About Me — Christopher Lee
Your Friendly Neighborhood Nerd
Hello there, dear reader. My name is Christopher Lee, but everyone I know calls me Chris. I am pleased to make your acquaintance!
My Childhood
I grew up watching science videos on YouTube. Channels like minutephysics, Veritasium, Vsauce, SciShow, and CrashCourse fed my desire to learn more about the world around me.
My scientific interest was inherent, diverse, and ravenous. I really could not get enough of these fascinating videos, explaining complex concepts in an understandable yet engaging way.
Sometimes I simply wasn’t able to understand what the person was trying to explain, but that didn’t bother me. The concepts I understood fascinated me, and the ideas that I could not grasp simply fueled my curiosity.
Simply put, I was in love.
Soon enough, I found myself trying to explain the things I learned to my peers and even my instructors. At one point, I even went so far as to try and explain the rope-coil effect (that I learned about in this video by SmarterEveryDay) to my very confused piano teacher.
It seems that my desire to share the things I learn is as central to who I am as my desire to learn.
My High School Years
High school was a difficult time for me. That age where you’re still much too young to really know what’s going on, but the world is starting to demand that you figure some serious things out. At the same time, the people around you no longer offer the same H of G they once did.
I come from an Asian household that gives heavy emphasis to academic performance. This is all with the goal of gaining admission to a prestigious university. I always followed along with the structure that my parents laid out for me. I never really questioned the importance of stellar grades and exceptional extracurricular achievements… until COVID-19 hit.
While I suffered the consequences of this seismic upheaval along with everyone else, the pandemic generated the time I badly needed to listen to myself. Who was I? What was it that I really wanted to do?
It was during this time of exploration and introspection that I solidified my career goal of becoming a professor of neuroscience. Neuroscience is the most interesting field of science I have encountered so far, not in small part because it requires knowledge of numerous other scientific domains.
I want to become an expert in that field and share my knowledge with enthusiastic students.
Where I Am Now
At the time of writing (January 8th, 2024), I am an undergraduate student majoring in neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, located in Baltimore, Maryland. I am currently working as a research assistant under Dr. Kirkwood at JHU, studying the effects of sensory experiences on synaptic plasticity.
I am still in pursuit of my dream of becoming a professor of neuroscience.
What Brings Me To Medium
I first found Medium through Ali Abdaal’s insightful video on making money through online writing.
My interest in making money online is quite recent, so I view it as a natural part of entering adulthood. However, that’s not all that brings me to this platform.
In fact, I had been looking for something like Medium for a long time.
Due to my background with consuming edutainment content on YouTube, the description of Medium as “the YouTube for writers” sounded perfect for me. I had always wanted to create content that shared the things that I found interesting, but it always seemed to be out of my reach.
Now, it looks like the world is my oyster.
Ultimately, dear reader, I am here for you. I am just so excited to share what I have with you. I want to tell you what I have to say and listen to what you have to say in return. I hope that we can learn and grow together.
Best wishes,
Chris
