This is a speech that I wrote for Toastmasters last summer.

In brainstorming for this piece, I went through a few phases. I thought about talking about by name, Robby Christopher Phoenix Ramdin; discussing my past, like all the schools I’ve attended, teachers I’ve had, and jobs I’ve held; or maybe describing my childhood or my relationship with my parents. But then I realized that would be showing you a blueprint of the foundation, when you asked for a drawing of the Empire States Building.

I have decided to talk about what I do, or more specifically why I do what I do.

I am attending college majoring in Computer Science. I also enjoy studying Physics and Classics, that’s the study of Latin and Greek literature, ancient History, and Pagan religion.

Ironically, all these studies focus on the topics which I have already made a point of avoiding—foundations. We use computers every day, and Computer Science is the study of all the underlying concepts and technologies. Studying Classics has taught me why we have certain grammar rules, where the ideas of philosophy and politics come from, and why it’s dangerous to take an army through the Alps. And Physics is the study of how the world works.

I put this knowledge to use a couple of summers ago, when my friend Ben and I went on a trip to Europe. On our last day in Rome, we took the train an hour or so out to a town called Ostia. During the height of the Roman Empire, the town of Ostia was the main port for Rome. Due to climate changes that altered the direction of some rivers, the Romans were forced to leave Ostia and it was quickly destroyed in massive flooding. Since then the water has receded back to ocean and neighboring waterways, leaving just remnants of the once vibrant town.

For me, visiting Ostia was a very interesting experience. With the exception of the Coliseum-like stadium in the center of town, none of the buildings stood higher than 10 feet. One could stand up on one of the many scattered pedestals and see over the entire village.

This town once bustled with the activity of dozens of ships arriving per day—seeing how it could almost instantly be reduced to its foundations gives insight into our own civilization. We see that what takes lifetimes to build can quickly come down at the whim of nature.

What’s more amazing is how archaeologists working with structural engineers have been able to create reasonable models of what Ostia looked like before its destruction. Examining the foundation of a building obviously gives an idea of its footprint on the soil. But looking at the widths of walls and signs of strain on them gives an idea of how high the building stood.

Many of the buildings have elaborate mosaics on their floors or walls. These breathtakingly intricate designs have not only become one of the main attractions of Ostia drawing those who appreciate art, but they have let historians determine how each building served the community. Each of these mosaics somehow depicts the relation of the building to the town as a whole. Some of them show people doing whatever task the building was for, while others simply have their purpose written out directly in Latin.

The research that has gone into Ostia is the kind of thing that interests me. It takes a breadth of knowledge so huge that no one person could do it alone. They have made connections across all sorts of fields and backwards engineered a vision of the past. Being able to understand the underlying concepts or science of whatever you are working with provides valuable and unique insight. Breaking down any problem into its atomic parts and understanding how these parts evolved over time to form the product lets you appreciate it for what it is.

So, on second thought, maybe a blueprint of the foundation of the Empire States building would have been good enough. Maybe I would have been well off giving you the foundation of my life, so that you could extrapolate a reasonable image of who I really am. But this was more interesting anyway.