Season 1 |
Bonus Episode 6: How to think critically about your career
[00:00:00] EMILIA: Hey Rori.
[00:00:00] RORI: Hey Emilia. Oh my gosh. Maria Elena Zabala
[00:00:03] EMILIA: I mean, she's such a great mentor.
[00:00:07] RORI: Oh yeah.
[00:00:08] EMILIA: You know, I thought it was that story that didn't make it to the episode. It's funny that, well, not funny, but when she was in Pomona, when she was an undergraduate, she was married and, um, a barrier that she faced is that she couldn't go out to lunch with the speakers that used to come to give talks because
[00:00:25] RORI: she got kicked out of the dorm.
[00:00:27] EMILIA: Because she was married.
[00:00:28] RORI: Yeah. Yeah, like as if people weren't already having sex in the dorms or something, but whatever. But so she couldn't then go to the dining hall and so she couldn't go out with the like scientist guest speakers.
[00:00:39] EMILIA: Yeah, but luckily somebody opened up an opportunity for a job and she was able to work and then have money to go to lunch.
[00:00:48] RORI: Yeah, and he did that for that reason, right? This kind of, this professor was like, I'm gonna hire you because you're a promising scientist and then you're gonna have money to go to lunch.
[00:00:55] EMILIA: Exactly.
[00:00:55] RORI: And clearly because he's gonna benefit from having her in his lab.
[00:00:58] EMILIA: Yes. Yes, so it was also a benefit to everybody, not just to Maria Elena.
[00:01:02] RORI: Well, listeners, welcome back to another Science Wise bonus episode. This time, Emilia and I are talking about our top three take-home from our wonderful conversation with Dr. Maria Elena de Zavala. So, let's see.
Emilia, the first lesson I have here is to take lessons and inspiration from your people, which for Maria Elena was her family of origin.
[00:01:29] EMILIA: Right. I mean, she, she had a pretty badass family. She basically desegregated her school.
[00:01:37] RORI: Yeah. Yeah. Amazingly. Like, Maria Elena got to go to a more resourced school because of her aunt's activism and desegregation.
[00:01:43] EMILIA: Yeah, I mean, she learned a lot from her whole family, her grandparents, her uncles and aunts, and her parents. And I think that's something that's really special to be around so many people. family members. And I think one of the privileges of being like a new generation is to be able to take all the lessons that you want from the people around you and then you have the opportunity to also carve a new path.
[00:02:11] RORI: Yeah. And she really did that, right? Like she learned from her family to be skeptical of leaders and to, you know, and to work for the change. And she, she kept that her whole career. And she learned from her grandmother about plants. So like her grandmother was a curandera and her dad obviously worked in citrus orchards and she took all of that with her and she didn't do everything they wanted. Right?. Like when we were like, what would your great-grandmother think of your botany career?
[00:02:38] EMILIA: She said she would not be happy.
[00:02:40] RORI: Yeah. She was like, Oh, she'd hate it. She wanted, her great grandmother had the idea of these like traditional family roles and was like, well, you're a woman. You're not working. Definitely not. And Maria Elena was like, well, goodbye to that part of what I learned from my family. Keep the things I want. Goodbye to the parts that I don't want.
[00:02:56] EMILIA: I thought it was funny how she rationalized that she was lucky not to be a man.
[00:03:02] RORI: Totally. Like, yeah, that was very enjoyable. And I was like, yeah, that does make sense. Yeah. And she was like, great, I don't have to support a family, but I am gonna get a job, but I don't have to make any money. It's a great philosophy for being an academic. Okay, Emilia, what's your lesson number two?
[00:03:17] EMILIA: My lesson number two, and I think that's true for me and probably for you as well, is that you don't need to share identities with the people who will mentor you, but you do need trust and rapport with them.
[00:03:30] RORI: Yes. And this is, you know, this is not to say that it's not crucially important that we improve the proportion of Black, Latina, Indigenous, women, non-binary scientists who are mentoring positions, but with the limited options that we have available at this point, the important thing is trust and rapport over identities.
And she said something funny about that at some point, right? She was like, Oh, if I waited for a mentor who looked like me, I would still be waiting.
