Photo by Benjamin Jance IV/The Gazelle.

To gauge the weather on any given day, I used to squint through the dust-tinted windows of the A6 residence hall on campus to catch a glimpse of Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in the distance, gleaming in white beside the TwoFour54 building that is now my office. It was a reminder of how Abu Dhabi is simultaneously big and small, peppered with architectural wonders and filled with a rich concoction of people from all corners of the globe. More importantly, however, I was looking out beyond the walls of our community and into a world I knew, but one I wasn’t quite sure how to fit into.

When we graduated in May, my fellow classmates and I were surrounded by the love of family, friends and colleagues in celebration of a truly remarkable achievement: the four-year undergraduate education at NYU Abu Dhabi. Five months later, I’m now based in an apartment at the center of city life and transitioning into a daily work routine, waking up at hours much earlier than the four-year college average and creating a brand-new network in what I consider my second home.

But if Sama Tower and the Downtown Campus were Abu Dhabi Part I and Saadiyat was Abu Dhabi Part II, I’ve now embarked on a unique Part III: an experience that places me out of the campus comfort zone and immerses me in everything else this incredible city and country have to offer. Seen through the workplace lens, it is also an opportunity to add two helping hands to the country’s growth, developing projects and initiatives at a rapid pace with the knowledge and skill I’ve gained from NYUAD.

Part III manifests itself in a different – and more utilitarian – perspective of the city, where I no longer take as much time to stop and take it all in. With the bustling streets of downtown Abu Dhabi once again my daily hallways, I’ve adopted a pragmatic approach to everday life: one in which tasks have to be completed because they have to be completed. The commute to work, the occasional lunch break and the almost weekly grocery shopping aren’t romantic per se, but they are part and parcel of my daily routine.

It’s for this precise reason – the pragmatic approach – that being grounded in the NYU community remains important. Nostalgia fills my heart each time I sit in a taxi that goes past Exit 11, gazing upon a building that housed a year’s worth of college memories. And I can barely describe the elation of meeting friends and colleagues from campus, with so many shared experiences under our belts and many more to come. The hectic work routine no longer affords me the opportunity to stop and take it all in on a daily basis, but having constant reminders – in the form of people, places and things – of the last four years bring back magical moments, no matter how fleeting.

These days, I’m at my desk or at client meetings in ironed business attire and my ever-present funky socks. But when I get a few minutes, I squint through the dust-tinted windows of the TwoFour54 office building into the distance, past Salaam street traffic and through the high-rise residential towers on Reem Island.

All I can do is smile and think to myself, “So that’s what home looks like from the other side.”