More than Just Writing

The scientist profile was difficult. The actual writing of it wasn’t the hard part, but the path I chose made the assignment itself more difficult that it had to be. The path that I took is the path I’m glad I chose.

I said before in the introductory letter that a person is the sum of their experiences. I didn’t say that purely because it sounds nice to say. It’s a trite saying but it’s absolutely true. If I had a silver tongue I’d be able to phrase it in a better way, but the value of it comes from its implications: if you want to change who you are, you have to have meaningful experiences. Your experiences change who you are.

Following my departure from high school and dropping out from college, I burnt most of my bridges. This included certain professional ones, including my P.I. that I conducted research with during high school. Incapable of facing the fact that I was a failure, I felt as if I had fell out of grace with the people who had expected a lot out of me. So when I got the scientist profile assignment to interview a scientist, I knew exactly who I had to interview and what it entailed.

Part of my preliminary reflection on the class is a bit mellow and less critically focused on the course learning outcomes, but the process of writing itself is important. Anything that influences the way you acquire information and forces you to think critically is worth mentioning. As our professor said, anyone can just read what they need to from the Internet to learn. The point of college is to use its resources and stretch your boundaries. I took that advice to heart and tried to use it for the scientist profile. Talking to a P.I. who I had essentially ghosted because of my own misplaced sense of inadequacy was going to be awkward, and as a naturally introverted person it would take more strength than I had mustered in a decent amount of time.

But I did it. I had half a mind to find a different scientist, one who I didn’t have any prior connection. Once I sent that email, I had resolved myself to see this through. And it was as awkward as I imagined it to be, as painful as I had expected to hear how successful my peers had become while I remained stuck where I was. I hadn’t, however, imagined the grace with which my P.I. spoke, how calm he was about everything that happened. By the end of it I was glad I stuck to my guns. And the words just came like a torrent of rain to my fingers.

A First Draft and the Writing Process

The first draft wasn’t really a draft, and it’s something that I came to appreciate later. The fact that we don’t have strict requirements for what a draft should be serves as a double-edged sword. It allows you to try out different formats of drafts to find out what works best, but it can also serve to throw you off balance. Without solid drafting, it becomes very difficult to understand where your weak points are. This is something I noticed early on, thankfully, and gave more substantiated drafts for the later papers. The quality of the feedback Professor Grove constantly gave despite the lack of focus in my draft also motivated me to work harder on them. Good feedback is hard to come by, and harder still to get is good criticism.

However, writing down all these questions allowed me to tackle the project in a way that felt quite different that I’ll elaborate on in the self-assessment. After using these questions as a guide for my interview, I wrote the first major assignment of the semester.

I was reminded of a story that resonated with me long after I had left the lab. That first time I saw the karyotype of a person with cancer and held the slides that contained cells of an actual person with myelodysplastic syndrome was when I realized that I had made the right choice in what I wanted to do. I genuinely want to have a career in science, and possibly medicine. That want is so bad that even when I had given up and completely burned out, I couldn’t stand not being on that journey. I remembered why I love this field. The awesome power of genetics to understand a person’s life, for medicine to give that person renewed purpose and save them. Knowing that when I had thought it was all over for me, I built myself back up from the ground. I want to be able to help other people understand that, and to show them that it’s not over until it’s over. How I can convey that as best as I can in writing is something that I’ve been learning over the semester and will continue to practice.