The computer-generated images of Saadiyat Island are awash in green grass and palm fronds, crisscrossed by paved highways and flush with tourists and residents. It boasts prestigious museums like the Louvre and the Guggenheim, eye-catching structures designed by famous foreign architects. It teems with life.

Of course, that's not what you see outside your dorm window. That's the future. For now, most of Saadiyat Island is under construction or remains undeveloped desert. Amidst this setting, NYU Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat campus looms out of the dust, a cluster of pale buildings huddled in the sand. It looks strange and isolated. During the day, passersby unfamiliar with NYUAD might wonder if it is inhabited.

The late U.S. Senator and sociologist Daniel Moynihan is widely quoted as saying that the key to creating a world-class city is to "build a great university and wait 200 years." We might be the great university Moynihan spoke of, but we don't have 200 years to wait, even with the famously rapid rate of construction in the UAE. Instead we must think about what makes this place one that we return to, only six years in the making.

I finished my second year of university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. If all goes well and I manage to churn out a capstone and pass the rest of my courses, I'm halfway done. The idea that my time at NYUAD was limited must have had an impact on me because as relieved as I felt to be finished with finals, I still flew from the other side of the world to come back to campus for a summer course. There were about three days in between when I had no homework and felt blissfully unencumbered, ready to sail off into a summer free of academics. Yet, as soon as I landed in Abu Dhabi the feeling of comfort and familiarity was unmistakable — I was home.

The course was very demanding. I got stressed and nervous and lost sleep because of exams, just as I had expected to. But living on campus again, I was back in my element. I reveled in the 40 degree Celsius heat and blinding sunshine. After four months in a homestay in Buenos Aires, I felt grateful for a new, clean dorm room and the safety of Abu Dhabi’s streets. During the summer term, friends congregated in the dining hall over hummus and wraps from the Grab and Go counter, just as they had always done. The Library Café welcomed us with its sunlit corners for tea and studying. We all got sweaty just from walking from our dorms to the gym. These are our small traditions on campus, the kinds of common habits a student body develops and bonds over at university, and they are an anchoring comfort.

What truly made the return to Saadiyat a homecoming, though, were friends. The only reason I can write this kind of essay is because of long discussions with close friends over shisha or in the backseats of cabs, a product of the critical urge we have to talk about how NYUAD is changing and how it is changing us. Without friends like this, I would not fully understand myself, and these ideas and questions would only fester in my mind and serve to isolate me even further on this campus surrounded by sand.

As much as our campus appears stark and uninhabited from the outside, returning to Saadiyat reminded me that I am an insider. I do inhabit this campus, and despite semesters away, January Term courses and breaks spent elsewhere, my friends are my roots. The Gazelle published a special issue last fall about mental health at NYUAD, and time and again, students used those pages to emphasize the need for more connection and support among friends. The people that make up NYUAD and the relationships forged in these peculiar circumstances are what give this place meaning, and what keeps us all coming back.