CHOICES

Choices are interesting. I never imagined that in my first year of PhD, most of my time and energy would be devoted to making choices. After all, all we want is to research, to leave our contribution as a gift to the future. Having to choose even the obvious was somewhat unexpected and frustrating.

Choose the topic of interest, formulate a decent research question, and from that choice delve into the strange and fascinating world of methodology.

I wasn't prepared to make so many decisions in such a short amount of time, and worse, knowing that each option would be dissected like an anatomy class. That's why we call it a thesis defense. We have to justify and defend every choice we make.

In the midst of this brain storm, I began to realize that choosing is inherent to being human, that we do it without realizing it. But when we are faced with the responsibility to choose, we create an unnatural, unspontaneous situation.

Like a fish trying to fly, I felt suffocated at times, as if in search of a time and space that gracefully hides itself in a banal appearance, but whose mysteries are only revealed with the right key.

The only possible solution was to stop debating between the whirlwind of options, and let myself be carried away by the only way to glide and breathe in this environment beyond my control. Finding my sea among the clouds in the sky and breathing in the dust of the stars became an obsession.

It was little by little, subtly, in a corner of my eyes, that I rescued a conversation I had long forgotten: a dialogue with my curiosity. This adventure companion that watches over us during childhood. With the weight of books, courses and opinions established and consolidated by society, it collapses, and shudders, leaving only a light drumming in our ears.

Yes, curiosity lives in our ears, free from the rush of the heart and the density of our thoughts, free and ethereal as it has to be.

With my aerial journey, this companion found a way to communicate with me and with my aspirations as a researcher. From the moment we held hands again, she took the lead, leading me in this environment she knows so well.

​

My curiosity took good care of me. When I felt her trembling, I was guided between the different options, and little by little, what was a longing, was discovered in the clothes of this friend of mine, and her secrets were revealed. I discovered that the question itself chooses how it wants to be analyzed, how it wants to be loved, because a doctorate is an experience of passion, as intense as the greatest novels in literature. In this new adventure, choices emerged naturally, steps of a love story for humanity, for science.

Today my curiosity is aroused, stretching through the gardens, looking for new stories to share. Sometimes prose, sometimes poetry, and often science. Today happened to be a mixture of everything, but only because she wants to extend an invitation. It invites us to new adventures. Shall we?