateau, let's assume I'm wrong. Why would a company (or individual power users) pay a recurring fee for your product if they can get the same results by generating and plugging in the prompts themselves? The barrier to entry for developers is lowered with AI appliances, but corporations also have this exact ability with far more resources behind them. SaaS is not going to save us.

No One Left to Pay​

At the height of the Great Depression, unemployment hit approximately 25% in the United States. Most people fail to realize how much the global economy depends on people having money to consume services and goods. Again, let's assume that I'm wrong about the AI plateau. Let's also ignore supply and demand issues for compute resources. Who is left to pay for anything if AGI replaces all these jobs? A global economic crisis would ensue. I don't know whether it's a universal basic income, an oligarchy with access to key resources, or something else that emerges after AGI, but it does not look bright for humanity at that point.

A Focus on Humanity​

Believe it or not, this post started as a therapy exercise. I've been struggling lately to define my worth, identity, and goodness as a human being without relying on my career accolades, the perceived prestige of the company I work for, the quality of my education, etc. When I look to others for inspiration online, I see the same qualities: braggadocious reflections about their many followers, indie makers plastering their incomes on their profiles, toxic elitism, etc. We've been conditioned for these targets in this influencer-obsessed society.

Over the years, I've sought personal validation and measured my worth through various metrics that, unfortunately, are deeply rooted in capitalism and vanity. At no other point in human history have we had unfettered access to data about ourselves as we do now. We can measure how seen we are with social media views, how much people approve of our thoughts via likes, how valuable we are with our incomes and contributions to our employers, etc. Perhaps even worse, we can also see these metrics for our peers. We choose these arbitrary metrics as our targets, and the wrong actions are incentivized. We build and optimize for these targets, and humanity takes a backseat. No longer do we have time to gaze up at the stars, draw constellations, tell stories, have downtime, etc., as our ancient ancestors did. We've replaced this with incessant media consumption, working more than ever, and nonstop reminders that all the numbers that matter to us must keep going up.

I don't blog often, but I felt inspired to write about my frustrations with the industry, society, and myself. I still have a genuine love of technology and am grateful that my career revolves around this passion, a privilege I do not take for granted. However, now more than ever, it's time for me to relinquish some of that competitive, capitalistic vanity and reconnect with my humanity. I do not care about constant improvement, revenue growth, external validation, etc., the same way that I used to. I want to spend more time creating for myself, learning for fun, exploring spirituality or connection with the natural world, and investing time in things that make the world a slightly better place. If AI replaces me in the process, then so be it.

I have no power to make changes on a massive scale. I'm a minuscule cog in this intricate and profoundly unfair machine, like most people. I can offer up my authentic self, though. I can share my tiny voice that questions the ethics and benefits of this technology that we know and use. I acknowledge that the anecdote has much more context than the data. I can share my journey to define my self-worth and goodness without the quantitative pressure of comparing myself to others. I can strive to be more human in an increasingly AI-obsessed world.

Disclaimer​

When I started this blog post, I worked for Amazon Web Services. The opinions and views expressed here are my own and not those of Amazon. I have since left the company.

My company’s office building is located in the heart of downtown Anchorage. This shimmering, golden beacon of American capitalism seems to cast a shadow over the Downtown Transit Center and its transient residents. Many are drunk and high; many are homeless and hopeless. Some even sell their bodies either for a quick fix or as a means of survival. They spend their dark days on the cold streets of Anchorage.

Now that the sun is starting to come out for more than just a few hours, I’ve started taking walks during my lunch break like I used to during my summer internship. What amazes me is that the Transit Center’s population during the winter is nearly the same as the summer. Except now, the Transit Center is used as a brief respite of warmth before chasing the rest of a nomadic day.

It’s worth noting that a staggering percentage of these transients are Alaska natives and their descendants. These people are trying to assimilate into American society, but despite living in the second wealthiest state in the US, can find virtually no economic opportunities here for them. It’s easy to point to cultural differences as an explanation for the rampant violence, substance abuse, and self-destructive tendencies, but in reality, like most things in America, it all comes down to money. Naturally, oil and gas is the primary industry here, which requires a great deal of education and specialization. People like me are brought in from the outside to fill these white-collar opportunities. A strong upper class is created, while the rest are detained to a life of abject poverty in a state with an exceedingly high cost of living.

Social change is a process that takes a significant amount of time and pressure, much like the geologic processes that lead to the formation of oil. Major production began in Alaska in the late 1970s, and an entire generation has already come to know degrading impoverishment of Alaska’s great economic divide. My company has made substantial donations towards helping the natives, but the American notion of throwing money at a problem fails to be a viable solution in this case.

