As I think about things I’m grateful for, community comes top of mind.
This week I announced that I’m building a company with the Allen Institute for AI. The outpouring of love and support from friends, colleagues, and the broader scientific community has been visceral. Thank you all for putting up with my wild ideas and quirky behavior.
For a long time, I very much felt like an outsider in science. Never the traditional candidate. But over the last dozen or so years, I’ve come to learn that’s basically all of us. We’re a bunch of misfit toys trying to find our way in a strange world. And that’s one of the things I love about it.
How did I even get here?
I came to science fairly late in life. As a high school student, I took a pathophysiology class and remember being excited to study neuroscience. When we dove into membrane biophysics and ion channels, I was like no way that’s too boring. Which is funny because that’s exactly what I ended up doing in my PhD.
But for whatever reason, I never thought I was smart enough for science. I didn’t take the SAT/ACT and only enrolled in community college at the encouragement of my grandpa - several years after finishing high school. After eventually enrolling in a major university, I took my first chemistry class and got a C+. That was the moment when I definitively said I’m not studying science. So I majored in english literature.
Somewhere close to my senior year, I did a legal internship for a murder case. Yeah sounds interesting, but I hated it and was like WTH am I going to do with my life. We were newly married, thinking about a family and I’m lost at sea.
Eventually I realized that I’d never really challenged myself. So maybe just see if I can go back and try my hand at chemistry. Long story short, I put in a ton of hard work and realized, wait, maybe it just requires effort. I fell in love with organic chemistry, changed my major to neuroscience and the rest is history.
Identifying as a scientist
I didn’t know what it meant to be a scientist - I’d never known any. Early in grad school, I remember someone telling me you don’t have to have a PhD to be a scientist (which is definitely true), but what are the qualifications? Honestly, I don’t know. But I strongly believe it’s a mindset, not an arcane collection of facts.
Over the last few years, I’ve interviewed more than 80 scientists for my podcast. The overarching question I’ve been asking is What does it mean to be a scientist? Do you need to be working at the bench or developing computational algorithms? (btw if you ask me, my answer is emphatically NO). Every single person I’ve talked to has a unique path. Many of them have felt like outsiders.
By nature, I think scientists tend to be a little “different” from other people. But I think there’s definitely a shared mindset - constantly curious, often contrarian, somewhat opinionated. To me, science is a way of approaching the world. As trite as it is to quote Steve Jobs, I’m gonna do it:
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Yes, we may be crazy. But gosh darnit, science is going to continue to change the world for the better.
Grateful for community
I’m beyond grateful that I’ve found my way into the scientific community. There’s nothing more exciting to me than being around people with big ideas to push the frontier of knowledge.
I’m grateful for the mentors who have guided me through the years. I’m indebted to the friends/colleagues who have refined my ideas. I’m honored to have built amazing things together. I’m thankful for the (sometimes very) difficult lessons I’ve learned along the way. And I’m beyond grateful for my family who has bolstered me during hard times and been a constant source of inspiration.
A career in science is a journey - one that I’m in the middle of. I’m grateful I’ve found my band of misfits to make the journey enjoyable.
Happy Thanksgiving!