m.ellemsby

I'm a little upset at the lack of stem in dark academia, so here's my list of aesthetic science things, STEM ACADEMIA (dark edition)

• relating a little too much to the mad scientist trope (and telling everyone "no, no I would never do anything like that, I just want to help people" but like imagine if we could resurrect people

• rereading Frankenstein every year, specifically in the month of october

• "why is STEAM a thing?? Art? who that?"

• minoring in classics because you still like mythology and history and reading

• finding the science in art (why things make you feel a certain way, how they do that, what effect they've had on health and medicine) and finding the art in science (isn't it incredible that dna knows how to tell plant cells to break down chlorophyll and this makes the gorgeous fall colors)

• reading every book that mentions at all a scientist or has a character who is interested in stem (they are few and far between)

• enjoying the structure of math and engineering but thriving off the chaos that is science

• where are the mad scientist women? I need this

• people being surprised when you tell them you're majoring in something "really science-y" after being an absolute bookworm and musician all throughout your childhood and having to defend what your heart desires (no? just me?)

• CARDIGANS are peak stem culture

• "why aren't you a doctor? why aren't you going to med school? why are you doing insert reasonable science degree here and not becoming a doctor? don't you want to help people?"

• wanting to go into genetics but wanting to go into botany but wanting to go into theoretical physics but wanting to go into astronomy but wanting to go into geology but wanting to go into chemical engineering but wanting to go into astrophysics but wanting to go into wildlife biology

• for some reason having a huge obsession with morals, ethics, and philosophy

• watching true crime just for the forensic bits

• watching mythbusters as a kid

• LISTENING TO TCHAIKOVSKY, BEETHOVEN, BACH, AND MOZART those are the stem classical musicians change my mind

• doing all your homework and frying your brain then getting to read a simple book that really refreshes you

• you had the astronomy and archaeology obsession as a kid

• listening to synth wave instrumentals

• MITOCHONDRIA IS THE POWERHOUSE OF THE CELL

• when people tell you that one cool science fact they learned and you try your hardest to encourage them but girl that wasn't even close to being correct

• ScienceDirect and PubMed are your go-to databases

• having lots of intrusive, existential thoughts that sometimes suffocate you, because you know better than most how much dark dna there is or how small we really are in the universe or knowing how much math explains and how little room there is for free will or thinking about how we are made up of mostly four types of atoms

• reading science or math textbooks for fun

• reading the fountainhead by ayn rand when you were way too young and didn't understand it but now parts of it emerge from the depths of your memory and you are struck by the power

• watching marvel and x-men and jurassic park just because

• reading sci-fi because it's the closest thing to real science in literature

• knowing a little too much about radiation poisoning and how to really dissolve a body in chemicals

• wearing white to make up for how little your professors make you wear lab coats

• having a favourite reciter

• wearing long coats

• wind blowing through your scarf

• jersey-hijabs in the summer

• islamic poetry

• writing essays in the library til it's dark outside

• coffee & tea with friends

• sharing homemade foods

• learning about islamic golden age; litterature, art & science

• praying at school

• combat boots

• glass waterbottle

• listening to old mid- and southasian & northafrican tunes

• well maintained nails

• watching the moon

• giving to charity

• ethical jewelry

• supporting poc & marginalised groups

• praying in mosques

• listening to podcasts on the bus

• a collection of duaas

• petting cats & dogs

Stop.

Wait a minute. Realize we can’t fill your cup for you.

Wanting to stop bad representation is all well and good. It’s noble! But just as fetishization can turn “I love this culture” into a negative because you actually love your idea of the culture, wanting to save the world from bad representation can also turn very negative.

Why? Because you want to play saviour to PoC.

We don’t need a saviour. Chances are, we’ve already written about the issue you want to write about. In your valiant effort to give accurate representation, tripping over yourself to ask what’s okay, what to avoid, how you can properly write this situation, how you can be a Good Ally and get cookies and generally stop being a White Person that’s discussed whenever PoC talk about racism… you add to the burden of emotional labour instead of detract from it.

You’re putting your own desire for immediate knowledge above everything else.

Instead of turning to Google and educating yourself, instead of going through our guides over and over again, instead of educating yourself across an extended period of time, instead of searching for authors of colour you can lift up, you want answers to your questions right now so you can stop being a White Person and just be a white person.

You won’t stop being a White Person overnight. You will not go from 0 to Passable Representation thanks to one question and one conversation. Even if we were to give you a list of what to avoid (which, honestly, our blog is a very large list of exactly that), it would still take you years of noticing your own behaviour to change. 

Take for example our most recent correction: using a Chinese example when the ask was about Tibet. Despite a fair chunk of education and several posts about how much China has taken over lands that do not want to be taken over by China, that mistake was still made. 

And that’s with education. That’s with knowing, intellectually, the context of China/Tibet relations. If you’re jumping in from scratch having only taken in enough racism education— enough to know you should be representing diverse cultures, not enough to know where to start— you’re going to make even worse mistakes.