This past May on one of the first days of my summer internship, a stranger in the elevator warned me about the transients. Using derogatory terms, he implied that these natives are a worthless people. Why can’t they just act right, he wondered aloud. I remember being horrified. To think that in the year 2013 in the United States the notion of second-class citizens could still exist was disgusting to me. Until that point I knew nothing about the Alaska natives or the social issues that plague them, and I suspect that most people simply don’t either.

I often see people go out of their way, often by walking on the other side of the street, to avoid making any sort of contact with the transients when they pass by them on their way for coffee or lunch, and I think that’s a significant part of the problem. Rather than politely denying their requests or even acknowledging their existence, it’s easier to just avoid them altogether, which is simply dehumanizing. The transients are long forgotten as employees walk past them to the parking lot. Downtown isn’t our home.

During my internship, I didn’t have a car. I had one more semester awaiting me in Texas, and I would have to pay tuition, rent, and living expenses completely out of pocket, because I didn’t have enough financial aid to cover my second degree. Despite the sizable checks coming from my work, I had to save every single cent that I could to make ends meet. Without the option of being gouged by a rental car company, I relied on the bus as my sole method of transportation. That’s not to say that I was without privilege. My employee badge allowed me to ride the bus for free.

Whenever a rider would get on the bus, they would either feed money into the designated slot or slide their bus pass across the face of the machine. A loud beep would resonate throughout the bus, signaling their entrance. When I got on the bus, I simply showed the driver my badge and entered, and they would have to manually enter a code. Honestly, I felt guilty about it at first. It was as if it were some underhanded deal. Why should I who could afford the fare ride for free? I received a lot of dirty looks from the patrons as well, I assume because donning my business clothes on the bus was insulting to them. Maybe it's the same look that button-downs would give someone in their office wearing street clothes. I didn’t see many corporate employees riding the bus, mostly just laborers in tattered work clothes. I grew accustomed to it, because I didn’t have the option to avoid it. Eventually, I became a regular, and the faces all became familiar. Now, when I take my strolls downtown, I see the value in sharing the sidewalk.

On my walk today, I saw a mural proclaiming that life on the street is a dead end. After that, I saw three young people hitting a crack pipe in a nearby alley. I couldn’t help but think that the message wasn’t lost on them, rather it was worthless to them. It’s easy to talk about change and opportunity, but what can they really do when their future was predestined by the socioeconomic circumstances that they were born into?

Sometimes, we all need to ride the bus. We all need to spend some time at the Transit Center. We need to remember that when homeless people approach asking for change, they don't just need the money in your pocket.

On Saturday night, I handed in my last final exam. Honestly, it was an extremely anticlimactic ending. The final had no bearing on my graduation or GPA for that matter, so it wasn't really the concluding push that I envisioned being the end of my undergraduate stay. After a brief test, I said to my professor, "終わりですね..." and stole away into the chilly evening.

I spent some time walking around the campus and reminiscing about fond memories from the past five years. So many little things have changed, but so much remains static. It still hasn't fully sunk in that I've graduated yet, but I know that when it hits, I'll spend a lot of time thinking back to that cold stroll.

Now more than ever I think about the Transit Center. Just four months ago I was torn between Anchorage and Austin. Once again, I'm pushing myself to the limit: returning to the city in the dead of Alaskan winter. The first three months that I spent in Alaska were filled with their own trials and tribulations, but this time, I know that nothing can prepare me for that moment when that plane lands. Now, during this awkward gray area between graduation and starting my job, I'm trying to prepare myself both physically and mentally for my return to the Last Frontier.

I still have a thick scar on my thigh from Flattop Mountain, probably my favorite souvenir from Anchorage. Climbing Flattop is considered amateur to native Alaskans, but by taking the road less traveled without adequate footwear, I managed to suffer quite a few falls. In any case, everyone needs to be taken down a notch now and then. Whenever I feel the scar tissue now, I think back to how I lived during the last week of my internship. Everyday after work was a new adventure. The day after Flattop, I crossed a glacial stream barefoot. I crammed as much adventure as I could into those short hours. For the first time, I felt truly alive. That's how I want to live the rest of my life.

I haven't opened up to many people about why I'm going back. In fact, if you talked with me early in the summer, I probably told you how awful I found it to be. Alaska certainly takes its toll on the mind, but at the same time I've never felt so connected to a place before. The natural beauty that I imbibed there evoked a sense of naturalistic wonder that transcends language or photography. After I left, I thought nonstop about going back. With the help of some close friends an opportunity 'opened up' for me, and I'm happy to be returning for five more months.

