Time Travel Tourism
A go-to guide to the future
“What’s past is prologue.” ~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Edge of Yesterday aims to transform STEM learning through story, interactive engagement and hands-on experiences.
Over the years, I have given talks at schools, libraries and STEM festivals. I love meeting young people in this way. I frequently hold workshops and programs to help ignite their passions, and engage them in STEM and STEAM learning.
A highlight for me is being invited to participate in the high school Youth in STEM program organized through Columbia University’s Pre-College Programs. In 2025, we celebrated the sixth year of a partnership between Columbia and the Edge of Yesterday.
As the author of the Edge of Yesterday YA time-travel adventure book series, and creator of the interactive STEM “learning through story” platform, I share lessons learned from writing through time.
Our focus at the Edge: “Examining the past through the lens of the present to create a better future.”
The stories we tell there are not just for young people, but for all of us seeking inspiration, courage, and beauty in these dark times. At this historic crossroads, how do we bring the lessons of the past forward to inspire that better future?
In April, I had the chance to meet with young people completing the year-long Youth in STEM program during the capstone four-day, in-person residency in New York City.
Columbia University’s Youth in STEM (YIS) is open to rising sophomores, juniors and seniors nominated by high school administrators or nonprofit organizations. It is highly competitive.
The goals of the program are to:
Engage students from underrepresented populations through hands-on instruction in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), while developing their leadership and communications skills.
Support participating students with mentoring, special events, and other resources as they prepare for college and career.
Build a community of lifelong connections.
“The program not only exposes students to emerging technologies and interdisciplinary learning opportunities, but it also emphasizes resiliency, adaptability, perseverance, and personal growth,” says Vanessa Carillo, associate director of Pre-College programs in Columbia’s School of Professional Studies.
Through the course of an academic year, students choose from a smorgasbord of online courses offered through Pre-College Programs. According to Kasey Hickey, TIPS Instructor (Team for Instructional & Pedagogical Support)—the most popular options include:
Medicine as a Career Choice: Thinking Like a Doctor
Social Psychology: Understanding Human Behavior
Neuroscience of Psychiatric Disorders
Cell and Molecular Biology of Medicine
Other courses include "Math Modeling and Statistics Applications," and "Data Science and Machine Learning."
Students are expected to complete these demanding courses on top of their regular high-school classes, afterschool and extracurriculars, family responsibilities, internships and jobs. They are mentored by Columbia graduate students who support and encourage them throughout the year.
Notes Vanessa, “By encouraging students to explore beyond traditional subject boundaries and take ownership of their learning paths, Youth in STEM prepares them to thrive in an ever-changing workforce and equips them to work across disciplines with confidence and purpose.”
It’s a tall order.
Preparing for my meeting with these young people brings me back to my own high school days at Walnut Hills High School, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Walnut Hills is a public college prep school for 7th- through 12th-graders. It first opened its doors in 1895 to students across the city, who qualified after taking an entrance exam. Rigorous courses, including a minimum of three years of Latin, and a variety of AP classes, form part of a classically-infused arts and sciences curriculum for the college-bound—with something like 96 percent of graduates going on to college.
Walnut Hills has adapted and modernized to include a robust STEM and Arts curriculum. But in those pre-computer, pre-Internet days, STEM was not yet a unified field. There were your math-science nerds.
And then, the rest of us.
Students like me needed a tutor to pass 11th-grade Chemistry, but loved history, and languages. And stories. My dream was to major in French in college so I could study abroad. Never mind I had no interest in ever teaching, and what would I do with my French anyway?
My chemistry tutor’s dream was to introduce me to the wonders of the slide rule, a tool that would, within the next decade, become obsolete thanks to the introduction of handheld calculators. Though we couldn’t know that at the time.
The school curriculum was designed to prepare us for college. Beyond that, there was little thought given to what we might actually do with our lives.
A simpler time, with high aspirations for students, and far fewer options for life.
And certainly, this high schooler could never have imagined that preparation would lead her to time traveling: writing stories that blend history, arts, math, science and culture, that might inspire readers, and one day time travelers—to take a leap from the edge of yesterday to the verge of tomorrow.
Which brings us back to Youth in STEM. The students are here not only because they are already taking college-level classes in STEM, but also to make connections and learn about opportunities for college, career and beyond.
