In college, I was excited about choosing additional subjects every semester. I used to spend more time and effort on them than on my regular coursework. However, I didn’t enjoy all of them. The lesson I learned the hard way was that choose a course not based on the topic, but based on the teacher. I once chose a course titled Intro to Human Behavior in Organization with an expectation that it would be about exploring psychology at workplace. However, the remarkably talented teacher turned such a practically important topic to bunch of definitions to be memorised. Other courses like neurophysiology and Intro to cognitive information processing offered similar disappointing experience. Teachers either lacked substance or were full of baloney.

I cherished courses like systems biology and physical cosmology without knowing much about the topic. I just picked them because they sounded cool, and was fortunate to have excellent teachers.

The same rule for books as well. Recently read a book titled “Why we die” by Venki Ramakrishna. The book included a lot of cellular biology, which I didn’t show interest earlier. But the good writing made me fall in love with the topic and gave me a new perspective about this topic.

And another encounter of this experience was in a neuroscience symposium. I had come for systems neuroscience, but with most of the talks to related molecular neuroscience, which bored me as I couldn’t understand most of the talk. But there was one talk, by this guy named Francis Lee. His talk had predominantly molecular neuroscience stuff, yet I and my like-minded friends were enthralled by his talk. What captured was the clarity in the talk. The reasoning behind each step was clear and explained in simple terms. Yet, there was nothing charismatic voice or regular witty jokes. The man had captured attention of non-specialists, just with a well arranged talk.

In summary, its the right person that kindles the spark of interest. Think about a topic you are currently excited about, it is exciting because there was a time ,when someone who understand the topic well, has spoken or written about it. Now think about a topic you hate, and you would be able to recollect the way it felt boring and frustrating when it was introduced to you. As an experiment, try picking up popular book by a good author on a topic you hate. If well written, the book might create irrational desire of pursuing it as a career.