How learning how to code helped me as a medical student
A comment that I usually get is “You are in the wrong course buddy!”. I am a medical student and my friends tell me that because I spend a lot of time writing code. Learning how to code, has helped me accomplish a lot of things that would have been impossible otherwise.
I learnt basic python from “How to automate the boring stuff with Python” just out of curiosity. And now, I can code my own Neural Networks and write the back-end of a web app.
These are the ways how coding has changed my life and it could probably change yours too.
1. It helps you think
Coding is like solving a puzzle. When you are stuck as a student in college, especially a medical college, in the initial days, there is very little to think about critically. It is usually just knowing your stuff. You either know something or you don’t. Applying all that ocean of knowledge that you learn comes later on, when you are at least 5 years into the course.
Studies show how much you use your brain as a teenager, for what kind of activities determines how well you can use it for the same activities throughout your life. The brain gets accustomed to the kind of tasks you throw at it. Now if I don’t ever challenge it and just let it sit and absorb facts without questioning them, I don’t expect it to perform any different in an ever changing world. Coding gives the sort of rush to the brain that running would to the body.
2. It opens new doors
When you tell people that you are a medical student and that you know how to code, it just opens so many doors. I have experienced this first hand. If you go to someone in a different field for help regarding a project, you now have two identities that you can expose. And that uniqueness makes them more open to your ideas. Just think about it. Not many people invest time to learn something far away from their own field.
3. It boosts your confidence
When you learn something that isn’t taught to you formally, and you have a working applicable knowledge of it, you have the confidence that anything is learn-able. You have done it once, why can’t you do it again? Electronics? Aerodynamics? Quantum Physics? Bring it on! What could possibly be present in it that you can’t learn online?(maybe with some help from online friends)
It makes your mind more open and you know that anything can be learnt, if enough time is invested in it. It makes you look past the jargon. You are not afraid of it anymore, for you know there are probably very simple concepts under the pretentious big words that anyone can learn given, they put in some time.
4. In a digital world, if you control data, you rule
Not to mean that you are now the ruler of the world, but knowing how to communicate in the engineering jargon, that doctors and other Life science students find so tough to do, will give you an edge. Knowing a couple of basic things yourself, you can automate a lot of boring stuff yourself. There are countless amazing tutorials online that you use and build nearly anything you want. For the bigger projects that will involve engineers, you knowing exactly what the project wants and communicating to them properly will make a huge difference.
It helped our “hackathon” team comprising of 2 computer engineers and 2 medical students win once. The key factor was, we could communicate what was what effectively.
Conclusion
Learning how to code, has helped me see my career path towards the interdisciplinary. I believe the future lies with those who are not afraid to venture out of their comfort zone. If you are afraid of what might happen, think about what would happen if you don’t venture out. In an exponentially changing world, we don’t know what the world will look like 10 years from now. Maybe A.I would improve so much that it can understand natural language so well that coding becomes obsolete. But the confidence that you can learn anything and be anything you want if you put in the effort will never leave you. And that will make all the difference.