During their capstone residency program, students craft resumes, create LinkedIn profiles, practice interview skills, and take on leadership roles. They are given a primer in financial literacy, business and professional skills. They are introduced—and gain access to—college admissions staff. They hear from leaders in the worlds of science, engineering, finance, and global nonprofits.
They also get time to engage in music, games, ice breakers, and fun.
They also take on a grand STEM challenge: a research project, focused on answering the question "How can we use technology to help improve New York City?"
Their entrepreneurs pitch requires them to crafting a compelling narrative highlighting some problem, and introducing their unique solution, including market opportunity, business model, and explaining the nuts-and-bolts to potential investors.
Their job: to convince the competition’s judges (including this one) of the multiple ways they—and their solutions—held the greatest promise of success.
Out of nine teams, three design proposals moved to the final round:
SWEET TRACK: a helping hand for smarter glucose tracking using machine learning principles to predict future glucose levels based on past user trends.
BLOOD MATCHED: an online system where donors are matched to a hospital based on their location, blood type and donor match.
RECYCLY: an app to allow users to take a photo of their trash which will be sorted using AI technology.
Each team had its pitches down cold. They knew the competition. They sold their innovation, explained the financials, and demonstrated why they were the team to make it happen.
The winners were the most successful at selling us on their story.
It always comes back to stories.
My own assignment to speak with the students—to fire up the time machine of the imagination and get them to dive into their own stories. To get them to think about how they’ve gotten here. And where they might take things into the future.
To introduce them to the idea that, as Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
And to show them how time travel is not just an imaginary function. There’s also biological evidence for it. In fact, we are always moving mentally through time.
Neuroscientists have given us factual evidence for our capacities to dream, daydream, and imagine ourselves in different places and times.
It’s found in our “default brain.” The researchers who first detected and deciphered the brain’s default mode network (DMN) found, somewhat surprisingly, that when we’re in a relaxed, resting state, many areas of our brains are busy firing away.
That the DMN is engaged in remembering the past and envisioning the future is confirmed in showing that this connectivity is related to the quality of past remembering, and to imagining the future.
The same regions of the DMN that are involved in mental time travel are also implicated in self-reflection and the development of a sense of self.
This can help explain how we spend our mental energy:
Upset about yesterday’s bad breakup.
Worried about tomorrow’s big exam.
Imagining your next vacation.
In short, time traveling.
As a science writer, I’ve been fascinated by what our brains prime us to do.
As an author and time traveler, I have gleaned a thing or three about connections—human, machine and temporal, seeing ways in which the past ripples into the present.
I am meeting with the YIS students to tell a story of addition. Technical Skills + Human Skills = MASTERY.
I want to show them how STEM skills alone are no longer enough to navigate successfully into the verge. At the dawn of the AI Age, machines using large language models (LLMs) are quickly evolving to do almost anything humans can do—Better. Cheaper. Quicker.
I contend that, to thrive into a future unknown, these students must be schooled in—and skilled at—MASTERY. Combining the best of human and machine learning.
Achieving MASTERY requires a new way of seeing and being in the world. Of enhancing our neural networks to see how humanity is not just acquiring new technical and analytical tools (flashback to slide rule obsolescence) but about mastering human ones.
Essential skills, like collaboration, communication, reflection skills and emotional intelligence.
Human values like integrity, fairness and justice, ethics, and love.
Together, human intelligence and machine learning promotes deepening opportunities for innovation through the combination of content and connection.
How we need not be captive to past patterns—or trust outmoded interpretations of those patterns— in our quest to create that better future.
In the Edge of Yesterday series, young STEMinista protagonist Charley’s true heart’s desire is to become a modern-day “do-it-all” Renaissance girl. When she discovers Leonardo da Vinci’s plans for a time machine, she’s determined to learn the Maestro’s secrets for blending art-invention-science-architecture-engineering-music and, yes, even culinary mastery—by talking to Leonardo, in person.
These YIS students seem similarly situated to take advantage of the multi-hyphenated future that is unfolding before us. Applying technical skills and human skills to build something new and different.
“Reinventing themselves is not just a possibility,” notes Vanessa. “It becomes a practiced skill they carry with them throughout their college-to-career journey,”
This feat requires developing a different sort of mastery—not subject matter expertise, or the skills automated through 10,000 hours of repetition.
But harnessing our minds to dream in something new. Expanded awareness that stories we have been told about, that we continue to tell ourselves about what is possible, are just that—stories.
