So I get a lot of questions, especially in messages,
asking about how I got excited about science
and what my relationship to it is now.
Am I doing science currently?
What am I doing?
So I thought I would take this video
to answer just a couple of those questions.
I don't really remember the first time that I really
got excited about science, but I do
remember the first teacher who made
me very excited about science.
It was my fifth grade science teacher, and he was so cool.
He was the first person that made science cool.
He had long hair and he always wore black high tops,
and he had bottled pig specimens in his classroom.
And he wouldn't accept anyone believing
that science was boring.
He did everything he could to make science fun
and exciting and interesting.
We made egg drop contraptions and we made catapults
to launch marshmallows.
We did all sorts of really fun stuff,
and it really made me think for the first time
that science was something cool and interesting.
So when I got to high school I was definitely a nerd
and I was definitely into science,
but I wasn't specifically a science nerd.
I really liked my Spanish courses
and I really loved writing.
And I also was co-captain of the math team.
So while I was taking lots of science courses
and I was definitely very interested in them,
I wasn't specifically a science nerd.
I was just more of an all-around academic nerd.
But my family was definitely very supportive
of me going into science.
My dad has a very scientific background,
and my mom was actually the first person who,
when I was about 14 or 15--
I was just standing around and I was like,
I don't know what I want to do with my life, and she was like,
oh, well, you'd probably be good at scientific research.
And so that was sort of a thing, and was sort of the first time
that somebody had said that to me.
So my family was definitely supportive of science,
but nobody was pushing me towards that specifically.
But when I got to college a lot of stuff changed.
I had a really rough time my first two years of college
and I never really felt like I fit in.
I had some great friends, but I couldn't find my place
in the school, and so I became really disillusioned
with science, actually, and academia.
I still thought that the subjects were cool.
I mean, no one can ever pull my love of biology from me,
but I felt at that point in time that I couldn't see myself
continuing on in science.
I couldn't see myself in a lab.
I couldn't see myself doing science as a career.
I really had a lot of trouble with it.
And so by the end of my sophomore year
I had pretty much given up.
I had decided that I didn't want to do science anymore.
I really didn't like it.
I didn't like anything about it.
And I feel like a lot of that had more
to do with how I was feeling.
I was really unhappy.
I didn't fit in.
I didn't know what I was doing.
And it didn't have much to do with science,
but I'd given up at that point.
At the end of my sophomore year I had given up on science,
and I didn't think that I wanted to do it anymore.
But thankfully, part of my scholarship
required that I work in the science lab for at least
two summers, and so the summer after my sophomore year
I had to get a position in a lab.
I wound up in the lab of my genetics professor,
and it was the best thing that could ever have happened to me.
I wound up in a lab of some of the most supportive, amazing
people, who not only taught me science, but also taught me
how to be a scientist and taught me
what science really could be.
They taught me how to run experiments,
how to make hypotheses, how to watch experiments fail and then
pick them up and rebuild them, how to write like a scientist.
And I spent two years in that lab,
and that was the most valuable experience
for me in the entirety of college, was being in that lab
and doing real research.
Now what I did, if you're curious,
I worked with fruit flies, which are my favorite little model
organism and they will be forever.
So I worked on gustatory nociception--
so sort of painful stimulation through eating.
Distilled down into its most basic form,
what I did for two years was I force-fed fruit flies wasabi.
And I know this sounds crazy, but what
we were doing was we were knocking down
different genes in the fruit fly.
If you have a normal fruit fly it should not
want to eat the wasabi.
But if you have a gene that's been knocked down in a fruit
fly, and the fruit fly now decides to eat the wasabi
and it's missing that gene, you can
tell that that gene had something
to do with the perception of the noxious stimuli in the wasabi.
So that's a really brief overview of it.
But I spent a lot of time in this lab.
I just felt so supported and I learned so much
about how to run experiments and really be a scientist.
That lab taught me how to be a scientist
and I am forever grateful to everyone in there for that.
So at the same time that my research lab was bringing back
my love of biology, I was also TA'ing in a biolab course.
Biolab had been the only course my sophomore year I'd
really enjoyed.
I had been so unhappy and that course
had been so awesome that I didn't want to let go of it.
My TA encouraged me to apply to be a TA and I did,
and so I spent most of my junior and senior year
of college TA'ing.
And that was the most fun I had in college.
