I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to answer the question “So what is your work?” The well-meaning small-talk initiator probably has no clue that they triggered an internal existential crisis.
I started graduate school just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic. While I took molecular medicine classes and listened to lectures from scientists who had worked on coronaviruses long before SARS-COV2 became a household topic, the world was actively dividing along the lines of misinformation and disinformation. Even in my nuclear family, where my mom is a registered nurse and my grandmother is a secretary on an ICU unit, we argued about the crazy beliefs that the virus was fake and the vaccine was a way to track us. (To this day, I still stand that the government doesn’t need a vaccine to track us, especially since we volunteer our data and whereabouts in these portable devices called cellphones)
As a basic scientist, it was amazing to see how quickly YEARS of research, failed experiments, and researchers walking away from seminars thinking “That technology is probably meaningful, but I’m not sure how” went into the materialization of the mRNA vaccine in 11 months! All of that excitement stopped in its tracks when I had to defend my decision to get the COVID vaccine as soon as it was available to me on a phone call with my brother. The most meaningful comment during that came during that time came from my mom who said “He does not see you as a scientist, he sees you as his older sister” in the middle of a rant full of “How could he say those things to me? I can explain how it was made and how it works. I’ve seen the tired researchers who’ve poured their lives into this work. I’ve watched healthcare workers isolate themselves from their families so that they don’t infect their loved ones. There’s no way that this is made up.”
Years later, her comment still shapes how I view science communication and how I should view my life.
Back to “What do you do for work?”
During COVID, answering that question with “I’m a scientist, pursuing a PhD in the biomedical sciences” usually led to an unwelcome rant about how Fauci is a dictator and what even is a so-called scientist. So much that I stopped answering the question altogether. Scientist became a trigger word for the misinformed.
So I started saying, “I study diabetes and obesity. I want to understand the factors beyond diet that are contributing to the obesity crisis in America”. That led to rants about how the government is purposely making us fat through our food, and the answer to why we are obese is obvious —Americans are lazy.
So I started saying, “I just finished graduate school, and I’m figuring it out”.
Now, I don’t work in a research laboratory, but I work very closely with some of the most talented researchers in the world. My mission is to support scientists, people who care so much about a topic that they are willing to be underpaid, overworked, respected in select settings, and always in the pursuit of an answer. Despite all of my years of training — 4 years as a pre-med undergrad, 4.5 years as a PhD student, 1 year as a postdoctoral fellow — I am finally redefining myself. I think it would be useful for people who are still in the lab to do the same.
I’m starting Nice Human with research scientists in mind. Your grit and intellect are impressive, but that isn’t the most incredible thing about you. If you were not a researcher, your brother would still want to talk to his sister. Your partner would still need a supportive lover. Your mother/grandmother/father/aunt/uncle still sees all of your past lives intertwined with your reality. Your best friend from the first grade remembers your Lizzy McGuire craze. You will impact lives even if you don’t discover the next groundbreaking therapeutic or publish in Nature, or win the Nobel Prize.
I hope you’ll log in each week to be reminded that before being a researcher, you are human. That makes you pretty special. Take care of your special.
You can be an avid fantasy reader, a Dungeon master, a Beyoncé fan, a Pilates instructor, an aspiring guitarist…and also a scientist.