I often like to tell people that my “bio” started with the day I spoke my first five syllable word “antibiotics” as I sat on my grandmother’s lap, but who am I kidding? It certainly did not start the day I emphatically told my teacher that I didn’t understand “cells” nor did it start the day my grandmother died of cancer and I firmly told myself that “cancer cannot be genetic” nor on the day I refused to study the chapter on RNA biology or memorize the functions of vitamins or draw the cochlea in the ear. I strongly believe, however that my “bio-destiny” started the day I read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park years after it was released. I had just begun high school then and I had my “where have you been all my life?” moment and I knew that biotechnology was where I wanted to be. But by the time I had started out as biotechnology major in college, I knew that my passion lay, not in cloning and recreating extinct animals but in cancer research as I wanted to understand the disease that killed my grandmother. The sheer complexity of cancer fascinated me. Reality of a career in research struck me and my fantasies of ground breaking research in a cool lab while wearing goggles were dissolved when I had my first research experiences as an undergrad. But there was no turning back. I went to grad school. Today I study mRNA splicing regulation in cancer and enjoy every minute of it. But to say the truth about my bio beginnings, I quote Darcy “I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun”.
Jurassic Park sparked my curiosity at a young age too. And memorizing functions does not come naturally to me either. Thanks for sharing your journey.
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