Who am I?

Jack of all trades, master of none - can’t be real, right?

I’ve heard this phrase before but never believed it could be me. Growing up, I always thought my skills lay in science, specifically in biology. This led me down the stereotypical path for a scientifically minded Indian-American: math and science competitions in high school, biomedical sciences major, and going down the medical school path. Or so I thought.

My hobbies growing up always had to do with using my hands and brain. I loved playing with toy cars, video games, and building cities from cardboard boxes. At the time, I thought this could send me down the path of becoming an engineer, but I never really cared about doing the hardcore math required to be an engineer. My entire family is in the business field, so I always had business values drilled into me: be your own employer, own something. I loved the business classes I took in college, but didn’t care for becoming an accountant or some sort of finance person.

I thought I was doomed to a singular path. How could I find a career that combined my passions: medicine, business, and engineering? I was already interviewing for medical schools and thought I had no way out. Even if I could find something, with only a biomedical sciences degree, how could I pivot?

First, I had to make a hard decision: Quit medicine. Medicine was not the path for me. During my undergraduate career, I met so many brilliant people who were extremely passionate about becoming a physician, and I was never able to relate to them. I knew that becoming a physician required a pure dedication to the craft that I did not have. After quitting that path, I took up a job as a consultant with a life sciences software company. One day after work, I was looking up graduate school programs and I found one with an interesting name: Translational Medicine. At first, I thought it had to do with language barriers in medicine. Once I read more into it, I realized it combined the 3 passions I had in a way to bring laboratory inventions in the medical device space from bench to bedside.

As I write this, I am in the middle of my first semester in the Master’s of Translational Medicine program at UC Berkeley/UCSF. This program has exceeded every expectation I had coming in. I’ve been leaning my education towards technical engineering courses and business classes focused on startups and Intellectual Property. For my capstone project, which is a project we work on outside of class for the entire year, I chose to work on a medical device that is still in the prototyping phase. I intend to learn how to use 3D printers and other tools to make prototypes, while also learning to make a business plan and organize a business from scratch. I hope I can reflect on this entry in the future and be proud of where I am.