“The best way to do anything in life is to ask questions”

Dr. Vasudeva Kamath teaches biochemistry and genetics to future doctors at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix, and studies how changes in mitochondrial DNA show up in diseases from pancreatic cancer to mental health disorders. We asked him how he got there, what a teen can do without a lab, and whether professionals actually want to hear from students. Most of his answers came back to the same thing: keep asking questions.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

“In high school, I had no idea what I was going to do”

You study how mitochondrial DNA changes in diseases like pancreatic cancer and mental health disorders. Back in high school, did you know you wanted to go into genetics, or did you figure it out later?

“To be very frank with you, in high school I had no idea what I was going to do. It all happened as I was going from one stage to another stage. After high school there was a time where I had to sit down and decide what I was going to do. I had a concrete plan of going and doing my graduate study, but I had no idea in what area, or what topic. I had not thought about it. But I knew for sure that I wanted to do my graduate study at that point.”

Who made the biggest impact on getting you here?

“My graduate program mentor. She played a very pivotal role in me emerging as a budding scientist, I would say.”

Ask questions. Never stop.

A lot of teens aren’t sure what they want to go into. How should they start exploring, even in high school? And should they pick something they love, or something they’re good at?

“I think the best way to do anything in life is to ask questions. Always, as a student, or throughout your life, the best thing one can do is to ask questions. Never take anything without questioning. That curiosity should always be there. That’s when you can understand what’s happening around you.”

“You see something, and you ask yourself why, what, where, when. All the WH questions can lead to answers, and that is a discovery itself on its own. Never stop questioning. Questioning is the basic principle on which our life should progress. Humans started questioning the things around them and making sense of whatever they got their hands on. ‘Why is this here? What is this supposed to do? What can I do with this?’ Only with that curiosity did they come up with meaningful uses for things, and that has brought us to this level today. As an educator, I always encourage students, or anybody for that matter, to question. I think that’s the best thing one can do.”

Discoveries don’t have to happen in a lab

How can a curious teen start doing research at home, or help their local community, with or without a professor?

“It’s always good to have a mentor, because you will move in the right direction with mentors. But without a mentor, one also grows from one stage to another. It will be difficult sometimes, but at the same time it will be very rewarding that you understood certain things on your own. So I wouldn’t discourage anyone for not having mentors around, or laboratories around.”

His suggestion is to start with where you live.

“If you live in a place, what was it before? How was it before? Who were the first settlers? How many people came here and started settling? If you ask those questions, you yourself can keep understanding and unraveling a lot of things that not many people around you would have known. And that itself is a discovery. Discoveries need not always be in the scientific field. It can be the history of your city or town, or the history of your school, which would have been forgotten for generations. Maybe there is a time capsule kept in the school. There are a lot of questions you can keep asking. Only if you start questioning things around you will you get answers, and those questions lead to discoveries.”

“You may not do earth-shattering research. But that small step for a human being is a large leap for mankind, as somebody said in the past. I think every small step does matter.”

Will professionals actually talk to you?

A lot of teens are scared to reach out because they think they don’t have the experience or the connections. Not just for lab positions, but just to ask what a field is actually like. If a student emailed you with questions like that, how willing are you, or other professionals, to answer?

“First of all, we are all educators. Although we are in a position to mentor, we ourselves are mentees for so many mentors around us. We don’t have one mentor, we have several, who we look up to and get a lot of our professional or academic help from. Nobody is perfect, nobody is complete, and nobody has reached a stage where you don’t need anybody’s help, because in academia you keep growing, you keep understanding, you keep learning new things all the time.”

“And mentors need not always be elderly people. Mentors can be your same age, who know something different than what you know. If you have curiosity in that area and you ask questions to those people, I’m sure they’ll be happy to answer.”

“If somebody comes to me and says, ‘I wanted to learn about mitochondria, I read somewhere about this topic I wanted to understand,’ then even if I don’t know about it, I can still facilitate the learning and understanding of that topic with the student. I might say, ‘No, I have not come across it in the past, but I would like to look into it more, so why don’t we look together.’ A lot of people in that area, even though they may not know exactly what the answer is, would be happy to help, as well as learn in that process. We are all learners.”

He also pointed out that students today have an advantage he didn’t.

“This is the era of information. There is no lack of information out there. Everybody has information on their palm. During our time, if you wanted to learn something, you had to go to the encyclopedia, or go to the library and find particular books. Now you can learn from videos, from TED Talks, so many things are available. I would encourage students to learn from the available resources first. There would be a point where, when you are immersed in those topics, you would need an expert’s help. I think that’s a very good time to reach out, because by then you would have a lot of information on who to talk to. You would have seen somebody talking about it, and you can approach that person.”

He was honest that Sean’s own email almost went unanswered. “Initially I was a little hesitant. I didn’t know what kind of invitation this was. But then, as I read it, I understood what it was about. There are always people around you who would help you if you have a particular question to ask.”