[00:03:56] EMILIA: Yeah. We have to be realistic that there's not going to be that many people that necessarily look like us. So sometimes your mentors are people that come from a different background, but.
[00:04:09] RORI: Right, like her undergrad mentor. She had this undergrad mentor who was really important to her. She felt like they were both really working class. And she felt like they had similar stories. And that working with him, she felt like she had a sense of belonging. Even though they didn't share some key identities.
He's the one who was like, you're free, white, and young. He said to her and she was like, uh, not quite, but she educated him. He was lucky for that. And because they had some rapport, she did see how he believed in her and she did see how he supported her as a mentee.
[00:04:38] EMILIA: Yeah. And I think it felt like she belonged even though, you know, she got kicked out of the dorms and stuff, at least for her science, her scientific identity she felt belonging, I would say, in her research.
[00:04:50] RORI: Yeah, and it's something that's so impressive to me is that how humble she is as a mentor. You know, she shares a lot of identities with her students at CSUN, at California State University, Northridge, and she really acknowledged the differences, and she acknowledges that she grew up with much more stability So she acknowledges her privilege, and then she goes on to do her own learning.
She like reading, and she's like trying to educate herself so that she can better mentor her students in the ways that she doesn't already know how to do it because it wasn't her lived experience.
[00:05:19] EMILIA: Right. And I think for people looking out to be mentors, I think it's important for them to know that there will be challenges and, and one of the things that we don't get training on is mentoring.
And so for a new faculty or, or, you know, new postdocs who are mentoring undergraduates and, or even grad students mentoring undergrads, even if we share some identities, there's still have, our lives could be completely different and our lived experiences could be completely different. And so I think it's being a good mentor is probably also learning from your mentees and vice versa.
[00:05:52] RORI: Oh yeah, I learned so much from my mentees. I feel like my rate of learning hasn't changed since my primary role has switched from mentee to mentor, you know? My mentees are still my best teachers. I feel like Maria Elena Zavala as a mentor also is so connected to her family of origin and we talked about how she took lessons from them and then she did things differently.
And as a mentor, she's trying to provide her students, her mentees, with tips, with context, with information, and then they make the decisions. She doesn't make the decisions and they'll do something different from her and she sees that as a very good thing.
[00:06:26] EMILIA: I think if we are a mentor, we don't necessarily have to have all the answers, but we just have to provide A thought or like a new perspective or something that the student, may not have thought about.
[00:06:37] RORI: Emilia, did you ever have a time when a mentor gave you a tip or information or context that was hard for you to receive?
[00:06:44] EMILIA: Um, I would say that there was a time when I was in grad school and one of my mentors was going to have a summer research program at another university. And I wanted to go to that summer research program because they were my community.
See you. You knew a lot of people in that group. Yes, I knew a lot of people in that group. I had gone to other summer research programs with them. So, and they were going to grad school with me. And so when I said, could I come in and join you for this summer research program? He told me, no, you need to focus on your research and what you want to do.
[00:07:20] RORI: How did it feel to get that no?
[00:07:22] EMILIA: Um, I felt hurt because I was being told not to be part of this group anymore in some way.
[00:07:29] RORI: That sounds like a little rejection or something.
[00:07:31] EMILIA: Right. And they were my social group and they were going to go to a place and I was not going to go with them. But he was right. I wanted, the research that I wanted to do was something where the people who were doing that research were at my institution they were staying. And so I needed to focus and work with them.
[00:07:50] RORI: Okay. So it's like for your career goals, he knew that this was a better thing or more appropriate thing, but it was not what you wanted.
[00:07:56] EMILIA: Because I was going to seek a lot of my friends.
[00:07:59] RORI: Yeah. You're like, friendships matter. We talk about this here.
But in this case, you did take his advice. Right?
[00:08:05] EMILIA: Yes.
[00:08:05] RORI: How'd it go?
[00:08:06] EMILIA: I mean, it was the right choice. I, I mean, it was the right advice and I'm happy I stayed. It helped, definitely helped my career. I can say that. Yeah.
