When Emily Xiao began at Wake Forest, she was undecided about her major and considered a range of options, including economics, statistics and even philosophy. Eventually, having loved her physics classes in high school despite not always doing well in them, she enrolled in a couple of physics courses at Wake Forest.
“I decided to take one upper-level course to see how I felt,” Xiao said. “And I absolutely adored it. My professor was so, so kind, and I think what really made me think, ‘this is what I want to do.’”
Xiao said her electronics course with Professor Oana D. Jurchescu encouraged her to pursue the major. She originally intended to drop the course after struggling to understand the material, but was heartened by Jurchescu’s encouragement.
“[Jurchescu] took me out of class one day and said, ‘I want you to know that you’re really good at this, and you’re very smart,’” Xiao explained. “She gave me the confidence to pursue biophysics.”
Xiao said she loved the course so much that she ended up completing her honors thesis in electronics with Jurchescu.
While her high school physics courses instilled in her a love for the subject, Xiao’s biophysics courses at Wake Forest taught her how to truly understand complex ideas. She said she appreciates the problem-solving aspect of her coursework.
“I learned that I’m a very big-picture conceptual person, and it is something that I still carry with me in a lot of aspects,” Xiao said. “I think physics became a lot more intuitive and easy to grasp when I stopped becoming obsessed with memorizing every little detail and obsessed with getting everything right.”
She continued: “Rather, I focus on understanding things on a larger conceptual level, and know that if I get some of the details wrong, it will come with time and practice. As long as you’re able to understand the big idea, that’s 90% of the work.”
Xiao said she maintained this mindset while studying for the Medical College Admission Test, which she completed in merely four weeks.
Xiao said part of what made her feel that she belongs in the biophysics department is the large presence of women faculty and students.
“The physics department actually does really well on diversity,” Xiao said. “We’re actually 51% female and 49% male, which is really impressive, especially for a physics department. I also have found the girls here very supportive, and I would say I’m pretty like-minded to them.”
After graduation, Xiao is attending medical school at the University of Kentucky. She loved her experience at Wake Forest and is sad to leave the community she has formed, but said she is excited to grow as a person beyond Wake Forest’s campus.
“I think I’m just generally a pretty optimistic person, so I’m really excited for the next chapter and meeting new people and learning new things,” Xiao said.
She said that moving forward, it is important for her to look towards the future and to keep the mindset that “the best is yet to come.”
“What scares me the most is that you never want to feel like you’ve peaked,” Xiao said. “I don’t want to have the mindset that you’re already past your peak and things are only downhill from here. So I think it’s just adopting the mentality that things can always get better, even if things are good now.”
