Born in Winter Haven, Florida, and moving to Lake Wales as a two-year-old, I have always been in a smaller community, surrounded by familiarity. Although filled to the brim with the fondest of memories, my childhood was nothing extraordinary and no different from any other. I was not starved for aspirations; I, the dreamer, yearned. I tried to build robots, though I did not know how; many adventures were mine. Knowing only the small-town feeling my whole life, I have painted enormous new worlds in my mind, which has only made me restless and impatient to reach them. It is this very sense of unrest, however, that I have felt pulled toward greater things—these being the pursuit of knowledge and perpetual process of seeking.
It is strange where we find ourselves with the coming years. The place I was a year ago, two years ago, is not the same place I am at the present moment, nor is it where I will be a year from now. The last few hundred days have seen an incredible amount of change and an astonishing level of growth in my life. If one does not equate college with a time of great discovery (and in all senses of the term), they are simply not looking about them. It is such a beautiful season of life, where we come closer to the one we are becoming. I am still learning, and for that I am thankful, but my confidence in who I am and the direction in which I am moving have become stronger and stronger still.
Like immiscible liquids, I am a composite of two unlike substances: a writer and an engineer. Although formally a Chemical Engineering major on paper, I am also a generator of poetry and fictions. I look for the themes and motifs in every day; I view my life as narrative. Naturally, I speak in metaphors. To me, even science is best understood in literary terms. The natural world is composed not of separate and random points but the lines drawn between them. Everything tells a story.
This strange phenomenon of connections has held my strong and continued fascination with the human brain and the intricate chemical reactions that take place within the skull. And, on a more personal level, I seek to understand the mechanisms of my own mind. Anxiety has been an ongoing battle throughout my academic career, and I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in the summer before entering college. Pattern recognition and the interconnectivity of all things has been my natural way of viewing that which surrounds me. I have not let OCD defeat me but, rather, I have chosen to use it to my advantage. It has allowed me to see the world is made up of stories. All life is intricately orchestrated: from the light-harvesting pigments in plants to the perfectly synchronized neural network of synapses in the brain.
Fittingly and fortuitously enough, the first chapter of my research experience was centered on numerous neural processes, when I had the opportunity to and honor to work on “The Aging Auditory System: Presbycusis and Its Neural Basis” alongside the members of one of the most prestigious research institutes and leader in innovation on age-related hearing loss research, the Global Center for Hearing and Speech Research. And now, reading ahead and turning to the current page on which my research experience is found, I work in a neurostructural research lab as a volunteer intern. My main task involves a combination of attention to detail and acuity with numbers—I identify and count the dendritic spines and their configurations on neurons viewed at 2000x magnification.
Through these and other experiences, I gained not only additional technical skills and a more seasoned hand at research but a clearer understanding of the sort of research that really drives me. The farther I travel down the road to completing my undergraduate degree, the more confident I feel that the brain is the focal point of the research I seek to do and the future career I hope to have.
It is my belief that completing a research-based Masters degree in a field such as neuroscience is a crucial intermediate step in my journey, as it links what I'm doing now with what I hope to do one day. My various research experiences have brought me into contact—directly and indirectly—with the research that really strikes a chord in me, but I would like to become fully immersed.
Ultimately, I intend to earn my doctorate in Bioengineering, Biomedical Engineering, or Biochemistry and pursue a career in research. Regardless of the exact title, I would like to understand the ways in which biological processes can be utilized in the engineering model. Synthetic neurobiology and neuroengineering certainly encompass the largest portion of my research interests, especially as they may be extended to improve the treatment of psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative disease. Research centered on the brain’s circuitry is of great importance and key interest to me; it is, I believe, crucial in unlocking the secrets of memory, cognition, and the mind in its entirety. When all is said and done, it is my desire be involved in research related to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. I cannot quite explain it all, but it definitely is a calling.
Beyond all that, I know not what the future will bring. I will never stop moving forward though; as the American poet Jack Gilbert has written, "I am hungry for what I am becoming."
The entirety of life dwells—untouched—in the vaults of our memory. The important thing to remember is to not become wholly immersed and consumed by the past—to look forward but not with any drastic compulsion or obsession and to remain in the reality of the current moment without becoming stagnant and cemented in its context. The lives we are to lead will come; I cannot say it any other way. I will leave you with the words of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke—an excerpt from his Letters to a Young Poet. This has given me continued strength; I hope it might do as much for all of you.
“I would like to beg you, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
Attached, you will find a copy of the speech I gave at graduation. What is written above is an excerpt.
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