As an MD-PhD student, one of the questions I get asked the most often is, “Why did you choose to do both rather than getting an MD or a PhD?”

I answered with a laugh, “I thought to myself, if I am in the lab all day every day, I might go crazy, and if I am only seeing patients all day every day, I might go crazy. So I thought, why not both?”

In reality, I wanted to do both so badly and could not see myself being happier doing anything else.

My college was a very research-heavy experience. The pursuit of knowledge and deepening one’s own intelligence were highly coveted and central to the educational training. I absolutely loved this. I love the feeling of learning something new. The fact that I could make a career out of asking random questions about the world we live in, letting the scientific inquiry answer back, and potentially finding something completely novel in the process is so incredibly fascinating, exhilarating, and rewarding to me. This drew me to research. However, I wanted my questions in science to benefit society in some way. One may argue that this can be done in many ways. But for me, humans and how we operate have always fascinated me the most. How other people and I operate, how we form our thoughts, behaviors, and feelings, piqued my curiosity like no other subject. Ever since I learned we are the way we are because of our brains, that it was merely a giant, complex electrical and chemical circuit operating in that tiny head of ours, neuroscience became my obsession.

How does a cell develop and know to divide in the specific ways it does to become a whole person? How do some electrical potentials in the brain firing create complex emotions, behaviors, and memories? What goes wrong in disease? Can we pinpoint exactly what is going wrong in which circuitry of the brain that creates depression, anxiety, dementia, or intellectual disability? Can we reverse it?

Ma1a was the first course all undergrads were required to take. It was an inauguration and a rite of passage for my undergraduate institution. Here, we learned proofs for every calculus equation we have learned in our previous studies. We would sit together, struggling to define how to derive simple equations we accepted as fact for all of our lives, humbled by the complexity that led to such simple, beautiful equations. Sitting in front of my desk late at night, only my desk light on, I was inducted into the belief that we can obtain mechanistic understandings of everything. To find the root, the derivation, of everything. How do we derive the biological basis of behavior, memory, emotions, and illness? How do I get to the bottom of every complex question we have about biology?

Research would allow me to do so – to go so deep in my hole of inquiry to maybe one day find a gem of truth. Thus, I fell in love with research. Research, for me, became the practice of becoming so obsessed with a single question and tackling it relentlessly until the universe has to spit out an answer for me. Staring at that answer, and asking it again if what I found is true. Will it stand the test of time and further science? How will I apply this to help patients in the future? These questions continue to linger as I pursue research.

Now the final question I must answer is, why medicine? I selfishly wanted to learn all the possible facts about the human body, physiology, and illness to own that knowledge. To have all of that to draw from felt like the most comprehensive, bulletproof way to ensure I am truly exploring scientific questions that we do not have answers to yet. But beyond this, I found immense joy in interacting with patients in the small ways I did before medical school. That I would be able to draw from that knowledge and rigorous training to actually touch someone’s life. To feel the deep level of reward, and the greater weight of responsibility, as I saw the patients put their trust in the expertise of the physician. To know that there is such a training process that would allow me to one day feel confident and competent enough to do the same. To work constantly to better someone else’s life, help them live another day, assist them so they can recover and revisit the things that bring them joy. If I am in a society that allows me to selfishly explore my curiosities, the only natural thing for me to do is to give back and make someone else’s experience a little bit more pleasant.

And therefore, medicine. Research. Learn, struggle, inquire, advocate. Rinse, repeat.