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t start learning! But recognize it is a process, and that wanting to save the world isn’t a sustainable reason to educate yourself and write good representation. You probably shouldn’t jump straight into the deepest depths of representation right away.

So What Can I Do?

Write stories you think are worth telling because they’re interesting stories, not because you want to “prove” how good/interesting they are. Write stories you are curious about, instead of picking the most under-represented group you can think of. Make sure your drive is from curiosity, not white saviour. You shouldn’t be trying to prove to everyone these stories are worthwhile; you’re very likely to fall into model minority because you don’t want to show anything “bad.”

Signal boost stories PoC have already written. You are not the first person to write about an issue, and chances are authors of colour have done it better. You can use your white privilege to lift up PoC narratives, bringing them to a new audience. Look through #OwnVoices or #WeNeedDiverseBooks as a starting place. Give value to authors of colour writing about their own culture, their own world, instead of thinking the value comes from your outsider take on it.

Realize you’re going to have to start small: background characters, adding diversity to friend groups, having more than one of any ethnicity to avoid tokenism. If you do fantasy writing, start by learning about trade routes such as the Silk Road and add in references to other countries’ trade links, while also realizing “exotic trader” is a very toxic trope.

Also, realize you’re going to be in this for the long haul. If you are interested in a fully immersive story set in another culture, you’re going to be spending years, perhaps a decade, learning enough about it to do it justice.

You don’t need to ask us to get the basics (food/clothing/religion/trade relations) of a culture. We can tell when you haven’t researched it.  

Writers are renowned for our research ability. How long will you spend looking up the weather in 1600s England, the process of learning how to be a swordsman, the average medical knowledge of a farmhand? The same applies to learning about PoC settings. You might be starting from scratch, but simple searches like “clothing in 1500s China”, “goods that traveled on the Silk Road”, and “Native American cities pre-contact” are starting places. It might be a little more basic because of unfamiliarity, but remember that you didn’t know stuff about Europe once upon a time.

Learn the definitions of appropriation, fetishization, and white saviour. Realize they all come from the same roots: a person’s ideas about a culture over the actual reality of the culture. Instead of assuming you know what there is to know, research to find out if you “know” a fake thing. You might “know” how horses work, but do you know the Disney version or the horseback rider version? 

The research we are asking you do is the same research. It’s the same steps of searching for a particular fact and building your story based on the details you uncover. It’s not some murky waters of hard to find information— especially as the internet is ever-expanding, and sometimes a few years or even a few months down the line you discover the information has been made available (“weather in India” wasn’t a wikipedia article 12 years ago, for example).

Learn you and your ideas are secondary. The facts are first. It will take time to learn that you are secondary, because whiteness by nature puts itself first. It is not an instant process because you don’t realize how deep it runs. You will mess up. You will get corrections.

Apologize (genuinely— no “I’m sorry if I offended you”; say “I’m sorry I made this error”), admit you were wrong, and do better. Research more, take more time, maybe even edit the previous work with your new knowledge so it really sticks. This is, after all, a process! 

You just have to do the work. You can’t come to us and say “how do I represent this group”, because we can’t tell you in a reply to one ask. You have to dive into the history, current situation, and culture of the people you want to represent. 

You have to fill your own cup of knowledge, and willingly drink all parts of culture: sweet and bitter alike. Drink from cups we have offered you already instead of trying to build your own. You can’t just take the sweet (finding it a fantasy world) or the bitter (the trauma of racism) and think you have enough.

some of my favourite microscope images I’ve taken

Max Planck before (1878) and after (1901) founding quantum theory.

math: solving problems in the middle of the night, equations are written on the windowpane, quick calculations in your head, seeing mathematics as a secret language and barrier from the rest of the world, using probability theory to present a person’s life before their very eyes, understanding the algorithms governing every single step of „fate“ and how to manipulate them for your favor, cryptic notebooks, and lost alleyways

engineering: the power to create something that surpasses that is more than humans will ever be, governing and shaping the future of a whole civilization, late-night philosophizing on the nature and difference between humans and machines, crammed study sessions and tired blood-shot eyes

biology: extensive knowledge about herbology and toxicology, knowing almost every plant-based toxin and toxic mushroom in the local area, midnight at the lab with lowlights on and the dark hallways shrouded in mystery, glancing white lab-coats from the corner of your eye

chemistry: spending hours upon hours alone in the lab, perfecting formulas and conducting research because you just know the breakthrough is so close, sudden heureka moments in the middle of the night, inhaling new substances at secret meetings in old buildings to reach a state no human has reached before, prolonged shared eye contact and knowing smiles, the sound of a pen hastingly scribbling chemical formulas into a notebook

physics: „after all, murder is just the redistribution of matter, and matter is my specialty“, pointing out constellations in the sky, seeing patterns no one has seen before, wearing black turtlenecks and long coats while discussing quantum mechanics, hushed whispers, the melancholy of the endless search for another inhabitable planet, coffee cups left on the window sill

comp sci: the sound of typing at lightning speed, a lone screen glowing the absolute dark, losing track of time as you completely lose yourself in your code, trying again and again and again until it finally works, absolute dedication, crafting algorithms that can be used for good – but also for evil, code marathons isolating you from the rest of the world, being able to change lives at the press of a button

scratched notes of equations, detailed diagrams with annotations of bones & blood vessels, old notebooks containing maths problems invented & solved in a quiet afternoon.

