Through a series of unexpected events, a young doctor who had just graduated from med school found himself in a prestigious program designed to train physician scientists. Dr. Lefkowitz, who had never thought about doing research before, experienced failure for the first time. The two-year training program was eventually successful, but he struggled in the process. Biomedical research proved to be more difficult than anything he had done before. During residency, Dr. Lefkowitz discovered that he actually missed the challenges of research, and he decided to dedicate a large part of his career to basic science research.
This faculty seminar from Tuesday given by Professor Lefkowitz made me think a lot about what I want to do with my life. His speech made me excited about doing research, and more importantly, his advice was valuable. Here are some of the talkaways I got from his talk. Building a career around scientific problems is better than building one with lab techniques. Learning new lab techniques takes a lot of time and effort, and it can be particularly difficult when one is already very comfortable with a set of techniques. However, as scientists, it’s more important to learn whatever that’s necessary for answering the scientific questions. Viewing work as play makes doing research fun. I resonate with Dr. Lefkowitz’s point of how intellectually stimulating the process of asking questions, forming hypotheses, and designing experiments is. Don’t talk oneself out of an experiment. Sometimes taking risks can provide surprising results, and a lot of scientific discoveries were made this way.
