silva rerum

So various, so beautiful, so new

I have hitherto discussed, at some length, the paths I have previously considered and how I have arrived at my current position along the journey of life. Now, I am delighted to feel, for the first time in my undergraduate career, that I am on the right road.

Robert Frost once lamented about how he left a road untaken. As for me, I have the joyous privilege to walk both roads at once! That I have a deep and lifelong passion for English literature should be self-evident; but now I am finding that I feel more and more at home within the biological sciences.

Surely you don’t know that yet, Justin. You’re only but a third-year, hardly in a position to proclaim your place in academia! Oh but I am! I am. I do so adore studying biology, indeed, it’s the only science that makes sense to me. I can touch it – I can feel it – I can smell it – I can see it. I fear to taste it but I’m sure that’s also an option. What cloaks of doubt that had previously haunted me as I walked the vaunted hallways of science have now been cast off, I feel that I belong.

But surely you belong in English! And I cannot see any reason why I cannot belong to both! It is my firm belief that I have found my niche within academia, that is, at the crossroads of the humanities and the natural sciences.

For the first time since entering UBC, I feel so emboldened and enlivened by my studies. Marcel Proust once wrote that, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” I’ve just received a second wind to my voyage of discovery. I cannot not waste this momentum – I’ve got to make this year count!