I’d read the Harry Potter series twice by the time I was a 4th grader, and I wanted to be a wizard very, very badly. Then came BioShock: an adventure game where you grow in power through genetic engineering. By collecting ‘Plasmids’ you could develop pyrokinesis, invisibility, hypnosis-power, etc. I began to realize: science is magic! My dreams of being a wizard were not in vain. And I was off to the races. Khan Academy, CrashCourse, a horrendously-out-of-date biology textbook from my orthodontist… I consumed science everywhere I could get it. Now at university, I get the privilege of not just continuing to learn, but discovering! I joined the Sarafianos research group during my sophomore year and began to learn what it takes to be a researcher. It’s HARD. It’s fascinating and worth it, but I had to learn that it doesn’t just take creativity, curiosity, or know-how… it's about perseverance and patience. Realizing and adapting to this is still the most important thing I have learned as a researcher during my time at Emory. On a whim during COVID, I signed up for an Intro to Python course. I’d avoided coding throughout high school -- despite being on my school’s FRC robotics team! But, I discovered to my surprise that I really enjoyed it, and as I dived deeper into research and computer science, I wanted to combine them. The Sarafianos lab didn’t have the kind of computational work I was looking for, but with their help and support I transitioned into the research I do now: using machine learning to predict prostate cancer using urinary biomarkers. It’s been thrilling combining medical research and computer science, finding parallels and applications between the two I hadn’t thought of. After graduation, I plan to continue learning about science and programming and applying these to bettering medicine. I will be working in industry for a year (or two!) before beginning a PhD program in Chemistry.