2005 Ritzmann Scholarship Winner
Oliver Kroner
Northeastern University
CIEE Monteverde Participant, Spring 2005
I have always dreamed of being an inventor. I love the new ideas and paradigm shifts that give birth to innovation, the design revisions that give us passively heated and cooled homes, the corn-based plastic substitutes that are cheap to make and biodegradable, the water-permeable asphalt that relieves water run-off and erosion. To date, design’s predominant considerations have been function and form, but as our understanding of our environment improves, so does design. Nearly every item on man’s inventory of technologies is eligible for one of these efficiency makeovers.
Nature offers the quintessential model of efficiency, a system of nutrients and metabolisms in which there is no such thing as waste. I look to biology for examples of these patterns of function and production without the unwanted byproducts. Life has been an ingenious inventor, taking form in the most extreme conditions our globe has to offer, and improvising and evolving to roll with Earth’s punches along the way. From thermophiles, which have habituated to 80C temperatures in geothermal vents, to camels that can trek for a week across desert without food or water, Life has figure it out. I am her apprentice.
I have recently returned from a three month backpacking trek across southern South America. The trip was incredible. I achieved new personal heights climbing El Misti Volcano at 5,822 meters high, and new lows in the depths of Colca Canyon, at 3,400 deep. I saw birds I have never seen before in colors I have never seen before, and 1,000 year-old plants that I mistook for boulders. I met people who had never left the town they were born in, and people who had been traveling for the majority of their lives. When I came home, I had even more curiosity than I had started with.
Language took on a new meaning for me. The hours spent trying to break down language barriers left me appreciative of simply being able to communicate. Developing my Spanish reminded me of how fun it is to learn a foreign language. And discussing Argentinean billiards rules in German with fellow Austrian travelers just made me laugh. But more than anything, I loved learning words in other languages for which there was no English translation.
The trip was eye-opening and revitalizing. Now, I don’t want to slow down, I want to keep traveling, I want to continue my biology and environmental studies and I want to advance my Spanish. I think I’ve struck gold with this Monteverde Tropcial Biology Program package-plan.
I chose to attend Northeastern University for its “sometimes a classroom isn’t the best classroom” motto. I loved this attitude going in, and my trip has reaffirmed this for me. Conventional classrooms act as middlemen in my learning, keeping me at a distance from my subject, and stifling my excitement. I want to be immersed in my study both mentally and physically. I have read and heard a lot about Costa Rica’s beauty, but I want to sense it empirically.