[00:08:13] RORI: Well, way too, way to roll with the tough advice.
[00:08:16] EMILIA: Yeah.
And I, I appreciate that now.
[00:08:18] RORI: Okay. Emilia, you ready for the third lesson?
[00:08:19] EMILIA: Yes.
What is the third lesson?
[00:08:21] RORI: Okay. The third lesson.
We need many different types of mentors and this we want to say in part because we want to, uh, hold the complexity of what we learned from. Sue Rosser and what we're learning from Marielena, right? In our bonus for Sue Rosser's episode, you and I talked about how you can just get a mentor by asking a question, by asking for help, and then that's how you start to build a mentoring relationship. I stand by that. Do you think so?
[00:08:47] EMILIA: I think so. And I think Marielena would also agree with that. I mean, when we asked her, what is mentoring for you? And she talked about transferring knowledge.
[00:08:55] RORI: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:55] EMILIA: Uh, and information, which is something that we get, we can obtain by asking questions. I mean, the reason we interview these women is because I think we want to be mentored by them as well.
[00:09:06] RORI: Yes, yes.
[00:09:06] EMILIA: And so this is our way of getting mentorship by asking them questions. Totally. And so students can do that all the time. They can ask people, you know, And that's why we create all these social situations in academia to have that space to be able to ask questions.
[00:09:22] RORI: Yeah. Maria Elena also talked about how you really need trust and rapport with a mentor.
I think there are different types of mentors. Like if you have like a primary mentor who is like helping you develop as a scientist, and guiding you through doing research projects, and learning new skills, like major career advice, that is an important mentoring relationship. And that mentor can't provide you with all of the mentoring you need.
You need these other relationships for other things where you need help with development. And so I guess I would say that there are many different types of mentoring relationships that we need, and some of them require trust and intimacy, and some of them
don't.
[00:09:59] EMILIA: Correct. I think, especially in academia, right, there's the research mentors, there's the teaching mentors, there's the social mentors, career development mentors.
[00:10:10] RORI: Oh yeah. You know, actually, okay, I called Sue Rosser for mentorship at a time when I had multiple job offers and was trying to figure out how to navigate and how to negotiate. I called Sue Rosser and I was like, Sue, do you have 20 minutes to help me figure out what I can ask for, what I can't ask for, or what is? you know, not going to be productive for this negotiation. And since she's been a dean and a provost, she had very relevant experience. So while Sue Rosser is not like my go to person to ask all the questions, I did reach out to her for mentoring for that. If I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to like to use a piece of software, I'm trying to like use people in population genetics know about and there's something I want to do and I don't know how to do it.
I'm obviously not going to reach out to Sue Rosser because that's not her jam, but I can walk down the hall to Peter Ralph, who is more of my peer and who knows that particular software very well, and he can give me the answer that I would like.
[00:11:05] EMILIA: Yeah, I think it's good that you called Sue. That sounds like what you needed to do.
[00:11:10] RORI: Yeah. Yeah. And I feel lucky I had like enough of a relationship with her that she like,
[00:11:15] EMILIA: I think sometimes it could be intimidating to ask somebody for information.
[00:11:20] RORI: Oh yeah.
[00:11:20] EMILIA: And so I think it helps to talk to your peers. And it's possible that they have already asked some of those questions to people who have more experience and they can connect you or they can tell you, well, you know, that person would be good at answering that question.
[00:11:35] RORI: Well, you know, Emilia, okay. In that same time, when I had these job offers and I was figuring out how to deal with it, I called you, of course, of course, I called you because I would call you no matter what, even if I wasn't actively seeking mentorship, but I called you and I was like, Ooh, what does this mean? How do I do this? And you had some ideas from your own experience. But you also knew people who would have useful information. And you were like, Oh, I know this person recently got this job offer, and you can probably approach them and ask them and they would be happy to tell you. And I did, and it was really useful.
So it's kind of like diving into the network for mentorship too. And this is, I'm not talking about like a social media network. Some people do that. I don't know how to do that. But it was like our actual social relationships network.
[00:12:16] EMILIA: Yeah, exactly. And this could be people that you know from other contexts.