When I think about life itself now, I always think of the day that I climbed Flattop. People from all over the world visit it to see a clear view of Anchorage and the port. It just so happened that the day I went, the mountain was beset by gray clouds on all sides. Despite this accomplishment of reaching the peak, I was still greatly limited in how far ahead that I could actually see. I suppose I thought that finishing my university studies would give me a great sense of clarity in regards to where my life will take me. I still feel lost in the fog even now that I've graduated, but I've come to accept it.

Most of the incredible experiences in my life I attribute to sheer chance, whether it be a change of major or a friend that grows to be a lover. There is always risk in living by chance. Sometimes you'll stumble, but even in success, you may still find yourself surrounded by the unknown. Let your life be ruled by these once-in-a-lifetime encounters. Wounds heal, but experience lasts forever.

My blog is nearing its first anniversary. Admittedly, I have failed to maintain it as I would have liked to over the past year. My instinctive response is to attribute this to a lack of time. As my college graduation swiftly draws near, I've been obsessed with the notion of time lately. With classes, work, side projects, and graduation rituals at hand, I find myself constantly thinking that there's just not enough time in one day. Not to mention that my exercise routine, Japanese studies, and myriad of other hobbies have suffered as well. Inevitably, there isn't enough time to do everything, but as I found myself updating my old articles about Japanese study, I realized that what I was trying to teach others about language study I should be applying to my own daily life.

A year ago, I was a Japanese major dissatisfied with the structure of my university's program. A student nearing the end and far cry from fluency. But in this harsh climate, my devotion blossomed. I was motivated and passionate and on the cusp of discovery. I decided that the only way I would ever become proficient at Japanese would be through rigorous self-study and began immediately. In addition to this process, I also sought to write about my experience, so that others in my position could learn from my successes and failures. I started by deriving what I perceived to be the steps to achieving fluency. The guide is loose and ambiguous, but served its purpose as an abstract template for my studies. Pulling from numerous resources, I developed a strict regimen with monumental results. In November of 2012, I delved into this process and began writing a lengthy guide about my journey.

Over the course of six months, I was able to learn how to write and the English meanings for the 2,200 jōyō kanji (commonly used Chinese characters) and vastly expand my knowledge of intermediate and advanced grammar and diction. While this is an impressive feat, I'm certainly not implying that I'm by any means smarter than the average person. Instead of raw intellect, I was able to accomplish this through sheer determination and an effective routine.

Think about what you've done today. Sure, you've probably attended class or gone to work all day, but think about the time that you may have wasted in between. What if instead of spending those fifteen minutes after lunch or class mindlessly browsing the internet or reading social media feeds, you did something that you truly enjoy and stand to benefit from? What if you tried achieving your life goals in increments of fifteen minutes? That's exactly how I did it. I replaced the mind-numbing consumption of bland Facebook statuses and trite internet humor with constant language practice. I shuffled through flashcards instead of statuses or tweets and read news in Japanese instead of English. I used my phone and computer in Japanese in order to make myself constantly see the language. With this mindset, finding an hour or two everyday to study everyday wasn't nearly as difficult as it seemed to be at first. For those six months, I was as submerged in Japanese culture as a busy computer science student thousands of miles away from Japan could be. My only regret was stopping after those six months. I cannot stress enough the value of immersing yourself in your passions.

The Twitter Generation wants knowledge in bite-sized, concise servings. Because of this mentality, we often lack the dedication to read a novel as opposed to the synopsis. We also seem to enjoy discussing the possibilities more than making them reality. With this being said, we are afforded a wealth of interactive learning tools that previous generations never even dreamt of. I attribute my accomplishments as much to the digital wonders of today as I do to my own hard labor. Use living in the Information Age to its fullest potential.

I've been using Japanese study as an extended example, and you may have absolutely no interest in it. That's perfectly fine, but I'm sure that there's something that you want to learn or do that requires an equivocal amount of toil. I challenge you to push yourself to achieve it. It won't be easy, and at times, you may want to give up. However, the journey is every bit as important as the ending. If you can't find pleasure in your struggles, then I urge you to question your reasoning. Be sure to keep the endeavor fun or you'll burn out quickly.

Comparing my Japanese studies over the last year with my largely unsuccessful studies during the two years prior to that, I can't help but feel like I've wasted too much time. Lately, I keep catching myself daydreaming of where I could be now if I had discovered how to learn like this much earlier on. Of course, the glaring fault of this is that I'm still wasting time thinking about it. It's never too late to get started.

As thankful as I am to have studied at a top-tier institution like the University of Texas, I have to question the driving force behind my alma mater: research or education? At such a university, a great deal of responsibility is placed on the student's ability to learn independently, something that was never properly instilled during my high school years. Honestly, it wasn't until my fourth year of college that I felt like I knew how to learn.

Despite this, everything I needed to know about computer science I learned during my first year of college. As a freshman computer science student, I took programming and logic courses. In the programming courses, I learned how to approach general problems using basic algorithms. In the logic courses, I was taught how to reason and develop proofs and theories. I understood the content of the classes, but their implications were lost on me. Nearly any technology field can be reduced to programming, logic, and mathematics. With these fundamental concepts at hand, I had the ability to learn web development or graphics or nearly anything during my first year of college, but I wouldn't realize this for some time. The only true failure is not even trying.

For the majority of my college career, I had the mindset that certain concepts and skills were out of my reach. I was trapped in the mentality that you can only learn what you are taught in class, and there were serious implications to this fallacy. Because of this, I never strove to create or learn much outside of the scope of my coursework. It wasn't until I started deconstructing seemingly complex tools and concepts into simpler, digestible steps that I felt like I could grow not only as a computer scientist but as an individual. Don't shy away from what you don't understand, because it's often not as intricate as you think.

Computer science is based on inherent laziness. Software in general is designed to make life easier by automating tasks and repetition. Effective software design is based on modularization and reuse, ultimately minimizing the amount of work that needs to be done. One day, we as developers will replace ourselves with software that itself creates software, and there will be nothing to be done. But yet again, I seemed to have been oblivious to the obvious. I taught myself discipline and effective learning practices, but only applied them to Japanese. Learning how to learn is an abstract and unique concept that can be applied to any field of study.

I've spent the last week or slowly piecing together my thoughts about what I wanted to pass on from my college experience. I've been adding and removing passages from here in an effort to keep this relatively coherent. Now, graduation lies less than one month away. Most of my classmates seem complacent with their academic accomplishments, but I finally feel at peace knowing that my education has only just begun. I've spent this semester stuck on my preconceived notion that true learning ends when school does. This week I started following my own advice again; living like I did nearly a year ago. Getting back into the routine. For now, I'll be that person at the gym flipping through hundreds of kanji flashcards in between sets of weightlifting. Trying to make sense of hosts speeding through complex dialogues on Japanese news stations while I ride the bus to campus. Squeezing in lines of code on my personal website and an iOS app in between classes. Reading up on photography and graphic design over lunch. Documenting the journey. I think it's the perfect way to end one era of my life and start another: achieving my life goals fifteen minutes at a time.

Cold air fills my lungs as I inhale deeply and behold this marvel of geologic time. I feel introspective and insignificant as I imagine my short life span juxtaposed with this ancient, undefiled landscape. I try my best to take a mental snapshot of this moment near the peak, knowing fully well that nothing can ever recreate this moment. Gazing down over the untrodden path that led me here. Imbibing water to replace the icy sweat now soaking my clothes. Savoring a brief reprieve from a steep journey. Noting some clever metaphor. Solving the profound, metaphysical intricacies of life.

My expectations of Alaska were highly romanticized to say the least. In my mind, Alaska was where I would figure everything out: love, career, happiness, and meaning. Many of my preconceived notions were wrong, and truthfully, they nearly ruined my experience. It wasn’t until the end of my stay that I learned to appreciate and grow from my time in Anchorage. It’s easy to share some hollow pictures to convey your experience, but it’s much harder to share how it changed you. Maybe that’s why I’ve been putting this off for a while.

Nothing could have prepared me for the moment that I landed in Anchorage. Reality set in that I was now 4,130 miles from home and not returning anytime soon. Upon exiting the airport, I was greeted by a brisk wind and the soft midnight sunlight. I remember that first night laying in bed asking myself over and over again, “What the hell have I done?”

The first week was one of the longest of my life. With no means of transportation and the house to myself, I had to find various ways to cope with the isolation, loneliness, and boredom. I spent much of that week walking around Anchorage, often seduced by the mountains. The mountains were one of the few things that held true about Alaska. I remember the morning after my flight sitting inside a Burger King for a long time just staring off at the scenery, amazed at how it could transform such a mundane place. I told myself that once the mountains stopped looking so majestic, it would be time for me to leave. By the third week, I stopped noticing them altogether.

A few days after I arrived, my other roommate and fellow intern Jordan showed up at the house. From the look on his face, I could tell that he shared my “now what do we do?” sentiment. I was very grateful for the companionship, knowing that he was going through exactly what I was going through. Things wouldn’t change right away though. Even after we assured each other that things would pick up once work started, they wouldn’t for some time.

