Advice from a Neuroscientist: Follow Your Heart, Not Just Your Mind

The Road to My PhD Taught Me More Than I Expected

Photo by James Graham on Unsplash

A young woman stands in ripped jeans, clogs, and an old t-shirt; hair pulled sensibly out of her eyes. She spent the last 10 hours in a room with no windows. It smells like mice. She hums along as she adjusts the dial to change the radio’s channels between Top 40 (“Near, far, whereEVER you are…I believe that the heart does go on….”) and NPR. While she listens, she uses a series of allen and cresent wrenches to adjust a $20,000 machine. Fluids ooze on her hands. She wipes them on her jeans. She is reminded that needs to carry her overflowing laundry basket down to the basement. Later tonight, tomorrow for sure.

Is she an auto mechanic?

Nope, she’s a Neuroscience graduate student at an Ivy League university.

I have a life long love affair with math and science. I also had the advantage of always feeling like I ‘belonged’ in math and science. My mother was one of the first women to get a Masters in Computer Science, back when computers took up the better part of a room. If anything, my parents expected that I would excel in these areas. And excel I did.

At the completion of college, I had no practical ideas about what to do with my life. I knew I was…