Hello! My name is Emilie Aghajani. I am going into my second year here at UCSB and am currently a pre-biology major that is a part of the EUREKA research program, and was an intern for SIMS last year. I have a very strong passion for research, but I’m also interested in medicine, and ecology, and academia, and am currently on a very confusing journey to figure out what on earth I want to do when I grow up.

I applied to UCSB rather confident that I was going to be a marine biologist. I had been a volunteer at the Long Beach Marine Institute for my entire high school career and fell in love with the subject. Although it’s not a field that had many job opportunities or a high pay, I didn’t care much, and had my heart set on exploring the mysteries of the ocean for the rest of my life. Then, I experienced the SIMS program.

To be quite honest, I didn’t even know what research really was and I had no interest in it whatsoever. My friend Kellie had done SIMS the previous year and nagged me so much to apply, I did so just to appease her. Not only was I pleasantly surprised to be accepted as an intern, I was even more pleasantly surprised to learn about the wonderful world of research. Being able to contribute to the world of science just as an undergrad made me feel a lot of pride and excitement. My curiosity for my summer project was so strong that I asked my mentor if he could let me continue working in the lab during the school year, and he was kind enough to mentor for the entire year.

Now as you could imagine, this caused a bit of a conflict with my marine biologist life plan. Not only did I now feel that research was a definite career option, I began panicking that I was missing out on all the other career paths my major had to offer. So I started volunteering at the Cottage Hospital and worked in the ER for 4 hours a week. This experience added even more confusion to my future plans, because working in the hospital gave a rush like no other! Unlike the research lab, I was constantly talking to patients, doctors, EMTs, and nurses, which really appeased my extroverted side. Everything was face paced and exciting and completely opposite of what working in the lab was like.

Even though all of these things are very, very different from each other, I am incredibly interested in all of these fields. This is rather troubling for me because now I am extremely unsure of what I want to do with my life, and I only have a small amount of time to really figure it out. Also, I have no idea what other careers I might like because I was so trapped in my marine biology world, and now I’m terrified that my dream job is out there but I won’t discover it in time.  I only have a year  to hide behind my “pre-biology” major because at the start of my third year I will have to declare which field of biology I want to pursue. That being said, I’m incredibly grateful to CSEP and all of the other wonderful programs UCSB has to offer because as anxious as all this has made me, I have discovered new passions that I didn’t even imagine I would have. Hopefully with a little more soul searching and experiencing all my options, I will be a little more sure of what my future will hold.