Rotational inertia strikes fear in the very base of my spine whenever I hear its name. Or even worse—Gaussian surfaces. *Cue the shudders.* Many have a love-hate relationship with physics; my relationship with it focuses mostly on the “hate” part. Writing and history, though? I adore it. However, I’m planning on entering college next fall as a biomedical engineering major on the pre-med track. 

If you had told my freshman year self that I would be going into engineering, she probably would have laughed in your face. Although I was an avid participant in my middle school’s Science Olympiad team, when I got to high school, my entire perception of STEM changed. 

STEM went from fun competitions and building machines to the thought of spending my four years of college struggling through multivariable calculus and problem set, after problem set, of physics. I heard from upperclassmen and the annoying characters in shows like “Big Bang Theory” just how hard it was to work in the STEM field.

As someone who was always more inclined to writing and the humanities, it just made more sense to me to ignore my fascination with biomedicine and focus on something else. I care deeply about public policy and humanitarian issues, so exploring those avenues in college seemed like a more natural option.

However, my past thoughts and worries about my future career aren’t unique. According to a TSP survey of 75 respondents, 92% of the students said they associated the STEM field with being challenging, and 49.3% associated it with being stressful. 

Yet, flash forward to the summer before my senior year, I was reading research papers I found interesting and looking into different engineering programs as I prepared to apply to college—a stark change from the plans I had been making for myself since freshman year. 

What changed for me was the crumbling of my clearly incorrect assumptions about the STEM field. The winter before my junior year, I applied to a summer program focusing on politics. However, I didn’t end up getting into the political focus of the program, and instead got accepted into their biological and biomedical focus. 

Encouraged by my parents to try it out, I attended the summer program and came out with entirely different career goals. The experience revealed to me that STEM isn’t really what I thought it was. I saw how biomedical engineering and sciences can be applied to solve real-world problems that I was interested in, such as a lack of available medical equipment in remote, underprivileged areas. 

STEM went from being this anxiety-ridden career with little impact on the things I cared about to a way for me to combine my love for science with my passion for solving humanitarian issues. 

Sometimes, it can seem like the STEM field is closed off from the rest of the world. We hear it being associated with tech-startups in Silicon Valley and cutting-edge innovation for rich companies — it’s not often that people perceive it to go hand in hand with humanities. 

There are countless opportunities in the field to explore the intersection of STEM and the humanities that you might not realize. In sciences classes, I felt that I wasn’t given enough opportunities to contextualize what we’re learning to the real world. As a result, for me, I never viewed STEM as an avenue to reach my goals until I was exposed to all of its potentials. 

So if you’re like me, and you’re scared to take the leap and dedicate yourself to perhaps studying a little harder than your peers if physics and math doen’t come easy to you, I challenge you to reconsider. STEM can be the perfect way for you to make a change in the world if you’re willing to try. 

STEM isn’t about being able to recite every single integral and derivative formula by memory or the elements of the periodic table. The field values those that are there to make a positive difference in the world.

Clearly, it’s impossible for the field to be filled with people that don’t have an inclination towards the humanities as I had originally thought. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be working to create technology such as those that improve water quality or decrease carbon emissions. Instead, like all fields, it’s looking for people with a creative mind that are able to empathize with people and communicate well through their writing. 

Ultimately, if STEM interests you, and you know you want to explore the field, don’t be afraid. The hard classes may be nerve-wracking, but that shouldn’t stop you from taking them. Who knows? Maybe one- day physics won’t trigger my fight or flight response. The future is too ripe with possibilities for us to be filled with trepidation for classes we haven’t even experienced yet.