Thoughts from a PhD student in BME
Don’t suppress the passions inside you while aiming to be the best
This morning, I quietly sat beside my advisor at the research meeting. When I think about the fact that I am nowhere on track to get a Master’s, let alone a PhD, I realize that my time is truly being wasted. My advisor is not interested in me, and now I am not interested in his research. I have all but checked out. I can no longer concentrate in classses, and it’s hard for me to even pretend to care.
Rewind:
As I applied to graduate schools, it was particularly difficult for me to find the “perfect program”. I was fairly new to research in the sense that my priority in undergrad was not printing out publications, and reading up on new advancements in the field, but the most important thing was getting good grades. For a while, I stopped watching television, had no idea what was going on in the world, or even in my backyard because my outside interests were not important. First, I had to get the grades and the degree to do what I wanted to.
But what did I want to do? What am I meant to do? More than likely, something that is reflected in my academic strengths… something with the physical, biological, and mathematical sciences. Hey, I’ve always been a tech person, loved working with cars in high school, loved using my tools when something broke, why not engineering? On the other side, I value human life so, and would like to encourage health, and quality of life… I made up my mind and decided to pursue Biomedical Engineering.
