Usually, the response I receive from people when I tell them that my undergraduate major was Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) balances between two phrases: “what an exhausting title” and “really ambitious, aren’t you?” On the surface, this is a fairly understandable reaction, as it is not a title that bears repeating for the sake of comfort or immediate understanding. And yet, when stripped down to its core, the nature of my studies does indeed have common ground with...
Usually, the response I receive from people when I tell them that my undergraduate major was Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) balances between two phrases: “what an exhausting title” and “really ambitious, aren’t you?” On the surface, this is a fairly understandable reaction, as it is not a title that bears repeating for the sake of comfort or immediate understanding. And yet, when stripped down to its core, the nature of my studies does indeed have common ground with those outside my academic field.
Over the past few years as an undergraduate student in the MCDB department of the University of Colorado at Boulder, my focus was to go beneath the surface of organism biology and find what, functionally, was occurring. As such, my academics dealt with the study of cells, DNA, proteins, energetic cycles and the like. More specifically, I would look at the roles these aspects would have functionally, structurally and mechanistically, ultimately building a picture of how they work independently and in conjunction to give an overall view of the particular biology at hand.
It is this type of constructive approach to my academics that maintains a universal notion: observing and understanding the individual elements to arrive at a more complex, complete picture. To that end, many ancillary topics to my studies have been subject to the same logic, including inorganic chemistry, biochemistry, physics, literature, and philosophy. This is why I believe that all individuals can participate in these disciplines, because this connective process is a daily practice: understanding how one aspect operates in its own while being apart of a larger whole. Yet unfortunately, the phrase MCDB does not come with that explicit connotation.
But the bridge to connect ones own ability to draw connections is not solely my ability nor those of my immediate peers. It is a part of an inherent logic in us all, and I think is one of its most optimum uses would be to have it be engaged in academic knowledge to those w
