I learn best by being there. My field courses in Nicaragua included time studying surf culture, and the way I studied it was by surfing, spending time with people, and talking with them between waves. I wasn't observing from the shoreline with a notebook. I was in the water. That difference matters to me more than I can fully explain. Working alongside someone is almost like an interview, but better, because understanding comes out of the doing and the relationship, not just the questions.

The SNAP project taught me the same lesson from the other direction. I came in assuming the problem was that people didn't know about food assistance. It turned out farmers were well aware of SNAP. They wanted to accept it. The actual problem was a process so confusing that wanting to participate wasn't enough. I only found that out by spending time with the people the system was failing. If I had designed the project around my first assumption, I would have built the wrong thing confidently.

That's what this body of work has taught me about communities: they're knowers, not subjects. The question "better according to whom?" has to come before the question "what should we build?" This doesn't make me passive. I still want things to change, and I want to be part of changing them. It means the change has to start from what people themselves identify as the problem and what they're already doing about it.

I've also learned to be honest about the limits of showing up. I'm confident the farmer onboarding work changed the process. I'm less sure what it changed for the people actually using SNAP, and I don't want to paper over that gap. Activity is easy to count. Outcomes are harder, and the difference between the two is where ethical work lives.