My Career Plans
As the Howard Hughes Fellowship comes to an end, I am glad to say that I have more insight into what my future plans will be. All throughout high school, I believed that I wanted to attend medical school and be a practicing physician. However, there was always a lingering voice in my head that said that research was what I really wanted to do. Having had zero research experience prior to Howard Hughes, I faced a great difficulty in deciding what was best for me. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to do research this summer, and although I still am not one hundred percent sure of anything yet, I am definitely heading in the right direction.
One thing I have learned this summer is that research can be very, very tedious at times. Often a researcher spends more time performing redundant but necessary experiments than contemplating an actual research question. One may notice from all of my posts that I talk about western blots quite a bit. Well, the reason for that is not so much that I just love western blotting, it’s that I have to do so many! This aspect of life in research definitely forces me to pause and think if a career in research differs from what I actually want to do. I do not know if I want to be pipetting for years to come! However, the one aspect of research that I truly believe diverges from my true interests is how narrow and specific research projects usually are. For example, much research has been done in the area of determining molecular/signaling pathways for cells. While such knowledge is certainly interesting and necessary to advancing overall scientific knowledge, I am not so sure that it is what I want to study. I believe that I would be more interested in studying organisms on a larger scale, such as a specific organ system, versus what specific molecules or chemicals are involved in one specific process in the brain.
At this point I feel that I am more inclined to pursue a medical career as clinician, clinical researcher, or possibly both. The reason for this is that I believe that results from this type of job are more tangible and easily appreciated, although no less valuable than the results of researchers. That said, I still do not know for sure if what I feel know will still apply in two years. These eight weeks of research I will complete, while a great experience, are hardly sufficient to truly grasp what research is all about. Many beginning researchers such as myself are given simpler tasks to do at first before they can move on the more advanced techniques. So, I hope to continue doing research, hopefully in the same lab, throughout my undergraduate years. More experience in the lab will help me decide for sure what I want. Who knows, maybe I will decide that both a medical and a biological research career (M.D./Ph.D are in my future, although the many years of schooling required may just be enough of a discouragement to prevent that from happening! Hopefully in three years time all of my questions will be answered.