A few thoughts on prioritization in career choice
The cover to Royal Blood, mounted honorably in my childhood bedroom. What, is that weird?
If you asked a 10-year-old me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer would be immediate and decisive: an author. Specifically, a fantasy author, in the fashion of C.S. Lewis, Brian Jacques, J.K. Rowling, etc. In 5th grade, I wrote a short book (~60 small pages) complete with the requisite map of my fantasy world. Then, in 6th grade, I grew more ambitious, starting a longer work called “Royal Blood”, which took about 3 years and came out somewhere over 300 book-sized pages, this time with both a map of the world and a guide to the magical language. However, as I moved through high school, my conviction that writing fantasy was the best way to spend my time began to waver. I excelled in math (dare I say I enjoyed it too…) and the intricacies of cell biology caught my imagination not unlike the worlds of fantasy, while the world of physics was permeated by an elegant mathematical simplicity I found it hard to resist. Applying to colleges, I was split between applying myself to the humanities or to the biological sciences. On one hand, I had always dreamed of spending college and perhaps graduate school buried in works of literature, but on the other hand, I had trouble seeing how I could benefit society from that station.
Several factors steered me towards science and away from the humanities. Having been offered a prestigious scholarship to UC Davis, it became my clear number 1 choice. I had applied as “Undeclared - Biological Sciences”, and due to the unique strengths of UC Davis, it seemed in my interest to devote myself to biology rather than literature. Additionally, there was the lingering notion that I stood a better chance to improve the world for the better as a scientist rather than as a humanities major (if you’re beginning to disdain my condescension towards the humanities, please cut 18-year-old-me some slack and stick around until the end). Finally, I was also intrigued to learn there was such a major as “Biomedical Engineering”, where perhaps my interests in math, biology, and physics could collide in a sensible manner.
Just for fun, an example using a force balance (remember high school physics?) to solve for a relationship between forces and cell shape
Long story short (I’m sure I’ll tell my story in much more detail in future posts), the world of Biomedical Engineering did indeed capture my interest as an undergraduate. I became increasingly invested after joining a biophysics research lab as a sophomore, where I discovered the the excitement of observing cells in action and was given permission to ask a wide-array of open-ended questions. I was intrigued to learn how far we could get by describing the cell using the simple, elegant laws of Newtonian mechanics (see one fun example on the graph paper to the right). Here, my imagination proved instrumental while my analytical, mathematical side could also stay hard at work. I ended up staying in the same lab for graduate school, and now I am reaching the ending stages of my PhD.
It’s a story with a reasonably happy outcome, but it does get me thinking about the need I felt to prioritize science over humanities. Was I right in my thinking? I imagine the logic makes some sense to you, my readers, but I wonder if you agree or not. There are a few objections to raise immediately.
Who’s to say scientific research is more beneficial to society than directions I could have taken in the humanities? If I were to become an author, I very well could have a profound positive impact on society. I could write about any number of important issues. Even works of fantasy for pure enjoyment are no doubt crucial to society at large.
Even if I accept the idea that pursuing science is more beneficial to society, why should that hold such sway over my decision-making? This is a very interesting ethical question to me, and something I’d like to ask others who chose science as a career. I wonder how common this consideration is in choosing to pursue science. What I’ll say here is that I think “overall benefit to society” is a relevant ethical consideration when constructing life goals, but certainly not the only one, or even the most important one. Many would reasonably weigh “personal fulfillment” more heavily than “societal benefits”, but this depends on our personal value systems.
Cell biophysics? How does that help society? I have plenty to say on this question. I do think it is crucial to develop this fundamental scientific knowledge to inform development of future therapies and such, but this will be more fully addressed by future posts. Regardless, the point remains that the sort of research I’m working on is unlikely to have immediate, direct benefits to our society.
A possible, but not recommended, way to balance between personal interest and (apparent) societal impact
The purpose of this blog post is not to provide any answers to these questions, but to mention them and to start a conversation about what factors we should prioritize when choosing careers.
The question could be extended to how we operate in everyday life and how we choose to use our time. How much time should be devote to our career vs. personal relationships vs. pure leisure etc.? Doubtless the answers will change depending on your value system. But what I’ll argue is that this is something worth thinking about. Speaking personally, I feel that sometimes I get too caught up in the mundane to think about how I really want to invest my time according to my personal values. If we start to take this too seriously, it begins to look like we need to solve some incredibly complicated multivariate optimization problem (something in the spirit of the table to the right, maybe?), and maybe that is what we in fact want our brains to do… However, I’m not sure we need to obsess about this every single moment of our lives, I just think we owe it to ourselves to ensure we can be proud of how we spend our time. That’s part of why I’ve decided to start writing blog posts and creating my website: I want to share some of my thoughts and share the exciting research I’m working on with not just those in my immediate scientific community, but with others in society as well.
In closing, I hope this post finds you well in this New Year. If you have any thoughts on what I’ve said, please leave comments!