The story of my Principal Investigator, is more than ordinary, it’s extraordinary. Dr. Phillip Benfey’s journey started after leaving a university in Massachusetts. After leaving he went travelling around the world. In the numerous places he travelled Dr. Benfey participated in a wide array of careers, attributing all the skills he learned to “picking it up as he went along”. He worked as an iron miner in Australia, an engineer in Somoa, in the film industy in the Phillipines, a Gardner in Japan, and a couple more. In addition, to travelling to all these places and holding all these occupations he managed to graduate from the University of Paris. Due to all the different occupations he held I wondered what Dr. Benfey originally wanted to be, to which he replied a writer. He would be content if he could be a writer, but it isn’t the most financially stable occupation. Therefore, he searched for something that he would enjoy and science was the answer.
Dr. Benfey found his passion in science because it was new all the time. In research every day is used in order to find something new that may lead to answering a question. It seems in his ever-changing life Dr. Benfey found a profession that could fuel his curiosity to see and experience new and amazing things. However, there are some restrictions that don’t allow research in science to flourish as much as it could. Although it may not be a problem for him as much researchers are constrained by the funding they get. The amount of money directly relates to what experiments you can undertake and it is definitely a hard obstacle to cross. There are also times in the lab that can be embarrassing or frustrating like when a new mutant was misnamed and went all the way to the publication process. But then, there are good times for him like when he gets to see all the new students become outstanding researchers.
In the end it all seems to be worth the effort for Dr. Benfey. It seems he has found an occupation that he can stay with and feel fulfilled doing.
