For many years I tried to train myself to go deeper and deeper into statistics, for example by pushing myself through graduate level courses as an undergraduate. I thought that if I kept deepening my technical training, I could understand almost everything in statistics. But slowly I realized that the world outside statistics is far broader and more beautiful.

This realization unfolded when I started wandering into things unrelated to research, sometimes out of boredom. Back in graduate school, when research workload piled up, I would enter a peculiar mental state where my to-do list was so long that I did not want to do anything at all. I had to push the reset button for my brain by stepping away for something completely different.

During COVID I started playing video games. Please do not laugh at me - the last time I played video games was already back in elementary school. The scenes in the modern games stunned me, especially when contrasting with the old-school games in my memory. In those scenes, sunsets spilled golden light across mountains, forests breathed in fog, cities glowed under imaginary skies. I could not describe how beautiful and detailed everything looked. Maybe my pre-COVID life had been too gray. For a while, I was staying up all night for virtual quests, and only working on my real projects when approaching deadlines.

After enough late nights, my head started spinning. My eyes needed something real. So I went back outside. In high school I did amateur radio direction finding, a sport similar to orienteering where athletes run through the woods hunting for radio transmitters called foxes. Running among trees always felt natural to me, so returning to the outdoors was not difficult.

Soon my partner and I drifted into birding. Parks near our apartment became our weekend playground. I carried the binocular and scanned for tiny movements in the branches or faint chirps in the air. Once I spotted a bird, I whispered directions while my partner aimed the oversized camera. Dozens of photos would follow. Most showed empty branches or blurs. If one photo actually captured a clear and well-centered bird, we would feel incredibly lucky.

Those feathered creatures fascinated me. Their colors range from deep red to bright yellow to intricate shades of green and blue, woven into delicate patterns that look thoughtfully designed, as if nature sketched them with intention. Their sounds can be sharp, musical, or low murmurs that echo through the woods. In spring and summer (when Michigan is not frozen), the wind waves, trees sings, grass sways, and we stand there feeling quietly grateful. Over the past few years we have traveled across the US and added hundreds of species to our lifelist. Each new bird turns a new page in a book that never ends.

Curiosity pulled me beyond nature. For PhD candidates at our university, we are allowed to take up to 4 credit hours of courses per semester, without (advisors) paying extra tuition. I seized this chance to step outside my statistical world. A bunch of random courses eventually showed up on my transcript:

  • guitar
  • ballet
  • private voice lessons
  • French
  • business economics
  • healthcare startup
  • accounting
  • commercialization of biomedicine
  • management consulting
  • patent law (audited)

Most of these courses were introductory. Some were taken purely for fun, and others came from curiosity about how ideas travel from theory to industry (although no classroom learning is comparable to actually working in the industry).

Classes in the business school were interesting and carried a very different energy from biostatistics lectures. Business students placed large name cards on their desks so professors could call on them easily. Discussions moved quickly, hands went up often, and opinions were delivered with confidence during class debates and group projects. Yet in biostatistics classes, we statisticians tended to sit quietly, eyes on our notebooks, minds busy with formulas and derivations. Many of us usually tried to avoid eye contact with the professors. For me, switching between personalities when running from business to biostatistics classes was entertaining.

Undoubtedly PhD training asks us to dive deeply into one narrow area, and that depth is valuable. Yet I see myself as a person first and a researcher second. I value the curiosity and capacity to keep widening my world beyond my specialization. Perhaps one day, this breadth beyond research will return unexpected, invaluable ideas back into our narrow research space.