The significance of a research

                                       

Instead of finishing up a paper, here I am writing a post. To be honest, I get overwhelmed most of the time. I felt like my research is not significant because my results were not that satisfying. I use genome editing called CRISPR to regulate the SIRT1 gene expression in liver cancer cells. Sometimes the result turned out okay, but most of the time, they were not consistent. I asked myself a lot, what is the significance of my research, how would it help people if if did not turn out the way I wanted it to be? It gets really frustrating. I have two amazing supervisors that really helped me a lot, but no matter how encouraging they are, somehow you will just keep questioning yourself and your purpose of life, of doing this research. I am supposed to write a paper on bits of my research, but I can't do it because I couldn't see the story, the outcome, its not like I don't want to write, but when it does not make sense in my head, I just cannot proceed with the write up.

"Is this significant to others for me to write a paper about it?"

"Would this help others?"

"What's the aim here?"

So, like i usually do, I searched on youtube and google for some encouraging talk. Funny that it turned out to be my co-supervisor's talk on Imagining a World with No Diseases. I ended up in a lil bit of tears because the points that I got was motivating. She said here that she was a bit frustrated because her finding only showed a 20% gene downregulation for HIV, as she went to the HIV patients, the response was beautiful because for the patients, 20% was a lot, it gave them hope and insights on the cure. It made me thinking, no matter how much I got for my results - gene upregulation or downregulation with the crispr methods, they are indeed a progress to finding a cure and making the world a better place. It is clear to me that I have missed that point. It seems simple but when you're in such a position, it will be really hard to make sense of everything at the point of time. 

My purpose in life is making the world a better place, to be someone who gets involve with something big, to be a part of the system that contributes to the betterment of mankind, in my case, in health-related. So yeah, I aimed for something that is very big which cannot be accomplished in a short-time-span, thus I missed all the small steps for me towards the goal, when in fact, I should take things more slowly. So that's it, it's a new day. Let's work towards that, one step at a time... 

May Allah swt ease everything, Diyana. InsyaAllah...