Spence Green

Then I would prefer to be either a rock star:

or better yet, a rock star and a movie star:

There is a difference between doing and talking. When Stanford accepted my application in March, I received permission to use its name and mine in the same sentence. The associated has already changed my life in ways both obvious and imperceptible. People outside of school seem to regard me as more intelligent, more qualified, for instance. This perception lacks justification because I have not changed. What observers fail to see, though, is not that I expect more of myself, but that any performance differential that existed between me and my peers has vanished. Now I am just one of many who attends the great school, studies a grand subject, and whose callow idee fixe has become a inchoate association with destiny. The object of graduate study, it seems, is to fill that form.

A winding path now extends from my desk to a distant time and place when I will leave here with a strengthened mind licensed with a beige clip of paper. The paving stones are long, solitary days spent in mental labor. Talking has lost its luster, because at the end of each conversation, there is the knowledge that while I talked, others were busy doing, and I must work that much harder to catch them.

Recently I realized that certain activities have become “normal” and that when I leave, the images associated with these activities will fade. I have thus decided to carry my camera even when my objective is not “epic”. I have posted the first three such reports here.

Report 1
Two diving trips to the Musandam Peninsula in Oman. The UAE’s manic development drive has a heavy environmental cost; the once pristine reefs on both the east and west coasts are now being covered in sediment by monstrosities such as this. But the Peninsula, which is largely uninhabited, remains a refuge for both marine life and enterprising divers. Typically, I go with ADSAC, my dive club. We leave from Dibba harbor in Oman around 7AM and travel north on an Arabian sailing dhow, which has been modified with an engine. Typically, the sea is calm, but during the heavy spring tides, I become very seasick. The water is clear, so we usually see a many fish and a plethora of marine plant life. After two dives, we go back to Dibba, arriving around 5PM. The whole affair costs about $45.

Report 2
Driving back from Oman, I pass through Sharjah–the most religiously conservative emirate–Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. I am often struck by the juxtaposition of these three dissimilar provinces: Sharjah’s overt religious observance, Dubai and its profligacy, and Abu Dhabi’s reticence. Dubai often reminds me of one who wears a tailored tuxedo to a dinner party for the first time: he wants to be recognized, but his affected style causes revulsion. One must always consider that near each luxury hotel are employees working 12 hours a day for $200 a month. What a country.