Maybe they were grad students with you or they were postdocs with you or young faculty. I think, and also people might not answer your question, but that's, that's okay.
[00:12:30] RORI: Totally, totally. And those relationships stay, right? The people who you've known, you still know those people.
[00:12:35] EMILIA: Yeah. I think that's actually an important point to make.
[00:12:37] RORI: We have opinions about this.
[00:12:38] EMILIA: Yes, I have opinions about this. My network are the people that I sort of grew up with, uh, who I overlap with as an undergrad, as a grad student, as a postdoc, you know, the people that are my collaborators. I, I work with them at some point in when I was a trainee. So if you're a trainee, meaning a student or postdoc, people that you're surrounded by, those are the people that probably you're going to call sometimes or work with.
[00:13:05] RORI: Yeah.
[00:13:06] EMILIA: They're the ones that will also help you. So. Think about that when you are in those communities, that those are the people you're gonna see in the future.
[00:13:14] RORI: Yeah, so building the relationships is worthwhile, your friendships are gonna continue to matter, and, you know, I would say, like, careful shitting where you eat, because there's still you, like, 20 years later.
Okay, Emilia, it's always a pleasure. I can't wait for the next time we get to chat.
[00:13:32] EMILIA: Hopefully very soon, Rori. And adios, everyone!
[00:13:36] RORI: Okay, hasta pronto!
[00:00:00] RORI: Hey Emilia. Oh my gosh. Maria Elena Zabala
[00:00:03] EMILIA: I mean, she's such a great mentor.
[00:00:07] RORI: Oh yeah.
[00:00:08] EMILIA: You know, I thought it was that story that didn't make it to the episode. It's funny that, well, not funny, but when she was in Pomona, when she was an undergraduate, she was married and, um, a barrier that she faced is that she couldn't go out to lunch with the speakers that used to come to give talks because
[00:00:25] RORI: she got kicked out of the dorm.
[00:00:27] EMILIA: Because she was married.
[00:00:28] RORI: Yeah. Yeah, like as if people weren't already having sex in the dorms or something, but whatever. But so she couldn't then go to the dining hall and so she couldn't go out with the like scientist guest speakers.
[00:00:39] EMILIA: Yeah, but luckily somebody opened up an opportunity for a job and she was able to work and then have money to go to lunch.
[00:00:48] RORI: Yeah, and he did that for that reason, right? This kind of, this professor was like, I'm gonna hire you because you're a promising scientist and then you're gonna have money to go to lunch.
[00:00:55] EMILIA: Exactly.
[00:00:55] RORI: And clearly because he's gonna benefit from having her in his lab.
[00:00:58] EMILIA: Yes. Yes, so it was also a benefit to everybody, not just to Maria Elena.
[00:01:02] RORI: Well, listeners, welcome back to another Science Wise bonus episode. This time, Emilia and I are talking about our top three take-home from our wonderful conversation with Dr. Maria Elena de Zavala. So, let's see.
Emilia, the first lesson I have here is to take lessons and inspiration from your people, which for Maria Elena was her family of origin.
[00:01:29] EMILIA: Right. I mean, she, she had a pretty badass family. She basically desegregated her school.
[00:01:37] RORI: Yeah. Yeah. Amazingly. Like, Maria Elena got to go to a more resourced school because of her aunt's activism and desegregation.
[00:01:43] EMILIA: Yeah, I mean, she learned a lot from her whole family, her grandparents, her uncles and aunts, and her parents. And I think that's something that's really special to be around so many people. family members. And I think one of the privileges of being like a new generation is to be able to take all the lessons that you want from the people around you and then you have the opportunity to also carve a new path.
[00:02:11] RORI: Yeah. And she really did that, right? Like she learned from her family to be skeptical of leaders and to, you know, and to work for the change. And she, she kept that her whole career. And she learned from her grandmother about plants. So like her grandmother was a curandera and her dad obviously worked in citrus orchards and she took all of that with her and she didn't do everything they wanted. Right?. Like when we were like, what would your great-grandmother think of your botany career?
[00:02:38] EMILIA: She said she would not be happy.
