Have you ever been hit with the classic question, “So, what do you study?” or its close cousins, “What’s your background?” or the dreaded “What’s your (research) interest?” Yeah, I’ve been there too. Even though I don’t walk around with a post-it on my forehead listing keywords, these conversations tend to pop up quite frequently, and I’ve often found them to be a bit of a puzzle.
At the outset, I’m all gung-ho, brimming with patience, and genuinely eager to explain the magical intersection of Econ and computational theory to anyone who’ll listen. It usually takes about four or five failed attempts on various unsuspecting victims for me to realize that expecting someone to grasp a sub-sub-sub-field in the span of 10 seconds is a tad optimistic, if not downright irresponsible. So nowadays, I often just go with the crowd-pleaser: “Oh, you know, I’m into computer science.”
But that’s not even the half of it. Back in the day, when I bid adieu to high school, I had grand plans for a career in biology. I had it all mapped out: acing all the college-level biology courses in high school, securing a spot at a top-notch university in China, landing a gig in a swanky lab with the most expensive microscope, snagging a PhD from some prestigious institute, and, eventually, getting a Nobel Prize: “You know, it’d better be the physiology one but chemistry would also be acceptable if it came my way…”.
When I was in the early years of high school (before I was herded back onto the standard Gao Kao track), I devoured college-level biology courses like they were my favorite snacks. That was the idyllic era of my life. My first love was physiology, perhaps because my parents are surgeons so it runs in my blood - when everybody else struggled with it, I just “gets it”. Then there was cell biology and biochemistry, two subjects I found so fascinating that I’d sometimes skip classes and spend the entire afternoon devouring them. And Ecology - the textbook I used was so technical that I learnt basic linear algebra and statistics from them.
It’s like the Celine Dion song
It’s so hard to believe that it’s all coming back to me.
There were moments of gold and there were flashes of lights.
There were nights of endless pleasure, it was more than all your laws allow.
But it was history with the slamming of the door. Things happen. It’s like ex-boyfriends, you will be melancholy heartbroken in the first six months, or a year or two. And thank u next! Anyway here I am, happily studying computer science!
(With the interdisciplinary of operational research, behavioral economics, game theory and so on…)
i wrote this when i was 18 during a ceremony - taking an oath to adulthood. never thought it’d come true though. fuck.
And, perhaps we’ll get back some day. Who knows? There’s market design with public health and algorithmic game theory…