the gift of critical thinking

In school, if you liked biology, the logical next step was to become a doctor.

No questions asked. No alternative routes considered. Liking science meant medicine, and anything outside of that was a tangent, a lesser version of the "ultimate" career. For a long time, I let that belief shape me. I was going to be a doctor, until I trusted my instincts and landed in biomedical research instead.

Lots of doctors manage to incorporate research, public health, and even entrepreneurship into their careers, but at what cost? Work-life balance? Time? Fulfillment? And don’t even get me started on what success actually means and who gets to define it (check out: What Does Success Truly Mean?).

Up until I was 22, I still toyed with the idea of medicine. Research felt like an uncertain path, and I couldn’t picture myself in it long term. Medicine felt safe, like it was a direct answer to "what do you do?" without the need for an essay-length explanation.

But then, Vietnam happened.

A completely impulsive backpacking trip with my sister, a week of living moment-to-moment, meeting incredible people, absorbing history, culture, and spontaneity in a way I hadn’t allowed myself to before. That summer, I was supposed to take the UKCAT and apply for graduate entry medicine in the UK. It felt like the logical next step. But for the first time, I realized I didn’t want to keep following logic, I wanted to trust my gut.

That trip changed everything.

I went into the final year of my bachelor's degree with an open mind instead of a half-hearted escape plan. Through a completely unexpected chain of events, I landed in a research lab studying circadian rhythm biology and intervertebral disc degeneration—nothing remotely close to my prior interests. And yet, it clicked.

The people. The atmosphere. The experiments.

I fell in love with waking up every day and immersing myself in a world of science nerds, learning techniques I had never heard of, collaborating with people who, to this day, are some of the most brilliant minds I’ve ever met. It felt right in a way medicine never did.

But now I have a new challenge: research is only one part of what drives me.

Recently, someone explained ikigai to me, the Japanese concept of purpose, the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

Ignoring one of these inevitably leads to dissatisfaction.

What do I love?

Science, politics, connecting with people, intellectual challenges, art.

What am I good at?

Research, communication, attention to detail, storytelling, generating ideas.

What does the world need?

Public health advocacy, passionate people who stay passionate, educational awareness, cures for diseases that take too much from too many.

What can I be paid for?

Biotech. Big Pharma. Authenticity (long-term payout).

And with that realization, the answer is clear: interdisciplinary is the way forward.

For so long, scientists have had a reputation for being isolated, socially awkward, difficult to understand. It’s because the knowledge gap is massive. The work we do is so layered, so niche, that explaining it to anyone outside the field requires an entire crash course in molecular biology. And because of that gap, people distrust science. They don’t see it, they don’t engage with it, they don’t believe in it.

So maybe my role isn’t just in the lab.

Maybe it’s in making science accessible. Maybe it’s in bridging that gap. Maybe the real answer isn’t choosing one path, but carving a space where multiple things coexist, where science, communication, advocacy, and creativity intersect.

Because at the end of the day, being gifted with the ability to think critically isn’t about following the logical next step.

It’s about questioning why that step is considered logical in the first place.