15th May 2021 was an ordinary day for me like for all people in the world. Just sitting at home and going to the gym. But then I started thinking why don’t I check my mail and so I did and what I saw in the mail changed my life.
A congratulatory message with the words “You are selected to be a part of the Pathfinder program.” At first, I could not believe my eyes. I was awestruck and I said to myself it is just a dream. But after pinching myself I realized with elation that I was selected to be a Pathfinder.
I thought at first it was a cakewalk. But spoiler alert, it was not, and it was in fact It is not for the faint-hearted. Then I started with the journey inside the UAE University Science and Innovation Park. Our first task as Pathfinder was to find solutions for the future human settlement on Mars which was challenging and taxing. But we thought maybe it could be revolutionary, but it wasn’t and was filled with confusion, confusion, and confusion. During the first few weeks we were all together learning about what being a pathfinder is and all the information scientists and others knew about mars and life on mars. Which in short was interesting but taxing also with a lot of doubts still left unanswered.
Then after the first 2 weeks, we were divided into coalitions wherein I was in the enhancing life coalition where we worked on the question of creating a flag for the human settlement on mars which did not exist. It was in short, a grueling task which can be seen from the fact that we had only 2 months to make the flag.
I and my group of pathfinders Sheikha, Fatima, and Haleemah tried our level best to achieve. But it was not easy. We were going through a dead-end in the first few weeks. My group was tired which I understood from the emotion of Sheikha who said how taxing this task is creating a flag for mars. But in the end, we created a flag that everybody liked, and we appreciated it. But this was not the end and in the next phase we had to apply the solution to the earth, which was another massive, colossal undertaking but we plummeted into and succeeded in creating the Virtual UAE Hub Eigrab
Thus, in short, that day on 15th May 2021 changed my life in positive ways by teaching me the importance of ambiguity and made me a different person as compared to what I was before. This difference was that now I became a pathfinder continuing to search for my path and be creative in the middle as compared to previous when I was just a random observer.
