2023 marks 10 years since I started my journey in higher education. As an undergraduate at the University of California, Merced, I initially started out as a mechanical engineering major. Given my increased interest in both math and physics during the last two years of high school, it was a practical choice. Yet, after a few weeks of interacting with other engineering majors, it soon became apparent that we did not have a lot in common. While tinkering on car engines, building robots that fight, and flying remote-controlled drones were all interesting in their own way, I was captivated by more abstract topics like Euler’s identity and Schrodinger’s cat. It was from this realization that by the end of my first year, I had abandoned any notion of becoming a mechanical engineer and promptly switched my major to physics in hopes of becoming a theoretical physicist (not that that panned out either).

My sophomore year saw another dramatic change in academic pursuits. I started the year by declaring a minor in Writing. As a high school student, I had enjoyed writing essays in my English and History classes and had hoped to bring somewhat of a balance to my now STEM-heavy education. I also was partially inspired to do this to follow in the steps of my grandfather (now deceased) who was a journalist by training and had written for Filipino newspapers in both the Philippines and the United States and had covered the Vietnam War on site. Initially, I had grown to like my writing classes very much. I always felt my writing was a bit stale and flavorless (perhaps you who read this agree?) in comparison to my high school peers, and thought it was starting to blossom into something one might even call eloquent. I recently took a glance at some old writing assignments during this period and found I had started writing fiction about a serial killer (I watched way too many TV crime shows in middle school and high school), and a fictional story starring the great mathematician Leonhard Euler (so much for a break from STEM). It was fun to write creatively and let my imagination roam. A seemingly infinite number of ideas and stories, from fantastical to unexotic could come to life with the click of my keyboard. All appeared well, as I had finally settled what my academic major and minor would be, or so I thought.

If you wanted to know why I ended up switching my minor from Writing to Applied Mathematics, the only explanation I can provide is, “the heart wants what it wants”. At some point in my writing classes, I found myself growing bored, and as a way of entertaining myself, I would start scribbling down and solving math equations in my notebook. The joy of solving a mathematical problem was a feeling that not even my enjoyment of writing could parallel. The writing classes at that point also required us to perform, in my opinion, tedious exercises that I did not see value in. In hindsight, I probably should have just been a better writing student by bearing through the monotony, but that 19-year-old version of me had other plans. He wanted to go all-in on physics and math, and so that brief period as a Writing minor came to an end.

Is there a lesson to all of this? Maybe it’s to not give up on something so easily. Or maybe it’s to go with your gut. Would my life be dramatically more different if I didn’t switch my minor? I’ll never know for sure. I do know, however; that having the Applied Math minor reinforced a lot of the physics I learned and served me well when the mathematics got “turned up to 11” in my graduate physics courses. In the end, the person we are is simply the product (Or maybe the sum? Can a mathematician get back to me on this?) of the decisions and indecisions in our respective lives. Perhaps, in another life, I stuck with the Writing minor and used that in tandem with my physics major to become a science writer for a magazine immediately after I graduated UC Merced. Or maybe I ended up becoming a best-selling science-fiction novelist (not likely)! Regardless of what I could have been, I just try to accept who I currently am: an ever-changing human in an ever-changing world, just trying his best to navigate the journey that is his life.