[00:02:40] RORI: Yeah. She was like, Oh, she'd hate it. She wanted, her great grandmother had the idea of these like traditional family roles and was like, well, you're a woman. You're not working. Definitely not. And Maria Elena was like, well, goodbye to that part of what I learned from my family. Keep the things I want. Goodbye to the parts that I don't want.
[00:02:56] EMILIA: I thought it was funny how she rationalized that she was lucky not to be a man.
[00:03:02] RORI: Totally. Like, yeah, that was very enjoyable. And I was like, yeah, that does make sense. Yeah. And she was like, great, I don't have to support a family, but I am gonna get a job, but I don't have to make any money. It's a great philosophy for being an academic. Okay, Emilia, what's your lesson number two?
[00:03:17] EMILIA: My lesson number two, and I think that's true for me and probably for you as well, is that you don't need to share identities with the people who will mentor you, but you do need trust and rapport with them.
[00:03:30] RORI: Yes. And this is, you know, this is not to say that it's not crucially important that we improve the proportion of Black, Latina, Indigenous, women, non-binary scientists who are mentoring positions, but with the limited options that we have available at this point, the important thing is trust and rapport over identities.
And she said something funny about that at some point, right? She was like, Oh, if I waited for a mentor who looked like me, I would still be waiting.
[00:03:56] EMILIA: Yeah. We have to be realistic that there's not going to be that many people that necessarily look like us. So sometimes your mentors are people that come from a different background, but.
[00:04:09] RORI: Right, like her undergrad mentor. She had this undergrad mentor who was really important to her. She felt like they were both really working class. And she felt like they had similar stories. And that working with him, she felt like she had a sense of belonging. Even though they didn't share some key identities.
He's the one who was like, you're free, white, and young. He said to her and she was like, uh, not quite, but she educated him. He was lucky for that. And because they had some rapport, she did see how he believed in her and she did see how he supported her as a mentee.
[00:04:38] EMILIA: Yeah. And I think it felt like she belonged even though, you know, she got kicked out of the dorms and stuff, at least for her science, her scientific identity she felt belonging, I would say, in her research.
[00:04:50] RORI: Yeah, and it's something that's so impressive to me is that how humble she is as a mentor. You know, she shares a lot of identities with her students at CSUN, at California State University, Northridge, and she really acknowledged the differences, and she acknowledges that she grew up with much more stability So she acknowledges her privilege, and then she goes on to do her own learning.
She like reading, and she's like trying to educate herself so that she can better mentor her students in the ways that she doesn't already know how to do it because it wasn't her lived experience.
[00:05:19] EMILIA: Right. And I think for people looking out to be mentors, I think it's important for them to know that there will be challenges and, and one of the things that we don't get training on is mentoring.
And so for a new faculty or, or, you know, new postdocs who are mentoring undergraduates and, or even grad students mentoring undergrads, even if we share some identities, there's still have, our lives could be completely different and our lived experiences could be completely different. And so I think it's being a good mentor is probably also learning from your mentees and vice versa.
[00:05:52] RORI: Oh yeah, I learned so much from my mentees. I feel like my rate of learning hasn't changed since my primary role has switched from mentee to mentor, you know? My mentees are still my best teachers. I feel like Maria Elena Zavala as a mentor also is so connected to her family of origin and we talked about how she took lessons from them and then she did things differently.
And as a mentor, she's trying to provide her students, her mentees, with tips, with context, with information, and then they make the decisions. She doesn't make the decisions and they'll do something different from her and she sees that as a very good thing.
[00:06:26] EMILIA: I think if we are a mentor, we don't necessarily have to have all the answers, but we just have to provide A thought or like a new perspective or something that the student, may not have thought about.
[00:06:37] RORI: Emilia, did you ever have a time when a mentor gave you a tip or information or context that was hard for you to receive?
[00:06:44] EMILIA: Um, I would say that there was a time when I was in grad school and one of my mentors was going to have a summer research program at another university. And I wanted to go to that summer research program because they were my community.
See you. You knew a lot of people in that group. Yes, I knew a lot of people in that group. I had gone to other summer research programs with them. So, and they were going to grad school with me. And so when I said, could I come in and join you for this summer research program? He told me, no, you need to focus on your research and what you want to do.
