Water Lilies 

Water Lilies by Claude Monet, No. 21

By Kaetlyn Patnaude

The three things I want to do during my summer experience are biking every day to class, going out in the morning to sketch, and hiking in Abisko. In addition to the formal tasks I’ll be doing during the experience, I want to experience each location in a more casual way. During my class in Delft, I’ll be biking from my friend’s apartment to the university, which is around a 40 minute ride. Since I’m studying urban planning, I’m excited to actually experience Dutch biking culture every day and this will help with my main research question of the role that community voices play in shaping sustainability efforts of a specific region. Something of a more personal nature is waking up early and sketching for a bit. This is one of my favorite things to do while travelling because it really allows me to be an observer of people going about their daily life. I’ll usually sit across from a building I find interesting and then sketch the landscape, adding details that are more fleeting, like specific activities taking place at that time. Then I’ll usually write a couple sentences about my impressions of that location. This is my favorite way to record my travels. Additionally, in Abisko, Sweden, since it is more remote, I definitely want to be immersed in nature by hiking without a specific task. All of these activities are fulfilling for me personally, but will also add more depth to my project by combining observations with interviews and direct interactions. 

Two skills I’m working on this summer are career and self development and teamwork. During my summer course, we’re going to learn a lot about sustainable urban planning through speakers, group projects, and lectures, all of which will help me gain more insight into specific career possibilities. This course focuses not only on technology, but also how tech can serve society in a more just way. Additionally, teamwork is something I’m looking forward to further developing. I also want to add critical thinking, since it is crucial to teamwork in my opinion. For the summer class, we’ll be collaborating with the community and other class members. I haven’t worked on a project with this range of collaborators before so I am sure I will learn many important skills in that respect. 

 I still have two weeks before leaving for my experience, so in the meantime I’m doing the pre-course work and also reaching out to interview US urban planners. I want to compare and contrast US, Dutch, and Swedish perspectives on sustainability. However, I often struggle with perfectionism which usually just delays any progress because I keep deleting things instead of getting something down and editing it later. In this case, I find myself putting a lot of pressure on planning every aspect of this experience. A painting that helps me reframe my thoughts (pun intended) is by Claude Monet, called Water Lilies. He actually painted over 250 versions inspired by his own garden pond. He took different perspectives of the pond at different times, and although he didn’t know how each one would turn out, they are all wonderfully unique versions of the same pond. So although I can’t predict exactly how something will turn out, I’m trying to remind myself to go with the flow rather than focusing on the outcome, because there are countless ways to see any experience through curiosity.