classical music blasting from a cheap speaker. cold university dorms with posters of animal bones & carcass that were too beautiful to be passed.

debates over conservation expectations, dancing to the sound of rain after a long lecture. sleepless nights in the library, staring at a screen that no longer makes sense.

kind professors in tweed jackets & loose blouses, demonstrating how to calculate a sum, or take apart a specimen.

the computer science students

as requested by @a-vintage-soul

pacing around your room, trying to work out a difficult bug

messy hair tucked back behind your ears

thick textbooks and multicolored highlighters

a battered old computer bag that holds everything you need

loving puzzles, the moment of understanding when it all fits together

late nights with your face illuminated by the glow of a computer screen

redoing the same problem again and again until it’s efficient as possible

the soft click of computer keys

pride in what you’ve created, the thousands of lines of code a testament to your hard work

ideas scribbled in blue pen

your favorite mug, tea-stained and always on your desk

colored LED lights decorating your room with a soft glow

being frustrated by bad web design because you know you could do better

getting sucked in by a challenge and losing track of time

a photo of Ada Lovelace, framed on your desk

wrapping yourself in your favorite blanket

learning as many programming languages as possible, loving the versatility of your skill-set

background music playing through headphones

seeing the impact of your work on the real world

glasses slipping down your nose as you work

the satisfaction of figuring out something particularly complex

So it's admission/recruitment season, which is super exciting and somewhat surreal, since one (fake, pandemic-riddled) year ago I was going through the same thing and now I'm one of the student hosts for prospective students. No one in my immediate family ever got a research degree that I know of, so I went into this whole process somewhat blindly. That said, one year later here's what I learned:

Vibe checks are KEY.

what does that mean? It means if you feel weird (even a little bit) about a lab's dynamics, one of the lab members, the PI, or the school in general, that is very important to note and consider when making your final choice. If you love the PI but the lab doesn't seem like a good fit in terms of the personalities of the current members... I personally would be really wary. You're going to be spending way more time with your lab mates than your PI, so if you don't like that environment it's going to be a long few years. If it seems like a lot of students across the department aren't happy, that's also a red flag because it suggests that student happiness isn't a priority to the faculty in charge, and it is likely that you will join the ranks of unhappy students. If the PI you're interested in has ridiculous work expectations that don't match up to what you're prepared for, that's also going to be a rough time. I personally asked at every lab I was interested in what the typical work hours were, if people worked weekends (and if yes, how often), and how much vacation time people were allowed to take. That helped me knock off several PIs and narrowed my school choice down.

Are you excited?

I think I often fall into the trap of thinking "hey, science is cool. I'm sure I could get excited about any science once I'm actively doing it". I would recommend not approaching grad school and grad school visits like this. You want to be actively excited about an area even at the get go- and I'm sure if you've applied to grad school that there is some topic that you have particular interest in. I would recommend finding out who does that work at the schools you're interested, and focussing on vibe-checking them as described above. If nobody is doing the kind of work you have particular interest in at a certain school, that's also a ding in my book.

How do people live?

This has some overlap with the vibe check in that you want the people who are in the department to seem fulfilled and happy with their situation. Specifically, it's worth asking how far the stipend stretches in the area. Is the cost of living high? If so, how much of the stipend goes to rent, parking, groceries etc? How much do people get to save? What opportunities do people have to have fun outside of school/lab? I would also lump in COVID policies in this section as the response will show how much the department prioritizes student/worker well-being vs productivity. It's also worth reflecting on your own preferences with regards to location - do you prefer living in a large city, adjacent to one, or farther away from one? I didn't take that into account in undergrad and I ended up moving out of campus housing because I didn't like being so far out in the suburbs.

Can you get involved?

This might be more of a personal thing but I also really wanted to find a school where I could get involved with things like science policy, science outreach, and diversity initiatives. If that sounds interesting to you, definitely look into what sort of extra-curricular opportunities the school supports for graduate students. Also, are students invited to departmental meetings? How do students make their concerns heard? I think those are all good things to know before committing to a school.

By the time decision date had rolled around, I'd narrowed my choices down to 3 schools. In the end it came down to 1. location, 2. which school had more people that did work I was interested in, and 3. which school had people who were most interested in me. I've been really happy so far so I think it worked out well. Hopefully this post helps some of you as well!

Grad school is an exciting new chapter! Congratulations on your well-deserved and hard-earned acceptances!!

(by me)

Gatekeeping just sucks

If you like historical styles you should also research the historical styles of other cultures, not just Euro-American. Seriously

Most current museum workers are not racist/classist and are actively working to fix the structural problems inherent in museum work. The British Museum system and Smithsonians just give a lot of bad names to the practice.

If you want a more diverse workforce in Academia, raise your beginning wages and lower the risk of starting out in academia. Otherwise, only rich white kids will feel comfortable starting out in these jobs.