EgoHeroine

To all the Ladies in STEM

Ok…so here I am, a woman in science. I didn’t originally intend to go into science. Why? Because I thought it would be too hard. I thought that since I hadn’t been obsessed with science since I was five, and because I still wasn’t closely following science news or trying to invent something amazing by the age of fifteen, that I was clearly not cut out for it. I’d save those jobs for the people that were perfect for it. I have a LOT of hobbies and I get distracted easily. I’d probably just fail and ruin everything.

Well guess what? I spent a whole year of undergrad as an arts management major. I took calculus because I felt bad about not taking it in high school (yeah who does that?)

There I was a freshman in college taking a geology class because I might as well get my science credits out of the way. When I changed my major to geology it was a leap of faith. I felt like there were too many other things to be interested in, and it was hard to decide what direction to take. I felt like I was bad at science because I wasn’t making straight A’s like I did in high school. It made me afraid that I might have made the wrong decision.

In spite of all of this, I graduated with above a 3.0 GPA in four years. I also had SO much fun learning about how amazing our planet is.

It’s easy to look at the ways you've failed, but it’s time for us to look at the ways we succeed. I’m going to grad school to study something that could help potentially thousands of people. Sometimes you just have to keep the end goal in sight and remember that you’re in science because you love it. Nobody else can tell you otherwise. If you care about science then you’re in the right place. There’s love and there’s apathy. If you think science is cool and you are always asking questions then you belong here.

Not to say science isn’t discouraging. Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to. Experiments fail, you work on a project that isn’t that interesting to you, and sometimes the subject matter is just plain hard to grasp or boring. It doesn’t mean you’re in the wrong place. Everyone feels like that sometimes.