How to Regain That Curious Spark

Think back to when you were a young child, curious to learn about the world. You undoubtedly had many ideas, with some lacking foresight and others proving to be amazing. I remember that I desperately wanted to make a coding website for children (not realising that there were thousands of them out there already). My friend wanted to create a tracker for personal items. So many people have had such ideas and ambitions, but they have done nothing to develop them into something tangible.

When did we stop coming up with ideas? When did we stop thinking and creating? The truth is, somewhere along the way, many of us lost that spark that made us avid creators. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to berate you for losing that flicker of curiosity - I’m guilty of the same.

My theory is that self-doubt caused us to stop creating. When we were little, we were not afraid of what would happen, or what people would say if our ideas did not succeed. We were eager to create, always ready to come up with novel ideas, we weren’t held back by the fear of failure. Over the years, many of us have been told that we are not good enough by teachers, peers, or even ourselves. Our self-esteem has gone down and this has resulted in the abundance of imposter syndrome, a condition causing people to doubt their accomplishments and skills, often accompanied by a feeling that one is not ‘worthy’ of their achievements. Staggeringly, around 70% of people experience imposter syndrome worldwide [1].

How many times have you had an opportunity, but stopped yourself from seizing it because you thought you were 'not knowledgeable enough' or 'someone else could do it better'? That opportunity might have involved applying for a competition, speaking role, internship, project, or anything else that could have benefited you.

There have been so many times where I’ve stopped myself from applying for opportunities or going for what I want because I felt like I wasn’t good enough. I’m here to tell you that you are ‘good enough’, you are capable and the fact that you are even thinking about applying shows your determination and excitement.

Something I hear often is 'I don’t deserve it', but what does that actually mean? People do not deserve most of the opportunities they get, but they make the most out of them. It’s not about whether you deserve it or not - it's what you do with the opportunity that matters most. When you have an opportunity, you owe it to yourself and to other applicants to embrace it and to make the most out of what you have.

Age is only a barrier if you make it one. Take Gitanjali Rao, who is currently 15 and was Time Magazine’s first ever Kid of the Year.  She got there because she has a passion for building solutions to pressing problems. When she was 12, she built an aid to Flint’s water crisis to test for lead, helping ensure clean and safe drinking water. In interviews, she’s talked about her excitement toward combating these problems and how it has empowered her to build solutions [2]. Or Alishba Imran, 17, who is building blockchain solutions to stop counterfeit medication, contributing to Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health and Wellbeing. Her work is helping to stop the counterfeit medicine industry, a $200 billion industry that kills millions each year [3]. Alishba found out about this problem at 14 and has since focused her energy on solving it [4].

How Can We Take Advantage of Opportunities?

Now that you have a bit more courage to dive for opportunities, you might be thinking: how? It’s often hard to find these opportunities, which is why when we do find them, we must make the most of them. It’s much easier when you have guidance, so I’ve shared my suggestions based on my own experiences...

To begin with, how about volunteering? There are so many amazing organisations that share your interests, values and passions; and you could help them further that! If you’re a young person excited about using STEM to work towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Youth STEM Matters may be the place for you. There are a lot of organisations that could benefit from your unique qualities and passions. These might include science museums near you, non-profits working on climate change or organisations working with marginalised communities, just to name a few.

Next, think about ideas that you individually have. Have you had any project brain waves that could have been really cool to put together, but you decided not to? If so, revisit that idea and try to discover if it could work. You could also think of ideas by researching topics you’re interested in and how you could solve problems using that information. Once you have an idea, get yourself ready or create a team and begin executing! Find mentors, validate your ideas and start building.

Another approach would be to combine different STEM areas! It would be amazing to combine your own STEM expertise with other people’s to find unique ways to solve problems. For example, researchers have improved detection of different types of breast cancer using artificial intelligence (woah, right?!). Current systems to detect breast cancer are not ideal and artificial intelligence has increased the accuracy rate, combining both computer science and biology to create better health outcomes [5]. Without computer science, we would have to use the human eye to look at the images fed to the machine learning model, which is way less accurate. You could work with different people to understand what certain fields need and try to fill those gaps with technologies and solutions you can think of.

Last of all, reach out to industry professionals and professors in your field of interest. People in that field likely remember being a young person who wanted to do something helpful and interesting themselves and many would love to help you. Just reach out! You may end up taking a class from them or even working in their lab. Who knows?

If you take away one thing from this article, I hope it’s this message: regain that spark you had when you were younger by letting go of self-doubt and take part in activities without fear. Get involved by volunteering, ideating and reaching out to people in the field you are interested in. Make sure never to give up, and even when you fail, keep trying.

References

[1] L. Craig, American Psychological Association, “Are you suffering from imposter syndrome?”, September, 2018, [Online]. Available: https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2018/09/imposter-syndrome [Accessed 7 February 2021].

[2] TIME, “TIME's 2020 Kid of the Year: Meet Gitanjali Rao,” December 3, 2020, [Online]. Available: https://time.com/5916772/kid-of-the-year-2020/. [Accessed: 10 February 2021].

[3] A. Imran, “Honestblocks,” [Online]. Available: https://honestblocks.info/. [Accessed: 23 February 2021].

[4] A. Imran. “Alishba,” [Online]. Available: https://alishbaimran.com/. [Accessed: 10 February 2021].

[5] L. Shen, L. R. Margolies, J. H. Rothstein, E. Fluder, R. McBride, and W. Sieh, “Deep Learning to Improve Breast Cancer Detection on Screening Mammography,” Sci Rep, vol. 9, no. 1, Aug. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48995-4.