When I decided to major in Cognitive Systems at University of British Columbia, I was baffled by how this intensely multidisciplinary program could encompass seemingly disparate fields from computer science to psychology to linguistics. It was only in my fifth year that I was able to start drawing pathways connecting these nodes which I had thought were wildly different. Like filling in a blank map, I realized that with every experience, good and bad, I was coming to a greater understanding of my mind and my soul—I was charting the atlas of my heart.

“What happened to being a family doctor?”

It was my last Chinese New Year at home dinner before I would leave for my first year at University of British Columbia, and my dad was disappointed with my change of heart.

“What? Didn’t you tell grandpa just yesterday that you wanted to be a veterinarian?” my mom teased, knowing full well just how much my father had hoped for me to attend medical school.

Nothing stressed me out more than the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up, and every time I was asked my answer would change.

“I like animals, too,” I hastily replied, not wanting to be lectured in front of all twenty of my close relatives.

“She will figure it out! That is what freshman year is for,” my grandmother interrupted, saving me as she always did from this ritualistic interrogation.

Problem is, it’s hard to “figure it out” when I’ve always been a jack-of-all-trades at heart. Like the sailors of olden times venturing into the unknown, I was charting the unexplored territory of who I was and what I could be, and there was still so much left to discover. Dedicating myself to one discipline for the rest of my life was like confining a seabird to a small cage.

Even at the start of my freshman year I could already see the dark clouds looming on the horizon. The fear of displeasing my father compelled me to major in psychology, the closest thing that the faculty I had been accepted into—the Faculty of Arts—had to studying the human body, and I pigeonholed myself into pursuing what I had no interest in. Soon after declaring my major, the world was struck by the Covid-19 storm, and I was shipped back to Taiwan to continue my sophomore year virtually. Shackled to a discipline I had no affection for, I felt myself suffocating and withering away.

The worst blow came in the form of the news that my beloved grandma had been diagnosed with malignant ovary cancer. Though the tumor had initially been the size of a penny, it went undetected by our local hospital’s AI-powered imaging scans, so by the time it was finally identified it was already at Stage IV. The next six months were the most painful and grueling of my life: on top of the four online courses I wanted nothing to do with, I was juggling my work at a psychology lab as a research assistant with another part-time job all while preparing for my grandmother’s imminent passing.

Ironically, the technical error that doomed my grandmother was what suddenly sparked something in my heart. It was, perhaps, a final gift, a way for her to continue protecting me from the suffocating weight of my family’s expectations. She had suffered the consequences of a medical system overly reliant on artificial intelligence that, while cutting-edge,was also slow and expensive and, in her case, unreliable. More than a mere inaccuracy, it was the absence of humanity in healthcare—in the doctors and nurses who were so utterly convinced that the AI’s cold diagnosis was more accurate than the discomfort and pain that my grandmother said she felt—that ultimately proved fatal.

For the very first time, I yearned to dedicate myself to a greater cause. Halfway through my sophomore year, I decided to pursue my newfound passion in biomedical technology and transferred to my current major, Cognitive Systems (COGS). Surprisingly, COGS incorporated several disciplines I had studied before, including psychology, philosophy, computer science, and linguistics. And even though my faculty didn’t offer any biology courses, my prior lab experiences landed me a research position in one of UBC’s diabetes labs. It seemed like everything I had done and studied before and thought uninteresting or irrelevant suddenly revealed themselves to be stepping stones to this new path ahead.

I am currently in my fifth year of university and have especially dedicated the last few years to machine learning to gain further experience for my application to graduate school. I still don’t have everything figured out: I’m not sure what subfield of biotech I want to dedicate my master’s to, and I don’t know if I’ll get into my desired graduate school—I can’t even promise I’ll be pursuing biotech a decade from now. Sometimes I still feel like a freshman without direction, especially during exam season when I’m reading articles on how to become a pilates instructor, honing my film and photography skills, or calculating how much it would take to open my own pie shop.

Some people already know what they want from an early age, and good for you if you’re one of the lucky few! But for the many others like me, those who feel like they’re just drifting aimlessly at sea, I want you to know that it’s fine to let the winds take you where they may. It’s not an excuse to procrastinate or sit on your haunches; it’s an opportunity to seek new experiences and stay curious. All your varied experiences gradually lead you closer to where you’re meant to go and will enrich who you were always meant to become, so unfurl your sails and sail forth into the new and the uncharted to uncover the atlas of your heart.

Atlas of the Heart