What Baltimore Taught Me About Slowing Down

For years, I approached my life as if there were one correct path through it. If I worked hard enough, collected the right experiences and made every decision carefully, perhaps my future would eventually become clear.

Since college, I have rarely stopped moving. I ran between laboratories, volunteered in shelters and hospitals, pursued a master’s degree in Boston and continuously worried about my research and future career. Even when I was completing one opportunity, I was already thinking about the next one.

As an Asian student, I had internalized the belief that success should follow a straight line: Work hard, make the correct choices and keep moving forward. Slowing down felt unproductive. Not knowing my next step felt like falling behind.

When I moved to Baltimore for my Ph.D., I brought that same urgency with me. My days revolved around experiments, meetings and the pressure to produce results. In research, however, effort does not always lead to immediate success. Experiments fail. Results contradict expectations. Weeks of work can end with another question instead of an answer.

After particularly discouraging experimental results, I sometimes go to the Inner Harbor. Sitting beside the water helps me step outside the narrow world of one experiment. I grew up near the water, so being there brings me a sense of familiarity and calm. The harbor does not fix my results, but it reminds me that a disappointing experiment is only one moment in a much larger life.

I have also started discovering Baltimore through food. At Café Dear Leon, I found pastries with Asian influences that could compete with — or perhaps even surpass — some of the bakeries I loved in Vancouver. Finding something familiar in an unfamiliar city made Baltimore feel a little more like home. It also reminded me that exploring a city does not need to be another task to complete. Sometimes it can simply mean enjoying a pastry and being present.

Most importantly, I began saying yes to opportunities that offered community rather than another line on my résumé. Through the Graduate Student Association, the Hopkins Biotech Network and other student organizations, I met students from my cohort and researchers from neighboring laboratories. These relationships expanded my world beyond my own experiments. They gave me people with whom I could exchange advice, explore career possibilities and talk honestly about the uncertainty of graduate school.

I am still ambitious, and I still care deeply about becoming a better scientist and finding a meaningful career. What is changing is my belief that I must discover the single correct path as quickly as possible.

Baltimore is teaching me that a life is not built only through achievements. It is also built through quiet moments beside the water, unexpected discoveries at a neighborhood bakery and conversations with people I might never have met if I had not said yes.

I am still learning how to slow down. I still catch myself rushing toward the next experiment, opportunity or career decision. But now, I am beginning to understand that uncertainty does not mean I am lost. Sometimes, it simply means I am still exploring.

I came to Baltimore focused on building my future. Somewhere between the laboratory, the harbor and the communities I found here, I began learning how to live in the present.