My bag of experience growing as a scientist

  People say that more experience comes with advancing age. I agree with that. And another thing that is important to learn is that bad choices are important in our lives. "Important" doesn't mean that it is good. My professional path is an important proof of that! Bad choices make us live bad experiences that we must absorb as a learning lesson to build up in our experience backpack. Even if a certain experience we have wished not lived it is still important as a learning lesson.

  Since school, I have been in love with Biology. I used to watch all Jacques Custeau documentaries, renting in a video store. Yeah, I am old enough to have experience in renting VHS tapes. Jacques Cousteau was an important Marine Biologist for those who never heard about him and was innovative in underwater recordings of marine life during the 80s/90s. I wanted to be the new Jacques Cousteau, so I joined the biology undergraduate studies.

  There I discovered that I was in love with not only marine animals but with most of biology, including microbiology, cell biology, and molecular biology. But except for plant biology, which I still find boring, despite respecting a lot of plants, their complexity, and their importance for the ecosystem. Right at the beginning of the University, I decided to have an internship in a cell biology laboratory, and my project was around testing promising drugs into protozoans in culture and in vivo that cause human diseases, like leishmaniasis. It is interesting these internships are where you learn a lot of things that you don't learn seated in class and reading a book. Practical experience gives you more knowledge than a textbook most of the time. Of course, you need the textbook because all the basic information is there to understand what is happening in the practical.

  This is an important experience that I always tell younger university students: "Don't stay only seated reading a book, go find an internship and try every type of thing that you want to."

  However, there are experiences that they just happen and there isn't much to absorb. My master and Ph.D. supervisor decided to supervise a biology undergraduate student and he gave me the opportunity to co-supervise this student, actually, I was the practical supervisor of the student and my supervisor was only the "supervisor on the paper". That happens a lot in academic life. So my Master's and Ph.D. were all with bioinformatics and at that time I had already lots of programming skills. I was trying to teach the student to code. However, there are things that we as people need to be sincere with ourselves. When we don't like to do something we need to admit that we don't like it and the more that we force it, is worst. This student didn't like to code, it wasn't her area for sure. And instead of admitting and maybe finding another thing that she really enjoyed doing, she insisted and in the end who was doing her project was ME. I tried to tell my supervisor but he told me that usually with undergraduate students you need to do most of the job, I DON'T AGREE with that of course. But it was a short period of time, she had only one year to finish her studies and final project, so I suffered a lot with my own Ph.D. project and this other person's project. Even her project presentation was terrible since she didn't produce any of the figures she was showing and didn't know what she was talking about. It was a nightmare for me and a complete failure as a teacher. However, I know that it wasn't my fault. I had wonderful students, even interns from High School later that didn't know anything about coding, and they learned a lot and had much more independence that this former student of mine.

  So life teaches a lot, however some of the times we pass through experiences that are like torture. I could write a book with many other examples, maybe I leave for another opportunity. From a dream about marine life to now I learned a lot for sure and went through different types of experiences, some that enriched who am I right now, some others not much.