“Do you want a Coke?” My host handed me the largest drink I’d ever seen: forty-four ounces of ice-cold liquid in a truly gigantic cup. I had no idea how I would ever consume it all and, three hours later, I had yet to reach the bottom.

It was July 4th, 1987, and I had just arrived in Tucson for a summer working at the Environmental Research Lab. It was run by the inestimable Carl Hodges, amongst other things one of the primary consultants on the development of the Epcot Center and designer of Biosphere 2. Beyond the common threads of science and dust, the bright Arizona landscape truly was a world away from my studies of Natural Sciences in the fusty old lecture halls and laboratories of Cambridge.

Herein lay one of the biggest lessons of that trip: the world around you can evolve incredibly quickly, whether through your own choices or events outside your control. Though humans are frequently wary of change, they are also incredibly adaptable. Within a week or two, I could happily consume one of those enormous beverages in twenty minutes over lunch. And I had settled in to driving electric carts, made friends with a concert harpsichordist and begun to explore the wonders of the Sonoran Desert. Little did I know that I’d return to work in America some thirty years later, nor that these lessons in adaptability might become so poignantly relevant.