When Uri Levine sat in Tel Aviv traffic, he didn't immediately design an app. He fell in love with a question: Why do millions waste hours stuck in cars when we have technology to route around congestion? That obsession—with understanding, not solving—led to Waze, which Google bought for over a billion dollars. But here's what matters: Waze actually worked because Levine refused to rush past the problem.
Both Sides Now
You’ll need this same instinct as you travel. The urge to help screams: What can I do? What project should we start? But human geographers know something counterintuitive: the most meaningful work begins long before any solution. It starts with slowing down enough to actually see the problem.
Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” offers the soundtrack. She examines clouds, love, and life from multiple perspectives, then admits she doesn’t really know them at all. That confession isn’t defeat—it’s wisdom. Every city, every issue has multiple sides. The more you look, the more you realize how much you don’t know.
The Five “Whys”
The Jefferson Memorial was deteriorating faster than other monuments. The obvious solution? Better cleaning products. But someone asked “Why?” five times. Why deteriorating? More frequent cleaning. Why more cleaning? Bird droppings. Why more droppings? More birds. Why more birds? More spiders to eat. Why more spiders? Lighting that attracted insects at dusk.
The real solution wasn’t cleaning products—it was changing when they turned on the lights. By the fifth “why,” the actual problem looked nothing like the initial symptom. Claire Satterfield (2023-2024) discovered this during her MEI Big Year. She arrived expecting to solve problems but learned to trace them backward, to ask why five times. “The teachers high expectations fuelled my growth as a student, thinker, and peer,” she reflects—because they refused easy answers.
Are You a “Learner” or a Fixer?
Here’s your central question: Are you going as a learner or a fixer? Fixers rush in because solutions feel productive. But when you prioritize feeling helpful over understanding deeply, you risk solving the wrong problem—or creating new ones. Learners ask: Who is affected? How, where, and why? What patterns emerge at different scales? They tolerate not knowing, because premature solutions often cause more harm than good.
Jayne Bartels (2019) went to Europe nervous about strangers. Instead, “learning outside of a traditional classroom” created space for genuine curiosity. She came home more confident—not because she fixed anything, but because she learned to be comfortable with complexity.
The Commitment
Uri Levine says the biggest driver of success is falling in love with the problem. That passion drives you to persist through uncertainty. Lucy Kubas (2019) found MEI teachers “very invested in getting to know each individual student” —modelling how to approach any problem slowly, individually, with genuine interest before acting.
Commit to falling in love with at least one problem. Not solving it—understanding it. Ask better questions. Look from both sides. Ask why five times. The solutions that eventually emerge will be slower, smaller, and infinitely more real.
