Ten years ago, after working as a Geographic Information Specialist for a couple of years with a great team at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, I was eager to start a PhD and conduct my own research. I wanted to stay in New York City and continuing living in Queens, so I applied to the CUNY Graduate Center and got offered a full scholarship. A full scholarship back then was not enough to live on in NYC, so I requested that I continue working at Lamont and conduct my PhD part-time, effectively hitting two birds with one stone. But that request was denied because the university’s experience was that many part-timers quite halfway because the work+PhD combination gets too much for them to handle. I tried explaining that the research topic I wanted to pursue was intertwined with my job. The denial stood – take it or leave it. So, I began looking and applying for other PhD programs, first in the US, then Canada, and finally Europe (Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway). I didn’t get into any of them. Then, one day, a contact of mine in Stockholm sent me a DM on Twitter to a call for a PhD position at Lund University in Sweden. So I applied, got interviewed and was offered the position.

At 7am on October 16 2012, I was on board SAS Flight 910 from Newark that landed at Copenhagen Airport. I was ready to begin a PhD at Lund University. I didn’t know much about Sweden except the usual stereotypes, for example it’s a rich country with happy people, lots of nature, and a generous welfare state. I was both excited and nervous, excited because this was a new chapter in my life, and nervous because a PhD is a huge undertaking and there was real risk of failure. It’s important to point out that I didn’t want to remain in Sweden, my plan was to obtain the PhD and head straight back to the US and get an Assistant Professorship somewhere. And that’s what happened… well, sort of.

After I defended my PhD in spring of 2017, I started applying for various US positions while on parental leave. I found one that fit me very well at a small, private, well-endowed liberal arts university located a couple of hours from Washington, DC. I applied, got shortlisted, went through a remote interview, and was then flown in for a full campus interview/tour in fall of the same year. A few days after the interview, I got offered the position. I was elated and completely over the moon, particularly since my startup funding request was approved by the dean. When the excitement settled, my wife and I sat down and did the quality-of-life math. Although, the salary was very generous, this decision would effectively render our young family a single-income household since my wife would be unemployed for an uncertain period of time. The number of out-of-pocket costs in the US would leave us living paycheck to paycheck. For example, childcare, family healthcare, family dental, and payments on two cars. These expenses would take up nearly the entire salary without even adding the cost of rent/mortgage, food, and incidentals, etc. We take those expenses for granted in Sweden because they’re covered as part of the taxes we pay, except the car payments, which are mostly unnecessary here because of a good public transport system. I asked the dean whether the university had a spousal hire program that would apply to me, so that we’d have two incomes. The reply came that it did but it was offered to someone else the year before and they cannot offer it every year for budgetary reasons. We mulled over this for a few days envisioning every possible scenario. The decision was the same at every turn — to remain in Sweden because it’s the most financially prudent thing to do. In retrospect, it was a bit of a strange decision because I was on parental leave at the time, and got on unemployment after the leave was over. But things worked out at the end, which shows the importance of social safety nets.

I’ve learnt a lot about Sweden in the last ten years, not least that those stereotypes about the country I mentioned above come with huge asterisks, except for the one about nature, that one is true 😉 After Abu Dhabi and the New York area, southern Sweden is my third-longest place of residence. It’s also the place where I’ve really felt the color of my skin. Perhaps this is me developing the maturity of noticing nuances in people’s re/actions, perhaps it’s a real and omnipresent prejudice here, or perhaps it is how social stratification is structured in Sweden. I don’t know. What I do know are the people I have met and interacted with. I’ve met some truly wonderful human beings here, forged real friendships, and I’m in a great work environment at CEC, and for that I am truly grateful. I also want to recognize my current home, Malmö. I love its ethnic and cultural heterogeneity, its nature, its accessibility and compactness, and its grit. It doesn’t quite have the diversity of Queens, but it’s close enough for me. The past decade has been filled with both personal and professional development, and opportunities to develop my career, forge a niche, and cultivate a wonderful network of research collaborators, many of whom I consider friends.

I don’t know where my family and I will be in the next decade, but wherever it is I hope that it will be filled with family and friends, because in the end those are the things that matter the most.

Onwards and upwards إن شاء الله