Unique qualities that attract me to a curriculum Anonymous

It started when my sister fell off the bed and nearly fractured her skull.‘Trauma to the occipital cortex,’ the doctor told my parents. ‘That explains the vision impairment.’ With the eloquence only a seven year-old could muster, I piped up, ‘I don’t geddit.’ The doctor looked at me, slightly amused. ‘You will, if you study the brain one day.’

Somehow, those words stayed with me. I spent hours poring over articles, and tracing my fingers across her CT scans, trying to figure out how hitting the head could have anything to do with the eyes. Of course, the complicated jargon slipped through my seven-year-old head and I couldn’t deduce more than blobs in the sheets I held up, but I was determined to know more – and thus began my love affair with the most complex organ in the human body.

Since then, my appreciation for the brain has grown. Over the years, my bookshelves have sagged with journals I’ve collected on neuroscience; my YouTube suggestions exploded with neurobiology and behavior documentaries. The idea that our complex, multi-faceted behavior is controlled by deceptively simple neurotransmitter and ion concentration in our body fascinates me, and I crave a deeper understanding of neuroscience.

The University of Michigan,...