Most of my life I knew that I loved two things; baking and science. Baking is my hobby and science is my job. I want to own a bakery when I retire, but in the mean time, I am pursuing my interest in science and want to do research on diseases of the central nervous system. I chose two Ted Talks specific to these passions of mine, one on business owning and the other on medical advancements through sustainable design.

The first ted talk I watched was titled “Profit’s Not Always the Point”. Here a business man, Harish Manwani , talked about how his company, merely selling soap and soup, were making a difference in the world. Watching this and wanting to own my own bakery someday, I began to ask myself the same question he was asking the audience; “How will you change lives”? Now a mere bakery, selling pastries to costumers doesn’t seem like a means to change the world, but how it’s run can make all the difference. Harish preached about being responsible for the community socially and economically. Making money means nothing if you aren’t doing good. If I had to sit down and design my bakery right now, I would undoubtedly consider the earth and its people in every aspect. My bakery would socially make a difference by buying ingredients from sustainable sources, fundraising for those who are not fortunate enough to have food at their finger tips, and engaging the community in events. Environmentally, we would recycle and have a compost compile. Our plates and silverware will be reusable and the bakery itself will be made of as many refurbished and recycled materials as possible, the type of cute things you see on Pinterest. By considering the world in my business, it will have a purpose other than sales.

The other Ted Talk I watched was truly quite astonishing and inspiring. The speaker, Mark Kendall, talked about his new technology called the nanopatch. This unique way of delivering vaccines eradicates pain, makes vaccines more effective, accessible, and cheaper, increases their shelf life, eliminates the cold chain, and much more. Overall this new patch has the potential to save millions of lives every year. It also reduces the amount of energy needed to refrigerate the vaccines, no syringes would be needed to be dumped into landfills anymore, and his applicator is reusable. The take home message from Mark Kendall was the through creative thinking and challenging the routine way of going about a process, great things can be made. This nanopatch has the potential to change the world, just by a change in design in administering a vaccine. I will definitely apply this moto to my own work throughout my life. I will be working in a biomedical engineering lab over the summer and am able to be involved in creative processes like this. The environment and people will always be a consideration of mine when designing and testing technology.

These talks pushed me to consider how I can make a difference through small practices, by abandoning self interest and taking responsibility for the world around me. Sustainability is a driving factor of business in todays world, and to succeed it must be heeded to.

Yeah, I was that kid who always said they wanted to be a doctor since kindergarten, probably even before that. I have always loved helping people and I figured people respected doctors, something I had always wanted. I knew that even the title “Dr.” would instantly make people believe you exuded intelligence. But the older I got, the more I questioned that.

I love science with out a doubt, well I love it more than I hate it, which is a start. Gen Chem isn’t my favorite, but hey, can you blame me? When I dated a guy for a while whose family had a long history of Alzheimer’s, I started reading more up on neurodegenerative diseases and realized my interest in them and how there is so much more potential work to be done in the field. Also my friend who was a year ahead of me had selected neuroscience as her major at The Ohio State University and she seemed to really like it. More and more the bricks started to lay as I paved my way to a future in neuroscience.

Now, another side tangent to my childhood. As a kid I believed I had cancer and was doomed for life. This was pretty irrational considering I was basing my findings of off my bumpy arms, which I got made fun of a lot for as a kid. I would draw diagrams in my diary how to cure cancer. Most of my pictures just included plants that one could find in the Amazon rainforest that could have extracts to place on skin to cure bumpy arms, and ultimately cancer. But, I never got diagnosed with cancer, well at least not yet anyway. So slowly but surely I shifted my attention to pathogens. It would be pretty cool to cure a world outbreak and be responsible for saving millions of lives. This basically stemmed from my thought process after I got the Swine Flue of ’09. I’m still pretty interested in pathogens today, pathogens of the brain, especially. But I could definitely see myself in a laboratory studying neurodegenerative diseases on mice for the rest of my life though (not rats, because rats have scary tails).

The battle between which doctor I want to be still reigns on inside of me. “MD” vs. “Ph.D.” is not an easy choice to make. I love people and would like to have direct contact with them, which a medical doctor would get to have, but a Ph.D. would allow me to go very in depth on a passion of mine and be able to study that until the end of my days. That’s why I decided to shadow a researcher at Case Western Reserve University over fall break. I have been to a doctor’s office thousands of times but how often can you go under ground and look at mice with electrodes glued to their heads?

It all started when my mom, being a realtor, sold a man, Dr. Capadona a house. Dr. Capadona and my mom exchanged conversation and eventually led to me touring his lab my junior year of high school. Dr. Capadona runs the grants in the biomedical engineering department at Case. The tour was great and I loved how I knew everything he was talking about (AP bio really came in handy). I decided I want to be a biomedical engineer for a while after this experience. But, we all change our minds and the second time around I was touring his lab, this past October, I knew I wanted to study neuroscience, not BME.

After getting lost a few times, I finally made it to the basement where Dr. Capadona and his graduate students work. One of his graduate students, Laura, took me around and even let me listen to live recordings of mice neurons on an EEG. This life of a graduate student didn’t seem too sparkly and exciting but I realize it’s what I need to accomplish to get where I want to go in life. Laura showed me their wet and dry labs, their operating room, the animal room, and a few other places that they encounter on a daily basis.

When Laura was explaining things to me (like how the EEG worked, etc.) I completely understood everything she was talking about. This was a great feeling that my behavioral neuroscience class was finally paying off. I have a lot left to learn about neuroscience material wise, but this shadowing experience helped show me how independent you are as a researcher in regards to your own experiments and how time consuming graduate school is.

I would definitely say that this experience helped to deepen my interest in perusing my career for a Ph. D in neuroscience. I know that it’s going to take around 10 years of my life to achieve this but I figure if I like it, it will be enjoyable. I believe this job will allow me study my passion and still have time for a family. The next steps I’m going to have to take for my career would be getting into a research lab with a professor at OSU during the fall of my sophomore year and maintaining a high GPA (basically how you get selected for graduate school). Dr. Capadona invited me to work in his research lab this summer, so let’s see where that takes me. I’ve got my sights set on neuroscience for a very long time, but I’m hoping that working in the field will help consolidate my passion.