I got to stand up in front of a group of 25 kids every week
and tell them something cool about science
and then teach them how to do experiments.
I was a crazy person.
I was the weirdest TA ever.
I would get up there and basically interpretive dance
my pre-lab lecture and tell people how to do things.
It was all very, very strange and not probably
your typical pre-lab, but the professor who ran
the course was the same way.
She was really excited about science and got people excited,
and so I tried to model myself after her
and get people excited about science.
And that was so much fun for me, to stand up there and be like,
this is DNA!
And this is RNA!
And let me tell you about it!
That was a lot of fun and that was
another huge thing my junior and senior year of college,
that I learned that, not only did I like science,
but I also loved teaching other people about it.
That was huge for me.
So on a related note, the first week of biolab,
my TA told us that we could either wear our own glasses
or we could wear safety goggles for the duration of the course.
Funny enough, the second week of lab,
I showed up with my own glasses, despite my nearly 20/20 vision.
So those two experiences, working in a research lab
and TA'ing for a biolab course, were
what made me finally feel like I had a place in college.
It wasn't a course.
It wasn't anything like that.
It was those two things that really
made me feel like I belonged and like I
had a place in not just my university, but also
the scientific world.
So I wound up graduating with two degrees, a bio
degree and a film degree.
And that film degree mixed its way in there
because during that sort of disillusioned, unhappy period,
I ran as far away from science as I could, to the film
department, which was admittedly a pretty small department
and they were doing their best.
But after I graduated, I knew that I
didn't want to go directly to grad school,
and I knew that at this point I wanted to do something
with teaching, something with education,
and I really enjoyed film.
And so I decided to take a year off
in between college and grad school
and to work in something media-related.
And I did just that.
I got a job at a media company--
and they're awesome, and that's where I'm working right now--
but it was only supposed to be for a year.
I was getting this extra media experience,
and I was learning so much, so much more
than I ever could have learned in my film classes.
Not to say anything bad about the film classes, but just
being in an actual job teaches you
so much more about anything.
Just like being in my lab position taught me
a lot more about science and how to be a scientist, actually
working in something film-related
taught me a lot more about film than any classes ever had.
So I was learning so much, but I was applying to grad schools
and when I got into a grad school,
I realized that I had a lot more to learn in film.
So I took another year off.
So I'm on my second year out of college right now.
I'm not currently working in anything science-related,
but I am returning to grad school in the fall
to a genetics program to go and get my PhD.
So for everyone who's asking are you in science right now, no.
I'm not.
I'm actually in this sort of weird limbo film and media
couple of years in between, but of course I still love science.
And that's part of the reason why I make these videos,
because I love talking to people about science.
I do have a volunteer position at a local aquarium
in the education department, and so I
get to teach people about marine bio
and about all sorts of cool fish stuff.
But I wanted something where I could sort of determine
the curriculum and where I could reclaim
a little bit of that experience of being
in my pre-lab lectures in bio lab and sort
of being excited about science and getting
other people excited about science.
And so that's part of the reason why these videos came about,
was because it was a way of smushing my bio
side and my film side together and getting people excited
and being excited and doing some awesome stuff.
So that's sort of where I am right now.
I make science videos, and I work at a media company,
and I'm headed back to grad school,
and there's lots and lots of really cool things happening.
So now I've gotten to this part in the video
and I'm not really sure what my thesis was.
I have always been a nerd, although not always
specifically a science nerd.
I'm just always sort of into learning and knowledge
and school.
I got a bio and film degree in college, which was not always
the easiest thing.
It took me a long time to really feel like I fit there.
And so if you are in high school or college
and you don't feel like you fit in, that's OK.
You will get through it, and I promise
that there is a place for you at wherever that institution is.
If you're in high school, if you're
in college, if you're past that, there is a place where you fit.
You just need to find it.
So go forth.
Do science.
And two things about that.
Go forth, do science-- that actually
came from my pre-lab lectures.
I would try and end off my pre-lab lectures.
I'd tell people about science then be like, all right!
Go forth!
Do science!
Because that's what my kids would be doing.
They would be going forth and doing experiments.
And number two, a lot of people get really confused
about what this is.
So this is American Sign Language for "I love you."
And this week, I feel like we all need a little bit more
of that than anything else.
With the events of the past week,
that's part of the reason why this video is
a little atypical.
The world can always use a little bit more love,
so just remember that this week, guys.
Spread a little bit more love out into the world, too.