Every week we have been fortunate enough to have a few different Duke faculty members speak to us about their research, and more importantly, how they got into their research. Researchers are definitely busy people, so I feel lucky to have been given some time from their schedules during which they explain what we wouldn’t have time to hear in a content-packed lecture: their personal stories.
While I loved hearing from all of the faculty members, my favorite was the message that Dr. Brian Coggins left with us. It was refreshing to hear a fairly “normal” path for deciding a career choice… A combination of good science teachers in high school and an inherent curiosity led him to yearn for a personal, direct experience with science. Growing up, he browsed National Geographic magazines and loved figuring out how machines worked. At Duke (where he earned both his B.S. and PhD), professor Dr. Dave McClay got him interested in biochemistry. He trusted his interest in science and has stuck with it to this day.
In his own words, “Sometimes you have to just make a decision and go with it.” I find this to be so relevant at this 18 year-old time in my life, because it can be so overwhelming thinking about planning for the future. “The future” can feel so far off yet so immediate. We are told, “You have time to figure out what you want to do,” and simultaneously, “You need to start preparing now and planning your future.” So my biggest take-away from Dr. Coggins’ talk is to trust your gut, and to prepare for the future simply by doing activities that you love. Reminding us how limited our time at Duke is, he encouraged us to take not just the important, useful courses but also to take interesting, more random ones, because they could lead to a career choice. He assured us that when we pick a career, the learning will come. He had not taken computer science courses or high-level math courses during his undergraduate years, but was able to learn what he needed to when he needed to.
Dr. Coggins is not only someone who loves science, but is able to articulate the causes underlying his passion for it. In response to the question he has probably been asked many times before, “Why do you love science?” he was able to list off in a few minutes, “Variety, puzzles, independence, collaboration, changing the world” as the specific qualities of science that have drawn him in. As for me, even if my future career does not entail reading astronomy papers from the 1900s or using computers to understand artifact suppression, I will keep Dr. Coggins’ talk in mind when pondering my options beyond undergraduate education.