Prepare for the future job, not a particular job

A lot of students feel complacent, or they’re not sure what they’re doing now will be worth it, especially with the job market. What would you tell them?

“If you think your job is what you want to work towards, that’s not how it works most of the time. You would have learned something else, and when you go into the job, you’d be doing something different.”

He gave his own research as the example. “When I started, I started with ACE inhibitor peptides. Then I moved on to pesticide toxicity, then into glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, and then into mitochondria. And currently I am teaching medical students biochemistry and genetics. The genetics aspect of it I was not trained in, but I was able to pick it up.”

“So what I would like to tell students is, do not keep in mind that ‘this is going to help me in my future job.’ Most of the time, once you get into a job, all you have to do is get trained in that particular area and go ahead and do your work. On-the-job training is more important than before the job. This is the formative age, where you need to learn and explore your capacity to understand things, to give rational meaning, to come up with a hypothesis, to discuss. Once you do that, your mind makes you completely capable of taking up new topics in any area and excelling in them.”

“Obviously an engineering student cannot go and do a surgery. But an engineering student can go into medical school and learn about surgery over time. And surgeons also need engineers’ help designing their surgical instruments. There’s always a need for different kinds of people in different areas.”

“One should not feel comfortable thinking, ‘I’m learning aviation engineering today, and tomorrow I’m going to build an aeroplane.’ That’s not what happens most of the time. For 98% of students, you might learn something else and end up doing something else. But that doesn’t mean that whatever you learned is useless. What you learn in your formative age gives you the capacity to approach a problem, solve a problem, and navigate your own exploration. So preparing yourself for the future job is more important than preparing yourself for a particular job.”

Failures are the stepping stones

It’s easy to assume someone’s path was smooth. What were your biggest setbacks, and what kept you going?

“I always give the example of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which played an important role in understanding my life goals and achieving them. Once you have a goal, once you have something in mind, you will end up doing something similar to it in the end, because you always work towards it. Subconsciously, your mind and your actions will lead you towards that area. So one should have an aim, and keep working towards it. You might not be successful in one or two places, but you should keep going. Perseverance is very important.”

“You should not compare yourself with your peers, because they have their own path, their own failures and successes to measure. There is no one measure of success, because everybody uses a different parameter. I would not depend on somebody else’s path. I would tread my own path, have my own aims, do it at my own pace, at my own interest.”

“You might fail, but that failure is not something that should discourage you from moving forward. The failures are the stepping stones in your life. The success of a person is always measured by how many times a person has fallen and stood up and moved forward. Thomas Edison was successful once in making the bulb, but he was unsuccessful several times. That does not mean he stopped after ten attempts. He continued until he was able to do it. He might not have made a perfect bulb, but he got somewhere, and other people later took that path to make different kinds of bulbs. What you have today is much different from what Edison created, but that doesn’t mean his invention was not useful.”

“And at the same time, one should not stop at success, thinking, ‘this is where I stop.’ You keep moving, because your life has a better meaning if you keep working towards making yourself better all the time. Never get comfortable with your current success.”

“I was just exam chasing”

What’s one thing you wish you knew at 15 or 16? And if you could go back, would you take the same path?

“Now I have some regrets. Some of the topics, some of the lectures, some of the content, I did not give importance to. I was just glossing over it because I wanted to get through the year, through the exam. I was just exam chasing for a long time, and I did not thoroughly learn certain things which I should have learned a long time back.”

“Every time, I feel that regret that I did not prepare myself 100% of the time. There was always some material left behind in every grade and every step. When I had to study physics or mathematics, I wish I had more time to learn those things. Even though they are not important to my job now, I would have understood certain things in life much better. If somebody talks about an aeroplane, or the speed of light, I would get a better understanding if I had those basics clearly embedded in me. That’s the only regret I have, and I don’t know how to achieve that at this point. But I want to read and learn all those things, if I can.”

Anything you learn is not useless

Is there anything else you’d want the people watching this to know?

“Be aware of who you are and where you are. If you’re going from one place to a new place, always learn about the place. Understand the history behind it, the current situation. Understand not just the science behind everything, but the history, the environment, all those things. Whenever you have a question, look for the answers. Never stop reading and learning new things. There is no limit for that.”

Sean mentioned a recent vacation where he walked around towns without really knowing the culture, the landscape or the animals there.

“Had you prepared yourself by understanding that area, their language and culture and food habits, you would have had a much better experience being there. Only a curious mind will look for such things. ‘We are going here, what can I do? What are the best things to explore? What is a good place to eat?’ Always keep yourself open for learning new things. Never shut yourself off thinking, ‘that’s not my cup of tea.’ Anything you learn is not useless. Never close yourself to new things. Everything that comes across you will contribute somewhere to your success.”

Thank you to Dr. Vasudeva Kamath for taking the time to talk with thirdauthor.

More interviews