Dreaming of Pursuit by Serena

Dreaming of Pursuit by Serena - August 2024 Scholarship Essay

A part of myself was afraid to deviate from the fate my parents set for me, their disappointment and shame I couldn’t bear. Moreover as a young and impressionable child, I was easily molded into my parent's desires and grand plans for the future. They had hoped that I would be a doctor one day pushing me toward the best future for me through advanced math and science classes. While I wasn’t happy learning about geometry or algebra, science simply captivated my attention with rudimentary concepts of biology and chemistry where we first learned of cells and then what made those cells possible to exist like atoms. Stacking knowledge on top of each other makes the world much more complicated than a 5th grader could have imagined beyond the plant life cycle But with every spin the Earth took around the sun, I began to realize that this destiny wasn’t a path meant for me
Secretly I had begun my rebellion against this predetermined notion that I would grow up to become a doctor. So I thought the second closest dream for me was a pharmacist. Due to my interest in how the immune system works it was the most sensible option to me at the time. The simple cells in our body were visualized as part of a vast network that could defend against deadly cancers and yet be so easily manipulated and turned on itself. I wanted to know more, desperate to grasp the reasons why and how our bodies work and what role could medications play in. When I told my parents they were overjoyed by the prestigious career choice. Nevertheless that option was only chosen to appease them but I still wasn’t completely satisfied with my choice and wished for a different path. So back to imagining and dreaming of pursued paths to see if the medical field had anything else to offer to me.
Many different futures were explored through college workshops, career fairs, and simply talking to professionals, combined with years of deep-diving into medical topics I realized that research was it for me. Rather than serving the public directly, chasing my curiosity and further understanding the world was more important to me. Dreaming of working with patients was nearly impossible for me but tinkering in laboratories and conducting research was a possible future I could imagine for myself. My curiosity about the world and its mechanisms led to this point on top of randomized knowledge from all sections of STEM.
After attending a college workshop and watching the professor answer every question with patience and precision, I thought to myself a new dream… a biomedical scientist? That would mean studying diseases and medical innovation where you could work in the academia or many more places.The versatility of the degree attracted my curiosity and I could finally dream of a satisfying fate for myself. Where I would do my undergraduate major in biomedical science and then work in a laboratory or continue to further my education. While my parents may not approve of this career choice I still have to thank them for allowing me to explore the realm of medicine. Now I have a goal of working towards a degree in biomedical science as it encapsulates my drive to be curious and explore while still leaving me plenty of options to explore in the medical field. There is still so much for me to learn about the human body and one day begin to research into it.