“I came back from Botswana less sure that the way I had been raised was the right way, and more curious about why my students were motivated by entirely different signals than the American kids I had known. That disorientation never really left me; it became the work.”

“I came back from Zambia in 2020 when COVID evacuated us, and the weirdest part was how fast America wanted me to slot back in like nothing had shifted. I had spent two years without reliable electricity or running water, working with fish farmers on protein deficiency, and suddenly I was supposed to care about LinkedIn and a job title.”

“I shipped out for the Peace Corps in Nepal in January 2020 and got evacuated seven weeks later, which left me untethered and angry at the world for a while. What I didn’t expect was that coming home changed meant I stopped fitting the version of myself that had planned a neat two-year service, and I had to build a new one from scratch.”

“I came back from Kupyansk in 2011 and the person who left didn't fit the life I was supposed to step into. I had watched kids become doers with almost nothing, and then I sat in San Francisco meetings drowning in emails, wondering what any of it was for. The disorientation was the point: the old engine had stopped, and I had to build a new one from what I'd actually seen.”

“I came back from Morocco unable to explain a recipe to a shopkeeper, and that failure taught me more than any job since. When you can’t fall back on jargon, you learn that being understood is a choice you keep making.”