The age-old question has haunted to likes of almost everyone for centuries: High school students, College Students, Your next-door neighbor, and even my dad’s crazy friend Josh who completely changed their career path at the ripe age of 60. I was no exception of course.
As a high school student, the societal pressure to make a choice was fast approaching. While I was filling out the form for the Columbia University Residental Summer program I thought: what better way to answer this question than to choose what I’m interested in? So as I filled out the form in early March to apply for the Intro to Engineering program from June 23rd to July 12th I had no hesitation in my choice.
The next two months were filled with schoolwork, sports, service, and social events so obviously the idea of “What do you want to do over the summer?” was put on the back burner, and let’s not even mention the idea of “What do you want to do with your life?” which was left out of the equation entirely. However, amid schoolwork, a trip to my house in the hills for our Geography IA was like the eye of a storm. The relaxing and nostalgic destination I had grown foreign to after not visiting for over a year had completely negated any stress from the piling workload in Colombo. It was here I had the luxury of reconsidering the idea “what do you want to do with your life?” and where my love for Chemistry truly blossomed.
When I came back on May 3rd, I hurried to the Columbia admin portal and happily made a choice that could have completely altered my future. On the very last possible day to switch courses, I switched to the Intensive Seminars in Modern Chemistry course.
July 23rd
After a brief visit with the family in Maine, I was now on the campus of Columbia University to start my journey with chemistry in the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” (Alicia Keys). The overarching idea of elitism that Grandpa had instilled in me about Columbia left a sour taste in my mouth as I took the bus from Maine to New York by myself. I pondered what the idea of College was about and what my future was about.
Nevertheless, this feeling like the previous one was put on the back burner as I joined Carman 1201 with my new roommates: Oscar from China, Miles from Boston, and Adam from the United Arab Emirates. As we first met, the diversity of the group had become unnoticeable. Growing up in OSC, it was nothing new.
As I walked to class at an alarmingly early 9 AM, I had second thoughts if this program was the one for me. Well, I guess that’s the whole point of it, to find out. After a quick introduction and breakdown of the course and each other’s identities, everyone had put aside the idea of location and was ready to indulge in the world of matter and things beyond the naked eye. Instead of giving you a repetitive breakdown of the course I want to highlight key moments and characters instead.
Carlos Johnson
It was this same day that I was introduced to Carlos Johnson, my assigned mentor for the coming weeks. Carlos was a brilliant guy from New York and was pursuing a career in Quantum chemistry. More specifically, Quantum dots under Professor John Owen.
Jim & Suleyman
Jim and Suleyman were my two closest friends in my specific program. Jim who lives in San Diego, Suleyman who lives in Turkey, and Darius who lives in Sri Lanka were not the most predictable of companions but we hit it off. In three weeks it feels almost asinine to jump to these conclusions but Jim’s sense of sarcasm had rivaled mine. It was pleasantly surprising to notice how not once did he fail to realize I was being sarcastic in any scenario. Suleyman was the catalyst, however. He is the reason we still talk to this day. Without his outgoing and disturbing sense of humor we for sure would have become distant by now. Yet, his unconscious ability to make me laugh excites me every day I see a message in our group chat pop up.
Synthesis of Aspirin
Wow. So smart sounding. This must take lots of cognitive grinding to figure out the mechanism of making an over-the-counter drug. Nope. Here are two solutions, recrystallize and then heat them to make aspirin. While it was not simple to that extent. The experiment was remarkably the easiest one of the course and was my definitely go-to answer to the question, “What did you do during your course?” that numerous family members asked.
Kevin
Kevin was a graduate student I met for a few hours and lunch. I got to see the real ins and outs of pursuing a PhD in the field of chemistry with him and he was very lenient in making his breakdown interactive. Kevin also was impressed with the depth of my questions and gave the breakdown of his research into Fullerite–A new allotrope of Carbon that bonded fullerenes together with Magnesium ions. I also got to exchange information with Kevin and learn about highly expensive but groundbreaking instrumentation.
Lecture of Professor Owen
Every afternoon of the first two weeks was dedicated to lectures from Professors in the sciences at Columbia presenting their life work. I had been to lectures before on an adult preaching to closed ears with a monotone voice as they read off a slideshow. That was my overall expectation for these as well but once again the course was pleasantly surprising. It was motivating to witness men and women of all ages excited to present what they had accomplished and love to answer questions from kids who had been once in their shoes. Professor Owen was the same but particularly interesting to me as his work was also related to my group’s collective project that was to be completed in the last week. Every other lecture up until his had at least one gap in my understanding and their teaching of the topic. Thankfully, I had spent the past few nights researching the topic Professor Owen was presenting for my group individual topic and had the brain exercise of a lifetime, piecing together the pieces of knowledge I had gathered for a base-level understanding of the concept to comprehend his complex breakdown.
Carol, Celine, and the Synthesis of Silver Nanoprism
Celine and Carol were the members of my experiment group throughout all three weeks. Our last task as a group was to synthesize silver nano prisms or variable sizes. This is where I learned the valuable lesson of failing. Our first attempt at the experiment was a complete failure as the purity of water led the shape of the silver nano prism to not succeed. Our second attempt came the next day after the purified water was not accessible. The second attempt yielded the same results and so did the third which led me to research into the job of each reagent in this experiment and it was not until the fourth attempt I realized the data published initially on the ACS had been updated a year later as the experiment used wrong Molarity values.
As I reflect on the question, “What do you want to do with your life?” once more, I realize that Josh was never crazy as it’s never too late to pursue what you love. Whether it be my juvenile self at the beginning of my journey or not. It was my spontaneous choice to change courses that led me to discover what I wanted to do in life. The same spontaneous choice I made a little less than a year prior when deciding my IB classes and the choice to switch from ESS to Chemistry.