About Me: Andrew Chen
Hey guys! I just graduated from The Ohio State University and started working as a Python Developer. You may think my major is Computer Science, yet in fact, it was Biomedical Engineering (BME). This shift sounds abrupt, even a little bit absurd, right? Yet, I will tell you how it happened and how it is associated with writing on Medium.
When I was admitted to the university, I was cheered to see so many fresh things: numerous labs, various equipment, nice professors, and excellent TAs. I chose Biomedical Engineering because I think Biology is cool. It is cooler to combine Biology with Engineering since we can apply engineering methodology to biological research and benefit people as Biomedical engineers. Yet, we didn’t spend so much time on BME fields in the first year. Instead, introductory chemistry and physics took the majority of my time. To be honest, I like those subjects.
However, I was eager to learn something practical and make something tangible. By the way, a lot of people think chemistry and physics at OSU are difficult. I partially agree with it since I didn’t do very well either. Yet, they didn’t bother me that much since I learned a lot during high school and didn’t work that hard (it proved to be a bad idea). I thought it was fine to get A- (even B+) for those classes, and that’s what I got, indeed. At the same time, another class about MATLAB attracted me a lot. I have to admit I spent tons of time on the projects and had trouble communicating with teammates because my English was not that good. However, I managed to finish the structure group project. Reflecting on that project, it was so rough to be mentioned, but it did inspire me a lot. At that time, I began to seek a new method to understand the world besides biology.
Things changed in my second year. We contacted BME fields and began to work on complex models. It should have been inspiring, but the workload was daunting, and the exams were overwhelming. My confidence was destroyed after the first midterm, and I thought I had made the wrong choice. Yet, in another class, BME 2700 (Numerical Methods in BME), we learned to deal with these models with MATLAB. Those functions were so elegant in my eyes, and I had a strong interest in them. In fact, I even go to the lab every Sunday morning to improve my models, and it is surprising for me to think, “how did I do it?!” now (LOL). After that, I began to realize that there are multiple ways to contribute to BME, and integrating it with Computer Science is the best choice. MATLAB is too heavy as software (I’m sorry, MATLAB), so I need more tools, like Python and R.
Therefore, I began to learn Computer Science by myself (and it was not a good choice for me, yuck!) Python was the first choice, yet I found Java might be better for me to understand OOP and other fundamental ideas. Thus, I also started learning JAVA and shared my docs on Medium at that time. Meantime, I was taking philosophical and economic classes as well because I wanted to explore the world from multiple perspectives. I jogged down some ideas and compiled them into articles, which can be found on my Medium. Later, I found I was noticed by some people, which made me feel alive.
As I mentioned, learning alone is not a good choice for me. I dreamed about making progress with my intelligence, but my ability was limited. It was too late to realize this fact. I was almost to graduate, but I didn’t have any internship experience in Computer Science to prepare me for graduate school, and nor did I involve in academic research to prove my ability. In fact, those factors are not that important for me if I want to keep pursuing Biomedical Engineering. Yet, my experience is far from enough to go to any graduate program in computer science. Therefore, I choose to work and keep preparing for future studies.
As for the future, who knows what it will be like? Maybe it’s better. Maybe it’s worse. Yet, I want to keep learning and keep writing (Actually, I have not updated any articles on Medium for a long time, sorry about that!). In my dream, I saw this graph: we are all collectors in a Cyberpunk world, and we are searching for the diaries and memory blocks of the ancient sages. I hope someone can pick up my words and my memory, and they can pass on what I’ve learned to the next generation. That’s the Romanism of writing, and that’s why we need writing.
My Medium:
