Still flowing
Yesterday morning, my advisor sent me a slide with a “post-doc opportunity” while he was at the mini-symposium downstairs, and he asked whether I had any intention to go there after my graduation. This academic center, located in Finland, is calling for data-mining scientists, which suits my major well. But to be frank, I found myself a bit bored browsing the project information related to cancer multi-omics, pan-cancer analysis, and so on. These topics are close to what I’ve been doing for years. In contrast, a project named “The Spirit of the Forest: Atmospheric Data and Human Health” caught my eye instantly, although it requires knowledge and skills I haven’t yet acquired.
On the same day, I watched a video sent by Nature Briefings about several scientists collecting the sounds of crows and trying to understand their language. I forwarded the video to my friend with comments as follows: “These researchers seem to love crows very much, as their eyes were also smiling genuinely when they talked about their research.”
Similarly, I was moved by a photo capturing a field scientist who uses radio tracking to monitor wildcats with her daughter in southern Spain, and forwarded it to the same friend.
These coincidences recalled two dreams I had last year. One was in summer; I dreamed about observing grampuses in Antarctica with a small group of scientists. Another was in winter; I dreamed about receiving an email for an interview related to ecological study while climbing mossy hills. These two dreams were too beautiful to forget. Besides these research-orientation-related dreams, I have also constantly dreamed of living in a forest or within mountains. I was wondering if my longing for nature was calling me through these dreams, which made me doubt the research field I’m currently working in.
I was at an agricultural university years before, but I was not interested in deciphering the genome of crops and increasing their outputs. Gradually, I gained the desire to learn about biological processes in human bodies, especially in human brains. Therefore, I used scRNA-seq data of the hippocampus in my bachelor’s graduation project, as if I was doing something different to “prove” my interest. In the first year of my master’s degree, I also took many courses in neuroscience and medical science. As I was disappointed by the overly subjective approaches to mouse modeling in neuroscience research, I switched back to the area of my advisor’s comfort zone: cancer. Such an interest has last for more than two years, but has been fading gradually. After developing the habit of hiking on weekends, I became quite curious about everything in the forest. And I guess that’s why I’ve dreamed of it constantly since then, thus influencing my research interests as well.
The transition of my research interests seemed natural and reasonable, but it also reflects some unstable and elusive aspects of my personality. Just like my attitude towards life, I always let myself live in each moment, following my intuition and current thoughts. When I’m dealing with tasks, such an attitude helps me focus on every step and immerse myself in the thing I’m doing. But now, looking back at my twenties, I found that I’ve been changing like entirely fresh flowing water making its own riverbed underneath.
Easily sticking to something used to be my advantage. But now, it’s like the more I know about something, the easier it is for me to get bored through the inevitable repeated work. As I’m still curious about many things I haven’t had enough time to learn, these things have become more and more attractive to me. How can one tell what is true interest, and what is temporary attraction based on the unknown? (Understanding the love towards a career is so similar to discerning the love towards a person…)