Confession Time:
1/ never felt comfortable in a lab - I didn’t identify as a researcher - and felt like I was a fake neuroscientist
This was my perception of myself, and I used to hide out in the CS dept to do my neuro work because I felt ashamed of my diverse background...

2/ I recently bombed a Neuro interview that really I should have been able to do. My narrative was always “you should know this, you don’t belong here if you don’t”. So I skipped lab meetings to read papers instead and avoided lab socials.

3/ last night a PhD candidate said they’d like to keep working on a project with me. Just now I bumped into our post doc who said that it’s okay to work in lab, that it’s allowed to be my home. Tomorrow morning I present a project I’ve been working on to the board of directors.

4/ Academia is scary. STEM fields are scary and I felt like I didn’t belong for a long time. But the past year with #scitwitter and the quiet support of @tsay_jonathan and the rest of @ivrylab - I’m learning to trust myself, the process, and the growth.

5/ at OC5 I left @ID_AA_Carmack’s talk because I couldn’t keep up. This year I took 11 pages of notes.

It’s easy to lose sight of progress when you’re in the thick of it.

But really this is just a shoutout of appreciation to the mentors who have kept me in the space #thankyou