I want to take a bit of time to talk about this vague kind of struggle we all seem to go through when we first enter the world. A select few of us, myself included, are often unprepared to answer questions about the future with definite nouns and verbs when we first enter college. Sometimes, we can pretend for a while by choosing to take classes for a specific major. We might even feign interest in an affluent company. What you may really be feeling, though, is lost, like I was. What college taught me is that you can, and should, let others know if you are feeling this way.

I admit that, for a long time, I had no idea if I was making the correct choice by going into the sciences. I had this romanticized notion that, if you worked hard enough and understood everything, you could do something that would change the world for the better. I was greatly attracted to the work of former scientists and work being done in the field today, but I mostly paid attention to how they had impacted the world. In other words, when I chose to go into science, I did so because I thought I, too, could ‘make it big.’

In the three years since I have had to fail several times which caused me to question my love for the sciences. I often got discouraged, for instance, when the other students in my Chemistry labs would leave while I was still working. It sometimes seemed like I had to put in twice the amount of work to understand scientific concepts like they did. I repeatedly asked myself, “Can I really do this?” I really felt like a failure, but the pressure always drove me forward.

I think what gave me my warped view of reality was that I tried to ‘make it big’ when I was still a student. It made it hard to see what I was actually trying to achieve. After a while, I realized I was trying to see the big picture before I understood the small details, and sometimes I tried seeing the small details before I got the big picture. I was doing everything the hard way and it discouraged me quite a bit. I took the time to calm down, and when I did, I realized something strange: I love the sciences and what they tell us about the world. Also, I’m pretty average at it, but certainly not bad at it. I slowly began to enjoy it, and I became more comfortable with myself and my chosen major of Biotechnology (basically, using biological and biochemical mechanisms as tools). I understood who I was and wanted to be.

Although I can’t be sure if I would have listened or understood myself at all as a teenager, I would have told myself not to choose my path before I went to college. I would have said: “Hey, be chill, and don’t take everything in this world so seriously. Find a way to remind yourself every day that you have so many options and are not obligated to pick a path whatsoever.”

“Life is a MadLib,” I would have said, “so you already know what to do: get creative with it.”