Arnav Moudgil


Myth Countries


I grew up between cracked spines and dog-eared pages, in the haze of books bought from the local Salvation Army. This was upstate New York, a land of beautiful summers, gentle hills, and the occasional state highway. My little brother and I lived with my aunts and uncles, who managed a roadside motel. Our four families lived in two small houses on the property. I didn’t see my parents often: they were studying to become licensed doctors in this country. For four years, until my brother and I joined our parents in Detroit, the only distractions available to us were a rusty basketball hoop, the creek behind the motel, television cartoons, and the whichever used books we could afford.

The creek would freeze over, the cartoons would repeat, but I would always return to the books. Turning their pages was like prying open the lid to a sarcophagus: after inhaling the must, unknown treasures lay waiting. I collected a small library of novels beyond by vocabulary, back issues of Highlights, and a mostly complete encyclopedia set. It made no difference if I was reading fact, fiction, or puzzles; I absorbed everything I could get my hands on.

One of my favorites was the Jules Verne classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It had a shiny aquamarine cover with a drawing of the Nautilus, and at the top were the words “Great Illustrated Classics.” I read that abridged copy at least a dozen times, partly for the thrill of reading about chasing ocean giants like the narwhal and the giant squid, and getting trapped in arctic sea ice. But equally as compelling were the characters, the everyday fishermen and professors who were willing to join a risky expedition. Ned Land, the Canadian harpoonist, and the rest of the crew are captured by Captain Nemo, but instead of being punished, they are rewarded for their daring with a submarine circumnavigation. To a young boy, the moral was obvious: if you are willing to make some sacrifices and take some chances, you too can have an adventure.

I soon read of real-world explorers and committed their achievements to memory. Columbus found the New World, Balboa first saw the Pacific, and Magellan’s crew circled the globe. James Cook described Australia and Abel Tasman reached New Zealand. Roald Amundsen was the first to reach the South Pole, and Robert Peary claimed the North Pole. Then there’s Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first people to summit Mount Everest, to stand on the planet’s highest point. These men were more than lifeless descriptions in a textbook. They were exemplars of human achievement, venturing into areas unknown to their peers, relying solely on persistence, quick wits, and fickle fortune. They were the stuff of legends.

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The last time I visited that roadside motel was the summer before my freshman year at Stanford. My aunt had died and we had come to see her body before sending it to India. In the intervening years I had lived in three states and dozens of friendships had been severed by distance. Standing in front of that motel reminded me of those dusty old books and the demi-gods within them I worshipped. Despite the funereal atmosphere, I couldn’t help but feel a little happy, proud of myself for choosing to go to Stanford. My closest friends in high school were staying in Michigan, or dispersing along the East coast. Part of me absolutely wanted to stay with them. But instead, I turned my sights westward. I picked Stanford specifically to leave behind the familiar, to explore an unknown state, an unknown climate, and an unknown culture. I was the first one in my family to go to college in the USA; I had no idea what to expect. This would be my own expedition.

Now, some five years later, the Stanford expedition is coming to an end. As with any expedition, there have been mistakes and setbacks. And as with any fortunate expedition, there have been numerous successes. I have certainly improved as an academic: I’m a better writer than when I first set foot on campus, and my critical thinking and scientific reasoning skills have never been sharper. I’ve had the opportunity to conduct research, and I have found in genomics a scientific calling. I’ve studied Mediterranean history, linguistics, rock and roll, wine tasting, and two foreign languages.

The most valuable experiences have come outside the classroom, however, surrounded by friends in situations unimaginable when I was a high schooler. I have backpacked in gorgeous wilderness, snorkeled with sea turtles, and climbed in the canopies of tropical rainforests. I have flown alone internationally, seen priceless art in Spain and celebrated my 21st birthday in New Zealand. Skydiving, rock climbing, summiting a fourteener, and most thrillingly, falling in love: for a kid who first experienced this country in the heart of upstate New York, I never thought I would experience the world so fully so quickly.

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I took my first creative writing course in the fall of my sophomore year. It was partly on whim and partly on a glowing recommendation from a friend. I was here to explore, so why not? Early in the first lecture, the instructor told us, “You won’t know by the end of the course if you have the talent to become a writer. Even I won’t know.” It was one of the most liberating statements I have ever heard in a creative writing course. There was no pressure to succeed. We were there to experiment, to tinker, to play with language and see what we come up with. If we couldn’t produce a Pulitzer prize-winning piece, no big deal. The freedom to fail fostered the best of our creative instincts. I thoroughly enjoyed myself that quarter, writing one sketch satirizing the obscenely wealthy and another exploring the immigrant experience. My full-length story at the end of the quarter examined the relationship between two brothers, one of whom has autism.

