Introduction
A simple hobby of mine got me a summer-long paid research position with free travel and housing at an R1 university as a second-year undergraduate.
The hobby? Lifting weights.
This wasn’t some sort of fitness or kinesiology internship either, and my lifting isn’t particularly impressive (quite the opposite, actually).
In fact, I doubt the faculty involved in the decision to recruit me were even aware of my interest in health and fitness. I was recruited to collaborate on cognitive systems research and contribute using my experience in computer science.
So what am I talking about when I say that lifting led to this incredible opportunity? I’m talking about how I leveraged the hobby in a new context.
Falling down the rabbit hole
One of the first things you learn when you get into the “fitness community” is the importance of tracking. Log your workouts to progressively overload each session, track your sleep to ensure you have optimal recovery, keep a food journal to stay on top of your nutrition–the list goes on.
Of course, not all of this is required. But personally, the numbers are what drive me and motivate me to keep going. The data I get is almost as important as the actual health benefits.
And what else to do with data but to optimize? I’ve spent hours looking at visualizations of my analytics, finding patterns between the different data sources, and trying to piece together how I can refine my processes. Eventually, in order to make sense of it all, it led to delving into literature on muscular hypertrophy and energy expenditure.
It started with the basics: web articles and YouTube videos from trusted sources. But you can only squeeze so much from the tip of the iceberg, and I had to resort to books and scientific papers.
I developed a digital compendium of my findings, synthesizing what I learned and making connections between different sources. Without realizing it, I became an amateur academic.
Complexity Science
As I learned more about the body, energy expenditure, different metabolic pathways, etc., I started to notice a pattern. Cells work with other cells to form tissues, tissues to organs, organs to body. Not to mention the beautiful intricacies of DNA encoding and gene expression. Each simple part has its own purpose, guidelines, and rules, but they work together to create something incomprehensibly sophisticated.
And this pattern isn’t unique to biology, either. As I branched out more in my research, I found more examples of similar systems in nature. This idea of small components working together to create big outcomes is everywhere. Consider ant colonies, where tiny creatures with brains the size of a grain of sand create elaborate societies that rival many others in the animal kingdom. Or Conway’s Game of Life, where simple rules for cell behavior on a grid create a system that is Turing complex.
The phenomenon is everywhere. Small units, acting independently, unguided by any centralized control, interacting with one another to create incredible emergent effects.
This is complexity science, and is what I wrote my research statement about when I applied to summer programs six months ago.
Conclusion
I never would have learned about this amazing field if I hadn’t stumbled down that rabbit hole. I’ve mentioned before that the idea of academia as a career was alluring to me, but I was never sure how to make that dream a reality.
But the exploratory journey I’ve taken over the past few months, and the discoveries I’ve made in the process, have given me a way to operationalize this vague idea of “research” into something tangible.
In a funny way, this compounding of my various interests–lifting, tracking, data analysis, learning, etc.–is just another example of independent components yielding emergent effects. It goes to show how ubiquitous complex systems really are, and is why I’m so excited about entering this ever-evolving science.
I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to pursue this passion and build something meaningful during my internship, and I can’t wait to find more paths to doors I never knew existed.