Day 2

On day two of my experience I had the privilege to sit down and have a chat with the Chair go the Biomedical Engineering Department of the Cleveland Clinic, Geoffery Vince. The conversation began as any interview would have with a simple “how are you?”. While this was great small talk I there were important questions that I had on my mind. As the chair of a large department you assume that the person has become good at being decisive. Dr. Vince was quite the opposite, he was indecisive and he not only embraced it but attributed much of his success to it. “In England” he told me, “you have to declare your major before ever setting foot in the college”. Well as you can imagine this was a problem for him, so instead of deciding he went into college and began a Chemistry and Biochemistry major intending to drop one when he decided. He never decided and carried out a dual major through his college experience. After this he once again could not decide what to do in graduate school, so since engineering is such an open field that one can do almost anything with, he decided to go that route. Later he “specified” his route as Biomedical Engineering, yet this still left many options from drug development to mathematical analysis of signals. The reason he went this way is because he wanted to help patients without having to wait half of his life in medical school, where after graduating he could help at best half a million people over the course of his lifetime. He went on to say that one invention of something such as a new heart valve could help millions of people in no time at all. I have no doubt in my mind that I will someday become an engineer.