Why should you even bother?
I will tell you.
Hello,
It's me again.
I promise to keep things a bit shorter this time, but I really need to talk with you about something.
You might think it’s just a catchy title, but no, Why should you even bother? is a very important question we should all ask ourselves from time to time. Because, really, why should you?
There are so many things you could be doing right now instead of reading this. You could be building a LEGO castle, taking a power nap or reading Sally Rooney’s books. If you asked me, I’d probably be chasing some wild slime moulds. Like this one:
Back to the main point: there are so many fascinating things in life. And yet, here you are.
So let me try to convince you to stay a little longer.
Maybe you ended up here because you have a deadline for that nasty R coding assignment creeping up on you. Maybe you’ve heard coding is good money, and you wouldn’t mind some. Or maybe you’re genuinely interested in how coding can be applied to solve (biological) questions.
No matter the reason — you are welcome here. But to stay longer and make yourself comfortable, you’ll need a fair dose of intrinsic motivation. So how about this:
We are all like Captain Hook, being chased by the crocodile with a clock in its stomach.
If you, like me, love reading books, you may be familiar with that awful feeling that comes with the realisation that there are far more books in the world than you'll ever manage to read📚. The bad news is that we’ll have to live with this until the end of our days. The good news is that if you learn how to make computers do things for you, you’ll have more time for the things you love.
Biology is a beautifully messy and complex subject.
Messy and complex subjects can rarely be tackled with just a pocket calculator or an Excel sheet. For that, we need much more powerful tools and skills — like coding.
If you’ve ever watched Dragons’ Den or listened to an enthusiastic venture capitalist, you’ve probably heard the claim that the most successful businesses are scalable. They may start with 100 customers, but over time, they should be able to handle 100 000.
Now think about your own data. Maybe you can manually go through 100 rows in Excel, but will you be able to do it with 100 000 lines 🐲?
Vanilla or chocolate? You don’t have to pick.
Too often, we are asked to make a decision and stick with it for the rest of our lives. Consistency is a great virtue (and something I wasn’t blessed with in abundance), but sometimes it can be limiting.
When I started high school, I really enjoyed math. But after a year, I dropped out of the advanced math classes—they were getting too abstract too quickly for me 🥴. Instead, I picked Language & Literature. At the time, it seemed like an odd choice to some, but the knowledge I gained helps me now when I write grant applications.
The point is, you don’t have to choose between being a biologist or a programmer. You can have strong computational skills and still enjoy reading about flying hippos. In fact, you might need those computational skills to start studying their biomechanics in the first place.
PS: Just look around and see how many software engineers try to sneakily smuggle animal themes into their work 🐍. As a biologist, you can do this openly!
Carpe diem,
Aga