Of course, Tobacman's motives in Indonesia are not all altruistic or career-related. More simply, he says, the trip is also about getting to know himself.

"I really am interested in learning about how I personally react to being in such a different environment," he says. "There's an element of personal exploration."

Becoming a Cantab

Cambridge may be a long way from Iowa, but he says he had little problem adjusting to life at Harvard.

"I jumped right in," he says.

His first year Tobacman was very busy, taking five classes and rowing freshman crew. That summer he began research with Laibson.

And over the past four years, Tobacman has become so well-adjusted that he prefers Cambridge to the "delightful safety" of Iowa City where he worries of growing "complacent."

"I think it's unlikely that I will live in Iowa for a substantial portion of my life," he says, noting that it's very likely he will be back in Cambridge for graduate school. "I expect that the people who excite me most will be in other places."

Tobacman is also very clear about the way he has changed since moving to the East Coast, though he says it's hard to know what is simply a result of growing up and what is a result of four years at Harvard.

"I've become much more aware since I've been here," he says. "Before I came here I wasn't judgmental. Now I'm able to detect more nuances about the way people are thinking and feeling."

"Also, I've come to ask better questions--questions about an academic field, questions about what's going on in the news, questions that are relevant to my friends."

But while Tobacman can isolate specific changes he has gone through during his four years in Cambridge, he says he can't isolate the specific aspects of his life at Harvard that have been most critical to those changes.

"It's hard for me to imagine who I would be now without my friends, without the time at the shelter, without the research, without my classes, and probably without having lived in Eliot House," he says.