I didn’t have another chance to take a creative writing course until two years later, in the fall of my senior year. I had decided to take a quarter without any science courses, and when it came to filling my schedule, I remembered how much fun I had had in my first fiction workshop. So I took an intermediate fiction workshop as well as a poetry course. Both were excellent, but there was a noticeable shift in my stories. Perhaps it was due to the classes, or perhaps it was due to being two years older, but my stories were becoming increasingly focused on people facing difficult situations. I had lost the freewheeling, write-about-whatever-springs-into-your-mind attitude of beginner’s fiction. Instead, I traded it for a desire to ask basic questions about people facing hard times. My major story that quarter was about a veteran and amputee who becomes alienated by his town.

I loved writing and discussing stories in these workshops. They were among the most intellectually stimulating classes I’ve had at Stanford. In a creative writing workshop, everything, from theme and character down to word and punctuation choices, is up for grabs. We would dissect a story at all levels, moving beyond just how the author is accomplishing a particular effect to what the effect means for the rest of the piece, and more generally, what questions are raised for the reader. For next quarter I applied for the advanced fiction workshop, and I was fortunate to be accepted. The technical skill of all the other student writers was humbling, and their feedback was invaluable to my growth. Thematically, I picked up where I left off from the previous quarter, writing stories about individuals in ethically complex situations. I wrote one story about a woman in an arranged marriage who gets caught committing adultery and another about an engineer being bribed by a terrorist group.

The following quarter, spring of my senior year, I took the only English course I’ve taken at Stanford. It examined the evolution of the short story from the 19th century to modern day, and it was taught by my creative writing professor from the previous quarter. Having written so much fiction in over the school year, it was a welcome relief to study from the masters. On the last day of class, my professor put up a quote from George Orwell’s essay “Why I Write,” which read, “I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts...”

I recognized myself in those words. The first half was open for debate but the second part certainly applied to me. It was the first time I saw my body of writing united by a common thread: “unpleasant facts.” Kinship with Orwell aside, it asserted that my writing had intrinsic value, if not for style, at least for content.

I spoke to my professor after class and she told me I was one of the people she had in mind when she put up that quote. For reasons inexplicable, that affirmation resonated within me, and I began to see myself as a legitimate writer. I had come a long way from that first fiction workshop, and my lecturer back then had been right: we didn’t know if we could be writers at the end of one quarter. That realization came when I realized writing was just another form of exploration. I write to explore a particular idea or situation people may find themselves in, to understand fully what is a stake. I create characters who are ordinary people brushing up against extraordinary circumstances. Through it, I hope to show something fundamental about what it means to be human. It’s not the same as discovering a continent, but it is equally uncharted.

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Writing “One in Four” for my The Senior Reflection project was in many ways an ideal capstone experience. It allowed me to pursue both biology and writing in way that was not seen as trivial or wasteful. While I didn’t have to defend being a biology major to my writer friends, I have had to explain to my scientist friends why I enjoy writing. I had hoped for something like The Senior Reflection when I was thinking about senior year. I had decided not to pursue an honors thesis and I felt I was missing something that all my research-oriented friends were going through. There was no creative equivalent at the time, so I used that time to pick up a Minor in Creative Writing. Although it was probably better for my writing to do the minor and then The Senior Reflection, it was something I would have certainly enjoyed senior year.

One of the best parts of The Senior Reflection was the one-on-one mentorship. Although I was skeptical about it at first, (thinking that it would be a hassle to regularly meet with a busy mentor) it turned out to be an incredibly rewarding experience. I met with my mentor, Nina, once every week. When we weren’t workshopping my writing, we discussed short stories. This was a great way to stay on task and have my progress monitored. At the same time, it allowed us explore contemporary writing. It was very helpful, as an artist, to see what other writers are up to, what is trending in terms of story or language. It provided a context for me to see my own writing. It’s difficult as science majors to keep abreast of the current state of art, so to have someone who lives and breathes it was wonderful. Perhaps I was lucky to be paired with such a supportive and available mentor, and not every TSR student was so fortunate. Nonetheless, I believe that had I met with my mentor less frequently, I would have produced an inferior product.

If there was one lesson I learned throughout the writing and revising process, it’s that writing–and any art, for that matter–is the sum of persistent, incremental effort. There are no shortcuts to producing good writing. Talent may get you partway there, but a finished product demands complete attention. I’ve seen student writing that’s stylistically or technically excellent, but that has a meandering, uncertain plot. Other times, plot and conflict are brilliantly explained at the expense of character development or nuance. Few writers may have any technical weaknesses; the rest of us have to revise and rewrite until our writing can stand up to scrutiny.

