Tanapat “Ice” Treyanurak ’17 entered Hamilton premed bound. He enrolled in two lab courses his first semester and, in need of a fourth course, he filled out his schedule with Literature, Art and Religion. It turned out to be his favorite that semester.
“Really, what I liked the most was being in a class with people who actually liked reading or were willing to talk about reading, because that was not the case in high school. I was one of the few who actually liked English,” Treyanurak says.
That first year, when his advisor asked him why he wanted to study the sciences, Treyanurak gave a scripted response that he wanted to be a doctor. But the question stuck with him, and he pondered it. “The answer really changed from, ‘Hey, I want to be a doctor,’ to ‘Hey, I don’t actually want to be a doctor,” he says.
The realization shifted his views of his science studies in an unexpected way. He found that without a medical career as the end game, he liked science even more. Treyanurak became a neuroscience major – and piled up enough literature credits to major in that subject, too. Teaching SAT prep classes and tutoring biology students, he discovered an affinity for teaching and is considering it as a possible career.