Hello

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog, where I plan on writing, maybe sometimes ranting, about my life and its many ups and downs.

I'm an undergraduate studying neuroscience for a bachelor's degree and computer science for a joint master's. "Why?! They're such different fields!" Well, I'm really interested in neuroscience, where so many interesting things are left to study and discover. I would really like to study memory and its biological bases, but I've recently been exposed to other areas of neuroscience that are also pretty interesting, such as vision and spatial navigation.

I'm drawn to computer science because I really enjoy programming and working with computers. The puzzles and problem solving involved in programming can keep my mind busy and satisfied (or frustrated and then satisfied) for hours and hours at a time, and exploring and developing new, good, and useful technology for use by everyday people appeals a lot to me too.

"But what will you do after college?!" *Sigh* This question has been bugging me for a while now and it's becoming more and more urgent to answer it because focusing on both areas is becoming increasingly difficult as I take on research and internships.

With neuroscience, I can go into medicine or research. I've already decided to opt out of med school and becoming a doctor, mostly because I'm not good with blood, I have somewhat shaky hands, and I'd rather not spend so much time in school and in debt. So that leaves research, which I think I would enjoy doing. Cognitive neuroscience / cognitive psychology / cognitive science appeal to me the most because I don't feel all that interested in biological lab work (although this may be due to a lack of experience - I haven't done anything remotely bio-lab-y in a few years now and have since forgotten much of what I did in high school bio.)

With computer science, I can go into software development and testing, research and design, theoretical research, or tech support. Everything except the last one appeals to me.

The fields do have some overlap, but not much. There's artificial intelligence, computer vision, brain-computer interfaces, and neural network modeling. I haven't learned much in-depth about any of these yet, but hope to soon, so hopefully, I'll see if I like any and see whether that helps me decide on one field over the other or to stay with both. If you know of any other areas of research or job possibilities that incorporate neuroscience and computer science, do let me know! I would really appreciate it. But until I really have a good idea of what's out there for me, I fly down both paths, somewhat blind to what lies beyond and whether a fork and a big choice await me somewhere in the future.