And, knowing that, we can change them.
We are not robots. The secret of this new mastery—beyond skills repetition, beyond knowledge gathering, are human skills that no AI, no matter how advanced, has the capacity to actuate: connecting in community for the benefit of those we care about.
Over the course of the residency, the young people demonstrate—by their questions, through their care and concern for each other, by the creativity they evidence in the STEM challenge, and by their openness to dig in and get to work—they are ready to meet whatever the future holds for them.
After the residency, a few students shared their stories—and their dreams—with me. Here they are, in their own words:
Myah
I am both a poet and a STEMinista. I'm a sophomore at Bard High School Early College Bronx, and I'm looking to pursue cybersecurity in college, with a secondary major or minor in creative writing. I’m also passionate about youth civic engagement.
Youth in STEM definitely introduced me to a variety of new ideas and career choices. I'd never considered the intersection of cybersecurity and wealth management, but by being in that space, and meeting so many amazing individuals, I realized that there are so many fields I have yet to explore; and so many places where cybersecurity is needed that I couldn't have imagined.
I also met you! Prior to meeting you, I always considered my passions in cybersecurity and creative writing to be in completely separate worlds, but meeting you in a STEM-focused space like Youth in STEM totally threw that idea out of my mind.
Emmanuel
I'm currently a junior in the IB Diploma Program at John Adams High School in New York City. I’m drawn to the intersection of law, technology, and society. Youth in STEM offered me the opportunity to not only learn about science and technology but to explore how they shape—and are shaped by—the world we live in.
I've always had a passion for critical thinking within systems. Youth in STEM shifted my mindset: I could see how these weren't simply technical topics, but societal ones. With this shift, I saw myself not simply curious about the world of STEM, but I could see myself become an active contributor.
I worked on a pitch for a venture titled Home Horizon, which utilized technology to improve housing equity and transparency. I've also worked with a consulting group, where I got hands-on experience thinking strategically about innovation. These experiences helped me understand that mastery is about more than becoming a specialist, but connecting the dots between varying fields.
I want to work at the intersection of justice and innovation, creating systems and solutions that are efficient, ethical, and equitable.
Joanne
I am a senior at the Brooklyn Latin School, which requires us to take 4 years of Latin. I found my love for classics and the exploration of ancient literature (quite literally time traveling far back).
Before joining Youth In Stem, I originally planned to major in molecular biology. Through Youth In Stem I started being exposed to more fields including wealth management, non-profit organizations, and other engineering careers. Now, I also want to explore other areas of knowledge.
Beyond my major, I plan on minoring in classics. I enjoy creative writing, reading (science fiction and mystery), and plan on taking classes in sociolinguistics in college to truly understand the languages we speak today.
Thanks to the people I’ve met through the residency I gained insight on how to integrate what I’m good at with what I love.
Their stories—their dreams—are impressive, no? Theirs is a sophisticated understanding of what the future may require of them.
We all get stuck in our stories, at times. I am no exception—these days, the world feels like it’s in such a dark space.
When stories remain unexamined, they repeat. When we open them to see what they’re really about, we can create anew. We can evolve.
Moments like these are also full of possibility for those who are prepared, for visionaries ready to build something better. For those who can tell a new story.
Time traveling with these bright, engaged young people infuses me with hope. Already moving from STEM to MASTERY.
Their openness to seeing the world with new eyes—inviting new dreams to emerge, is inspiring. Imagine what stories—what thinking, making and doing in this emerging generation will help us turn the page on the old stories?
What innovations, what inventions are being seeded early that will help lead us forward?
So I ask you: is it time to rewrite our old, stale stories? To invent a new future? How do you see yourself living out into the world?
Inspring work! There's so much here, Robin. I wanted to find a time to read this essay carefully. Your article appeals to the writer, coach, and teacher in me. (For 20 years, I taught at an independent IB school in Toronto. I hope I've never influenced anyone to cling to slide rules. Mostly, I taught English.) What stands out for me here is your emphasis on subject integration. That Renaissance spirit is so important! Kudos to you for amplifying it through your writing and service. And I agree, we find ourselves in a period calling for rebirth, a re-envisioning of our world. It's essential to support young people in cultivating emotional intelligence, empathy, courage, connection, and their innate potential to dream, in every sense of that word.
Saving. 🌷