I'm taking a topics in biochemistry seminar course where we read two papers a week. The topic the course covers this year is chemical biology.

Now, I'm someone who loves organic synthesis, who loves biochemistry, and who loves molecular biology. I think my mind is set up for the type of conceptual trouble shooting of organic chemistry on terms of diagrammatic reasoning as opposed to mathematical reasoning (like in a lot of computational and biophysical approaches). At the same time I'm an arrow pusher, and I think of this very much at a structural/chemical intuition level as opposed to a gross biological scale. But as much as I love organic chemistry I like applied organic chemistry. The entire complexity of biochemical systems is both fascinating and overwhelming. So where this rant is all going, is basically I thought chemical biology would be exactly my cup of tea.

Turns out that there are a lot of chemical biology projects that seem just sort of...pointless to me. Like they are doing an interdisciplinary project for the sake of being interdisciplinary? I'm skeptical, because a lot of these projects don't seem to be tackling interesting questions, really. I mean, there is some chemistry in there that appeals to me, some biology, but rarely do I find a paper where I think "yes, this is a good mix of concepts."

But I think, actually, I'm probably going to end up in a chemical biology program, it'll just be a matter of finding one of them that does something really cool, or the intellectual challenge of working on a piece of a collaborative project knowing the big picture but being an expert in a small area. Or somesuch.