As with any internship, work started off painfully slow. I desperately tried to fill my time with projects both to get work experience and keep my mind occupied. For those first couple of weeks, I would find myself feeling hopeless as I counted my days remaining in Anchorage. The calendar reminded me of how far I had to go, and the mountains reminded me of how isolated I was.

After work everyday, Jordan and I would walk to the Transit Center, a low-income blip in the midst of corporate Anchorage. I often saw people in business clothes cross the street to avoid walking next to the bus riders. Most of the people here were Natives donning frayed jeans and work shirts. Some were inebriated. Some were using drugs. Some were even soliciting themselves. Most of them were bussing home from work just like me. Most of them were assimilating, or at least trying to. The Transit Center was just one stop on a journey. Some were heading uptown, but most were heading downtown.

When my father was in high school, he picked cotton in his family’s field. When I was fourteen, I was writing programs. As one of fourteen children, my father never had a chance at going to college. I’m finishing up two degrees. People forget that that kind of mobility in one generation is rare and not based solely on hard work. I spent long days and nights to get where I am, but I can’t deny the factor of environment. There are people with cars, and there are people who have to wait at the Transit Center.

The bus rides home surprisingly made me feel at home. In Austin, I didn’t have a car for my first few years of college, so I was no stranger to public transportation. Also, downtown Anchorage is not unlike downtown Austin. There was a surprisingly large population of young people and transients that often populated the buses. Riding the bus reminded me of class warfare. Although ConocoPhillips pays the bus company to allow their employees to ride for free, I never saw any on the bus. The bus was a symbol of the tension between rich and poor, oil and not-oil. Jordan and I were ambassadors to both sides; both poor college students and corporate employees. I often debated which was my real skin. Was it the tattered concert tee and flip-flops or the business casual button-down? In any case, on the days where we went to the gym after work, I felt substantially less noticed wearing my street clothes.

I stayed up late many nights in Anchorage, often unintentionally. It was common to watch a movie or talk about life and philosophy with my roommates for a while. The days dragged on, but the nights went by very quickly. With the sun still beaming at 10pm, it’s not hard to imagine losing track of time. I suffered from insomnia pretty badly at first. It wasn’t even so much seeing the sunlight, but feeling it. It was as if some vestigial structure in my body was beckoning me to stay awake. During those long, bright nights the mind wanders. Even when I was able to sleep, it was sporadic. I often found myself not being able to tell if I was actually awake or not.

Oil is the product of time and pressure. During those nights, that’s exactly what I had. The pressure of graduation and a long-distance relationship and the time to think about them fueled some potent night terrors.

I think many people shared in my sentiments of sleepless nights, namely those who hadn’t been there long. Alaska is truly a place of extremes: bright nights and dark days, affluence and poverty, mania and depression. During the summer, people are constantly doing outdoor activities as if powered by the sunlight. Most people go hiking or fishing multiple times per week after work. In Alaska, it’s imperative that you keep the mind occupied and the body tired.

My routine continued for some time. Hours turned to days; days to weeks; weeks to a month. Finally, at the start of July, I returned to Austin for a week. It was a pleasant reprieve. Although I feared that it would more or less ruin the progress I had made towards surviving my stay in Alaska, something was different when I returned to Anchorage. I’m not sure if it was my time in Austin or even just the fact that I had managed to make it a month already, but I had a new perspective on the experience. I wanted to make it count.

By the end of my internship, I realized that my homesickness, stress, and loneliness were truly a prison of the mind. I learned the value of friendship and human connections. I felt the power of self-reliance in overcoming such a great obstacle. I hiked mountains, held snow in June, saw unique wildlife, crossed a glacial stream barefoot, and touched the Arctic Ocean. I made close friends and learned a great deal about myself. Looking back, I could have taken a lot more out of the experience with the right mindset starting out, but truthfully, I wouldn’t change anything if I could go back.

It was an ongoing joke that Jordan and I weren’t allowed to watch Into the Wild. That it might just push us over the edge. I suggested that we watch it on our last night in Anchorage. We never got around to it, and that’s probably for the best.

I spent my last night with my closest friends in Anchorage right up until my red eye flight out. I never thought I’d be so sad to leave. I never thought I could build such good friendships and share in such an amazing experience there. I never thought I could change my mind about a place like that. I sat in the terminal waiting for my flight, contemplating my new lease on life. Torn between my friends I was leaving behind and my life in Austin, I felt something indescribable. Looking around at all the people on their own journeys, I thought once more of the Transit Center.