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One of the struggles I had was determining what project I was interested in and also
sort of what my personality was in terms of doing projects. So, some science projects,
it takes a lot of ground work, can be even years before you begin getting data. Other
projects have much shorter turnaround. And for my personality, it turns out, that I prefer
the shorter turnaround projects. And I also prefer projects that have a little bit more
black and white answers. Because often a trade-off in science is that you can do an interesting
project, but then the answer's often ambiguous, or you can do a cleaner question where it's
black and white, and the answer is kind of boring. And I actually prefer, I think, the
cleaner question, and you know they're boring. It's just that my personality fits better
with that than the ambiguity.
One of the most important things I had to get over in learning to be a scientist was
to redefine what it mean to be intelligent. Because I used to think that intelligence
meant you had in your head this huge body of knowledge, facts, understanding about things.
Well, in fact, that's not intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to learn a lot of new things
and facts and understand them and the processes and use them, but it isn't holding all that
stuff in you're head. And for me, that was especially important because I don't have
an exceptional memory in any sense of the word. But I know where to find information
and I know how to use it. So rather going around and feeling Ugh, I'm just not smart
enough, I realized I'm plenty smart and is has to do with using information, not storing
it all in my head.
Probably, one of the biggest challenges that I faced was my first year in college. I spent
a lot of time at the student union playing ping pong in the basement and would skip classes
occasionally. So that can- I dug myself into a hole. I had some B's and C's that first
year and then I, I just decided if I was going to do it, I was going to take it seriously
and do it right. So, starting at that point I put a lot of effort into making sure that
I mastered the material, and got ready for the exams. I made straight A's then- but-
from my sophomore through my senior year until I graduated, nothing but straight A's after
that- but it was like climbing vertical. It was really tough to bring my GPA up. I finally
got it up to a 3.4 and that was- it was okay, you know. It was good enough to get into-
you know. I was waitlisted on a PhD program at the University of Miami. And I did get
into a couple of PhD programs. One at Rutgers and one that I attended, Rice University.
But that was a pretty challenging thing that I had to work on.
So you know, what is a struggle with, what is one of the struggles I've had to deal with
becoming a scientist. And I, I have to say it's a long journey. So there's a lot of involvement.
For me there was college and graduate school and post-doc. Spent all this time training
to finally get a job as a professor. Um, I will say probably one of the biggest struggles
for me- there wasn't any individual thing that was really really hard but, through that
whole time staying really really motivated towards science. I mean, you know, you have
to wake up every morning saying "You know, I'm really excited about what I want to do
today!" And it's such, and it just, you have to get up every morning and say that to yourself
and I guess if there's one struggle that I really had it was you know, getting up every
day and saying, "Alright, I'm going to go do this, and I'm going to be excited about
it." Not just doing this because, you know, it's what I have to do, but doing it because
it's what I'm excited about doing. Because if it becomes a drag, it's really hard to
do science, does that make sense? And so, I think that's one thing for me that was a
struggle long-term is just staying motivated, motivating myself, I mean no one else can
do it form me. I have to be the one to say "Okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to
be able to motivate myself. I'm going to get in there. I'm going to make this happen. This
reaction failed five times last week. I'm going to get in there and do six today and
it's going to work." Do you know what I mean? So that's the kind of struggle for me that
was the hardest throughout the whole experience.
A struggle that I had to overcome was essentially self-confidence. And I think a lot of women
who are in the science and engineering fields have to face this because it's a male-dominated
field. So having the self-confidence to say, "You're just as good as the next guy in the
office or the next guy in the lab" It was a struggle. And when you give your presentations,
you're always kind of giving yourself a pep talk, saying "Yeah, I'm just as good as these
guys. I've done my homework. I've done my research. It's the best I can do, and it's
GOOD research." So it's always self-confidence that's always been an issue.
