As I sat down on a bench overlooking the darkness of the night in my residence studying for the last bioengineering paper in university, my mind wandered off and out of the blues, I thought about how I first fell in love with science. I have walked down this science path for the whole of my education career; primary, secondary, pre-u, and college. If I have chosen a path that I have followed for three quarter of my life, there must be something really important and I love about it.
I am not sure when this longtime affair started, but I think I could safely conclude from my youngest memory of the first physical phenomena that I learnt and understood. It was of the formation of rain. I still remember the joy I felt when suddenly I understood why rain happened, and it made sense. Not the standard thing my religion teacher used to tell me (“Because God made it that way.”) but the whole process from how the water from earth turned into water vapor and moved into the sky, condensed to form clouds, before everything got too crowded and heavy up there and they all fell back to the earth with the blessings of the Sun. Even the things that accompany rain, like thunders, lightning, rainbow; now they all made sense.
I remembered still how fascinated my best friend and I were when we learnt about the working of heart; this incredible pumping machine in our body that works for as long as we live. I am actually very intrigued of my memory retention ability. I still remember most of my human biology lessons from as long as 10 years ago. I love it how when we were young, life seems more intriguing, every little things that we learnt were new and intriguing, our passion lighted up from simplest things.
We all know that these kinds of excitement do not stay for long. And as I learn more of science, delve deeper into intricate phenomena, dissecting the mathematics of it, my mind just baulk most of the time. I complained a lot in university about my decision to go into BIE, and I must admit that I do not enjoy it, I am not very good at it and I think it would not take me into the places that I want to go in life. I am an average student, with very confused career objectives and even more dispensable career choices. I wonder what went wrong throughout these years. Has science, especially engineering, become too difficult for me to excel? Am I just not cut out for it? Or was my emotional instability in some years has snuffed out my passion?
Despite all these chronic questions that I cannot answer, I believe that life goes on and that it is inevitable that at certain points in our lives, we are bound to make not-the-best choices. I am not someone who thinks far into the future. I follow my gut feelings and I believe in what I love. I did not explore career options when I was at that crossroads 4 years ago, but I follow what I believed to be the best choice for me at that time. That choice is the sum of what I am and what I love. Maybe BIE turned out not to be the best in the end but I still can pull through it somehow. And most importantly, I have met some wonderful people that I will always keep in my heart.
Life is still waiting.
