If you don’t know me (and you probably don’t, being that this is my first post), hi. My name is Bella Rose ,and I am a junior in high school doing what all juniors in high school do: just trying to figure out the rest of my life. If you’ve already passed high school, you know that junior year is not a year to miss, and if you’re not there yet, it’s not a year to look forward to. Junior year is filled with looking to the future; to college applications, to getting admitted, to what comes after college, and what comes after that, and so on. But before I get to that, I’m going to take you back to where I thought I might have been today—have I made some different choices. As a young kid, I thought I’d be doing what I’m doing right now at this second: writing! I probably didn’t predict I’d be writing in a personal blog about science, but I was convinced that I was going to grow up to be an author (I think it’s safe to say that I do not want to go to college for writing). I wrote fiction books, poems, and novels until I got to middle school. I was always in the upper levels of all of my classes, but I was specifically good at math and science. I started taking science and math classes three years ahead of where the “average kid” for my grade was. Teachers and my peers told me I was for sure going to be in STEM when I grew up—that I was going to be a scientist, an engineer, or in tech. As I started realizing that I could advance quicker at math and science than reading and writing, I stopped writing and started to focus on what I felt confident in.

So then… enter high school. Freshmen year. Ugh. There were so many electives to take and many options full of possible career paths high school could set me up for. And how many classes do I get to take to explore all of my possible interests? One. My schedule allowed one class to set me up for other advanced courses in only that specific later on. So I chose (arguably) the broader, vaguer-than-most class that I thought could set me up for several careers: business. I took Intro to Business that semester partly because I thought it was my safest bet and partly because my parents are entrepreneurs who co-founded and own a technology business together (what did you expect?). Fast forward a semester, and I remember thinking that there was no way that I was going to follow in my parents’ footsteps. I decided that the business field was not for me and that in 10 years, when I saw myself in a career, I could not see myself typing on a computer with a major in marketing or finance or anything of the sort.

So I switched into Introduction to Health Sciences! The reason was nothing more than that it was supposed to be an “easy class”, especially with with my background knowledge in science. Oh, and I had friends taking the same class. I didn’t expect to hate health science, but I also didn’t expect to love it either. After just one semester, I found myself fascinated by medicine. The intricacies of the human anatomy fascinated me, and I longed to memorize every detail—I wanted to know the names of every muscle, every bone to correlate with injuries and diseases. I wanted to know which body system did what, why we can function the way we do, and the limitations why others cannot. I wanted to know what caused illness and sickness in the body and what sources of pain affect not just individuals but their loved ones too. I wanted to know, much like how the body can experience pain, how it can also heal, and how we as humans possess the power to facilitate this healing. More profoundly, I wanted to be this source of healing for others, to offer hope to those who find it difficult to hold onto in their darkest moments and to witness that hope transform into a reality as I help restore them to their natural state.

I realized that I wanted to be a doctor who would have an impact on humans for their entire lives. This explains the “medicine” part behind this blog. Now, I’ll go into the “mind” portion. I’m going to start off by saying that I am fascinated with all things related to the mind, and I always have been. In elementary school, I remember doing a research project on dream interpretation, the meaning behind our dreams, why we dream, etc. It amazes me that the human brain is something that no person will be able to understand completely. The brain is constantly evolving, and with that, our knowledge of the brain is constantly evolving as well. It’s involved in everything we do, whether we think about it or not. Whether we think about thinking about it… or think about thinking about… I could go on, but I’ll spare you. The point is that our brains and our minds are constantly challenged and being put to the test, and that excites me! I want to know what challenges I can achieve with my mind and how others think about things in their own minds, and everything from how this process works to every structure used in these processes.

There’s so much about our own mind that we think we might know, but we don’t because, like I said before, the brain is changing all. of. the. time. This is what gives me such a thrill; this is why I hope to go into neuroscience someday because I can’t wait to see how my perspective of my own mind changes throughout my neuroscience journey and how I can use this in whatever career my future may hold (neurosurgery is my #1 right now, but I’m going to use this as a way to explore more neuroscience and medical careers too).

So I invite you to join me on this journey I am experiencing as I explore all of the possibilities of mind & medicine that await me. I don’t know where this journey will take me, but I’m eager to find out, so I’m going to start here, with my introduction of what brought me here and where I might go. I’m going to be writing about anything mind- or-medicine-related, whether that may be a common disease such as Alzheimer’s or the optogenetic control of dopamine receptor (no, I do not know what this is. More on this later…) The point of this blog is for me to become acquainted with the community I may be committing the rest of my life to. It’s a scary thought, but it’s the truth, so I’m going to keep this blog as real as possible as any medical professional should too. But like any medical professional, I’m going to have hope—hope for me and you to have new enlightenments, wisdom, perspectives, and ultimately, hope that this is only the beginning of my story as a future physician.