The first step: Samuel Cortes
Confidence built at Ohio State helps pave the way to a strong career start
Samuel Cortes didn’t leave Ohio State with a perfectly mapped out career plan. He left with something perhaps more useful: the confidence to figure out what comes next.
When Cortes arrived at Ohio State, he knew he was interested in science and medicine, but he didn’t have a specific vision for his future. Over four years, that vision began to take shape through the opportunities he found on campus.
“I had a lot of freedom to explore my interests,” he says. “That helped me become comfortable with the fact that a career doesn’t necessarily have to follow a perfectly straight path.”
Cortes joined a research lab early in his undergraduate career, eventually working on projects involving regenerative medicine, nanomedicine, extracellular vesicles and tissue engineering. His biomedical science coursework gave him a foundation in the field, while internships and a minor in international relations exposed him to perspectives beyond his primary discipline.
Those experiences have become especially valuable since graduation.
After earning his degree in biomedical science, Cortes moved to Cleveland, where he is working as a post-baccalaureate research assistant in biomedical engineering at the Cleveland Clinic. He is preparing to pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering or bioengineering.
But the transition has involved more than choosing his next academic step. For the first time, his days are no longer organized around semesters and an academic calendar. He has a full-time job, a new city and a community to build.
Finding an apartment, managing his own schedule and establishing a life beyond campus have made adulthood feel tangible in a way college never quite did. Now, Cortes is meeting people through work, exploring Cleveland and finding hobbies and activities that will help him build connections outside the lab.
Ohio State, he says, prepared him for that independence by giving him room to explore, work across disciplines and discover what kind of work he wanted to pursue. Just as importantly, it taught him to be comfortable with uncertainty.
His first year after graduation is about more than preparing for graduate school. It’s about becoming an independent researcher while learning to balance work, friendships, personal interests and the responsibilities of adulthood.
Cortes may have left Ohio State, but he is carrying its most important lesson with him: Sometimes the best way to find your path is simply to be willing to explore it.