The biggest one was the first time that I failed at chemistry. And that was- that was
quite a shock. That was in graduate school. I went to a pretty small college, so I was
sort of the big fish in a small pond. Everything that was available in college, I pretty much
did. I got research grants, I won some awards at some research presentations, that was all
good. Got to graduate school, took an organic synthesis class my first semester and had
to drop it because I was incredibly over my head. And that was really the first time I
questioned whether I was actually doing the right thing with my career. Once you're in
graduate school, it seems like it's a bit late to start questioning that, but I was
questioning that. It turns out that was fine, I was just in, I was just in the wrong class.
And I took another couple classes, things were fine there. I got into a research group
and research program that I really liked. Not only the faculty member but the other
graduate students and post-docs in the group and that first three months was really difficult
but with the support of the people that knew what I was capable of, talking with my colleagues
back in college, that was a really good way to get through that.
An analogy for me, for doing science and for doing life is that both are a bit like doing
jigsaw puzzles. And I can make jigsaw puzzles impossible to solve with one rule change and
that is, you just touch each piece once. You gotta try a piece, doesn't fit, try another
one. So to me, science and life is to realize that if a piece doesn't fit, go ahead and
try another one. Don't give up, don't worry about it, on to the next one.
Alright, this is for you guys out there. It's- Science is so much fun. Try and get to the
fun, but also work on the basic skills because those skills of organization, personal time
management, are going to serve you well all the way through. So! Have fun in the lab,
but give yourself time to stay organized.
One thing I've really always loved about this job, the job of being a faculty member, being
a teacher, professor, however you want to put it, was the combination of all the different
things that you do. It's a very diverse job, so you're teaching, you're advising students,
you're doing research in the lab, going out and giving talks, meeting all kinds of new
people, hearing about fun science. It's, so at the same time, you're really kind of you're
own boss, so that I also like, being my own boss. Although, I technically have a supervisor,
they almost never talk to me. And the job gives a lot of flexibility and freedoms to,
for instance, I can set my own schedule as long as I'm getting what's expected of me
getting done, I can do it whenever I want to. So, there's a lot of freedoms. For instance,
I go to the gym almost every day over noon hour, and take an hour and a half and do that.
I make up for that time doing work at other times. I really like the combination of working
with students at the same time you get do research, you're discovering new things, things
that maybe no one else in the world has ever seen before. It may be that the discovery
isn't that groundbreaking, but it's something that I did or it was students that no one
else has ever discovered before, so that's kind of exciting.
I think that science is all about- developing science is all about creativity and new ideas.
And you really need lots of different people to come up with new ideas. Because they're
going to think up of ideas that I could never think of that are easy for them because they're
different from me. And that goes especially for minorities. We need scientists from all
walks of life because they're going to have ideas that would never occur to me, that I
would never even come close to, no matter how smart I think I am. So we need scientists
from all walks of life, especially minorities. And one of the biggest struggles I have, is
that I can't really, as sort of not a minority, I am not in a position to inspire students
of other races to do sciences. We need people in sciences to do that inspiring. We need
not only people who do the science, but people to be the ones to lead the way. So if I had
any reasons for wanting a minority to really go for the sciences is because we need their
creativity, we need their ideas, and we need them to bring more into sciences and that's
just the only way we're ever going to get anywhere in science.
Never give up. Trust in your abilities. It is a long, hard road to pursue undergrad degrees,
to pursue advance degrees, but if it's something you really, really want, then go for it. No
one's stopping you but yourself.
I think the best thing to continue to think about is that it's not that you have to do
science, it's that you get to science. If you like it, we tend to be good at what we
like, and like what we're good at. And maybe some particular aspects of it that are a little
fatiguing, that are laborious, but if you can get through those parts of it and see
the big picture of what you really like and what you really like to be doing, being able
to do science and being able to do the kinds of things that excite you. Not some sort of
external excitation- which is you know, there's awards and there's grants and there's all
sorts of things that are out there that are possible- but if you like what you're doing,
then it makes some of the difficult times significantly more bearable and you'll be
better at the science when things start to go well.