The biggest surprise for me was the sheer difficulty of having to sit down and write. A peculiar blend of dread and indolence would descend sometimes when I reached for the keyboard. Ironic, given that I minored in creative writing, but there’s a motivational difference between a professor’s deadline for a grade and one’s self-imposed deadline for a draft. The latter is infinitely flexible, and it’s easy to see how a lack of discipline can prevent one from ever finishing longer works, like novels or screenplay. Although writing was at times a frustrating and bitter activity, I’m glad I experienced its challenges now.

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In parallel to my work in The Senior Reflection, I’ve also been working as a research assistant in one of the Biology labs. They were night and day, two different, unrelated activities. I had been working on a project investigating patterns of protein evolution in a computational model. I programmed simulations of protein evolution and ran them on a remote computer cluster. When the simulations were over I produced graphs to see what was going on. I would tweak the program, rerun the simulations, check the data, and repeat. It was completely unlike writing a short story. Or so I thought.

I think it was in the midst of revising draft after draft, trying out different characters or introducing new plot details, that I finally made the connection. When I started on this research project, there had been little published literature. We basically had to create a model system from scratch and define its operational parameters. For the first few months, I tried different programs and different values, trying to find the combination that worked best for us. Eventually I found suitable parameters for our experiments, but it took a lot of time and tinkering. Exactly what I was in the midst of doing with my short story.

I was doing the same thing in both projects: manipulating details to find the best set for my purposes. This realization was at once sudden and exhilarating. Ever since one unpleasant summer in high school, my taste for research had been soured. It seemed like a series of protocols followed blindly and logically until one arrived a result. Yet, that was the opposite of what I was doing. I was designing, testing, evaluating, redesigning, and trying again. All of these were the hallmarks of a creative process, and that’s what research had been all along. A scientist asking a question does not necessarily know what answer she will find, nor does she necessarily know what methods will get her an answer. She may very well have to create new protocols or testing devices to assist her. In short, she will have to be creative in trying to answer her question.

The instant scientific research became a creative process, it stopped being a chore. There was a greater purpose beyond the drudgery of PCR protocols. I saw the forest beyond all the trees. It was expansive, teeming with life, flush with endless possibility. The virtues I needed to succeed as a writer–tenacity, inventiveness, courage–were the same I needed to succeed as a scientist. Moreover, I had already cultivated them! With a small change in perspective, I realized that I was capable of pioneering work in both the arts and the sciences.

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There is no map where people have not trodden. In any enterprise, if what you seek to do has not been done before, no amount of information will carry you to your goal. You will have to cross the limits of knowledge and venture forth, learning from experience and failure. I wrote a short story about familial fatal insomnia, which (to my knowledge) has never been done before. I read many stories about patients and patient families afflicted by disease, and they informed my writing. But ultimately, when it came to specifics, I had to create the first literary description of familial fatal insomnia. Scientists do this all the time, relying on previous publications to inform their next experiments, which no one else in the world is doing. Mountaineers do this when they climb a new peak, archaeologists when they discover a new site, entrepreneurs trying to launch a new startup. At some point, in each of these endeavors, knowledge gives way to intuition and skill. Professionals momentarily become artists, forging solutions from the flame of creativity.

At this point, the techie/fuzzy divide becomes moot. We share a common skill set to reach our goals irrespective of our media. Whether I am writing an essay or running an experiment, I am an explorer trying to understand something, and I happily reach for my artistic faculties to aid me. In this way, I can relate to my childhood heroes, the brave explorers venturing into the uncharted. I may never establish the first ascent of a mountain, but I will run through the same abstract processes: preparation, execution, improvisation, and continual reassessment. The ability to do this well, for one’s own needs: this is art.

Paul Zweig, in The Adventurer, briefly talks about the history of narrative:

“The oldest, most widespread stories in the world are adventure stories about human heroes who venture into the myth countries at the risk of their lives, and bring back tales of the world beyond men... It could be argued... that the narrative art itself arose from the need to tell an adventure; that man risking his life in perilous encounters constitutes the original definition of what is worth talking about.”

At face value Zweig’s sentiments are true. We don’t want to hear about everyday events in ordinary people’s lives. We want to hear about the fantastical and the magical, the rare and the extraordinary. But I believe Zweig’s notion can be extrapolated to one’s own life. After all, what are our lives but a narrative of the things we’ve done? Everyone ought to experience the rewards and discomforts of the “myth countries,” for it is when we open our minds and try something new that we grow as humans. I confess citizenship in three myth countries: the arts, the sciences, and the outdoors, each trembling with potential discoveries. Over this past year, The Senior Reflection has reaffirmed my commitment to the unadulterated spirit of exploration. What lies ahead is an unknown and uncertain landscape.

Let’s go map it out.