My first week in the Evans lab has been wonderful. I have never been employed full-time in research, but contrary to what I expected, time flies by fairly quickly. This week, I achieved memorization of the bones of the vertebrate skull using alligator, wolf, dog, and Hadrosaur models. Having virtually no background knowledge in anatomy, I felt very naive to have learned, for the first time, that the skull is composed of more than two different bones and some teeth. Also, the lab has announced a newly discovered dinosaur species this week, which prompted much attention from the media. I witnessed my PI being interviewed by several sources, and it really made me get a sense of what popular science is like compared to science that only people in the field care about.
Enjoying what I am learning likely has much to do with my perception of time. I can honestly say that this is the first time I am truly interested in and motivated by my research topic (in contrast to previous ones: physics, plant ecology, and microbiology). This is the kind of "evolution" that I registered into the EEB program for, the kind that really walks me through the history of life, and the kind that I read about in Dawkins' books in high school, inspiring me to study it day in and day out.
Should I not feel passionate about medicine, I will most likely opt to do a masters or PhD in a macroevolutionary field, before going on to become a professor or some sort of education activist. It is ironic that medical schools look for students who are passionate about any field, but my passion for evolution is making me have second thoughts about whether medicine is really what I want to do, even though medicine is all I've ever wanted to do since the oldest memory I have of myself. The only caveats that I perceive in remaining in academia are the politics involved in every step of the way and the very high degree of specialization in knowledge that contemporary research has forced upon students. This is a real pickle.
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