Marine Biological Laboratory Summer Course Participants: Why I Do Science

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00:00:14;18 I think that one of the things that has inspired me to be a scientist
00:00:20;29 is the fact that science provides you with the opportunity to combine two of the...
00:00:28;17 what I think are the most beautiful qualities of human beings...
00:00:31;23 that is reasoning -- the capacity to reason -- and creativity.
00:00:37;11 The way I think about it is that every morning, I wake up, it's like Alice in Wonderland.
00:00:42;09 You just wake up in the morning, and you think that I'm going to go down the rabbit hole today,
00:00:47;10 and I don't really know what I'm going to find out,
00:00:48;24 but it's that you don't know what you're going to find out
00:00:53;19 that makes it really fun.
00:00:55;10 I really think that science is fun because you have the opportunity to create
00:01:00;25 and discover things that nobody else in the world essentially knows.
00:01:04;24 Science itself... It's just a great feeling to be looking at things people have never looked at
00:01:12;20 and maybe finding something that is really, really new to the world,
00:01:15;29 and no one has ever experienced that.
00:01:18;25 Science is fun for me because I get to play with stuff, basically.
00:01:21;04 And I get to play with puzzles... actually, questions that are really important
00:01:26;26 for a person's life. If you actually get to answer the question and solve that puzzle,
00:01:35;08 you get to improve people's lives.
00:01:38;07 First of all, when I was in high school, I wasn't always sure that I would become a scientist
00:01:42;28 like many people do... that they always knew that's what they're going to be.
00:01:45;28 For me, it was more that I liked biology,
00:01:48;00 and I was always curious about the world and what's happening.
00:01:50;24 So, I enrolled in biology in university,
00:01:53;05 but I really didn't realize what I was getting myself into,
00:01:55;07 what science really is, and what being a scientist means.
00:01:58;04 And, I was surprised, especially during my Master's thesis
00:02:01;05 and my PhD how diverse of a job it is,
00:02:04;03 and now even as a post-doc, even more, I realize that it's not only,
00:02:07;13 or actually it's a very small proportion almost that we spend thinking on our own.
00:02:12;24 It's an incredibly diverse job and really interactive.
00:02:16;27 My mother has epilepsy. Watching her as a young child, going through epilepsy
00:02:20;28 and the situations that she goes through and conditions,
00:02:24;03 has inspired me... It's like, I can help someone else with that.
00:02:28;02 The knowledge that I can get from school, I incorporate that into research,
00:02:33;20 and from there, help find cures, help find treatments, and also maybe help people
00:02:39;23 to maintain and control their seizures more effectively,
00:02:45;19 so they can live a more normal life.
00:02:47;28 It's your opportunity to become, essentially,
00:02:50;15 the expert on a particular area that can potentially help many people
00:02:55;17 who are suffering from potential diseases and also help clinicians
00:02:59;18 who are also helping those individuals.
00:03:02;11 I think that learning about the history of humanity has been a very important part
00:03:08;05 of the inspiration for me.
00:03:14;06 Looking back in history, I sort of see how many people
00:03:19;20 have had an impact on society through science,
00:03:23;01 and it makes me realize that I could also play a role in shaping the world.
00:03:30;15 The science I do, I couldn't do alone.
00:03:33;01 I'm a biologist by training, but I need physicists, engineers, and mathematicians
00:03:36;08 to help me analyze my data, to model data, to have more insight on it.
00:03:41;13 So, we work really closely together, and we talk basically every day, on a day-to-day basis.
00:03:45;24 We teach each other a lot.
00:03:47;02 I also think science is fun because you have the opportunity to travel the world
00:03:50;27 and communicate with other scientists that have similar interests to you,
00:03:54;25 and you get to see and meet people that you
00:03:56;15 ordinarily wouldn't have the opportunity to do.
00:03:59;19 Sometimes we have advancements in science, but sometimes
00:04:03;07 we have a scientist to educate the public about how to go about this.
00:04:08;04 And, we have to have this crosstalk.
00:04:09;25 You're autonomous essentially. You are your own boss.
00:04:12;19 There's no right or wrong answers
00:04:15;05 because this is an area that nobody else really knows about.
00:04:17;19 You don't sit at a desk all day, but you also don't stand at a bench all day.
00:04:21;03 It's a mix of all of that, and it's a really flexible day...
00:04:24;21 how you want to structure your day and how you want it to look.
00:04:30;24 When I was an undergraduate, I took a course in evolution as a first year student,
00:04:37;26 and it presented a lot of the research in that field,
00:04:43;02 in a way that was accessible as a process in science, as opposed to just information.
00:04:51;19 This is really what's most interesting. We learn so much every day
00:04:54;28 and if you are interested in learning, then this is the best job you can have.
00:04:58;10 It's really rewarding when you see something that you've never seen before
00:05:02;21 or you've been to a place that nobody has ever been before.
00:05:06;08 So I guess that element of not knowing what you're going to see
00:05:10;21 makes it really fun, I think.
00:05:12;12 If science can shed light on this question
00:05:21;01 that people have been unable to answer for millennia,
00:05:23;06 in such a beautiful way, then science is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
00:05:28;01 You have that opportunity to leave your mark years from now,
00:05:33;12 and you can impact generations and generations to come
00:05:35;27 and really have contributed and leave a lasting legacy.
00:05:40;11 So, all in all, I think that science is a great job, and it's a challenging job,
00:05:48;13 and it's never getting boring.

This Talk

Speaker: MBL course participants

Audience:

General Public
Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: September 2011

Talk Overview

Why do YOU do science? Marine Biological Laboratory summer course participants, seven graduate students and post-docs, tell us what they find inspiring and fun about doing science.

Speaker Bio

MBL course participants

The speakers are graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who participated in summer courses at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. They are from universities throughout the USA and beyond. Velez-Perez, McLean, Quiñones-Laracuente and Roberts were all participants in the Summer Program in Neuroscience, Ethics and Survival (SPINES) at the Marine Biological Laboratory. The… Continue Reading