[00:07:20] RORI: How did it feel to get that no?
[00:07:22] EMILIA: Um, I felt hurt because I was being told not to be part of this group anymore in some way.
[00:07:29] RORI: That sounds like a little rejection or something.
[00:07:31] EMILIA: Right. And they were my social group and they were going to go to a place and I was not going to go with them. But he was right. I wanted, the research that I wanted to do was something where the people who were doing that research were at my institution they were staying. And so I needed to focus and work with them.
[00:07:50] RORI: Okay. So it's like for your career goals, he knew that this was a better thing or more appropriate thing, but it was not what you wanted.
[00:07:56] EMILIA: Because I was going to seek a lot of my friends.
[00:07:59] RORI: Yeah. You're like, friendships matter. We talk about this here.
But in this case, you did take his advice. Right?
[00:08:05] EMILIA: Yes.
[00:08:05] RORI: How'd it go?
[00:08:06] EMILIA: I mean, it was the right choice. I, I mean, it was the right advice and I'm happy I stayed. It helped, definitely helped my career. I can say that. Yeah.
[00:08:13] RORI: Well, way too, way to roll with the tough advice.
[00:08:16] EMILIA: Yeah.
And I, I appreciate that now.
[00:08:18] RORI: Okay. Emilia, you ready for the third lesson?
[00:08:19] EMILIA: Yes.
What is the third lesson?
[00:08:21] RORI: Okay. The third lesson.
We need many different types of mentors and this we want to say in part because we want to, uh, hold the complexity of what we learned from. Sue Rosser and what we're learning from Marielena, right? In our bonus for Sue Rosser's episode, you and I talked about how you can just get a mentor by asking a question, by asking for help, and then that's how you start to build a mentoring relationship. I stand by that. Do you think so?
[00:08:47] EMILIA: I think so. And I think Marielena would also agree with that. I mean, when we asked her, what is mentoring for you? And she talked about transferring knowledge.
[00:08:55] RORI: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:55] EMILIA: Uh, and information, which is something that we get, we can obtain by asking questions. I mean, the reason we interview these women is because I think we want to be mentored by them as well.
[00:09:06] RORI: Yes, yes.
[00:09:06] EMILIA: And so this is our way of getting mentorship by asking them questions. Totally. And so students can do that all the time. They can ask people, you know, And that's why we create all these social situations in academia to have that space to be able to ask questions.
[00:09:22] RORI: Yeah. Maria Elena also talked about how you really need trust and rapport with a mentor.
I think there are different types of mentors. Like if you have like a primary mentor who is like helping you develop as a scientist, and guiding you through doing research projects, and learning new skills, like major career advice, that is an important mentoring relationship. And that mentor can't provide you with all of the mentoring you need.
You need these other relationships for other things where you need help with development. And so I guess I would say that there are many different types of mentoring relationships that we need, and some of them require trust and intimacy, and some of them
don't.
[00:09:59] EMILIA: Correct. I think, especially in academia, right, there's the research mentors, there's the teaching mentors, there's the social mentors, career development mentors.
[00:10:10] RORI: Oh yeah. You know, actually, okay, I called Sue Rosser for mentorship at a time when I had multiple job offers and was trying to figure out how to navigate and how to negotiate. I called Sue Rosser and I was like, Sue, do you have 20 minutes to help me figure out what I can ask for, what I can't ask for, or what is? you know, not going to be productive for this negotiation. And since she's been a dean and a provost, she had very relevant experience. So while Sue Rosser is not like my go to person to ask all the questions, I did reach out to her for mentoring for that. If I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to like to use a piece of software, I'm trying to like use people in population genetics know about and there's something I want to do and I don't know how to do it.
I'm obviously not going to reach out to Sue Rosser because that's not her jam, but I can walk down the hall to Peter Ralph, who is more of my peer and who knows that particular software very well, and he can give me the answer that I would like.
[00:11:05] EMILIA: Yeah, I think it's good that you called Sue. That sounds like what you needed to do.
[00:11:10] RORI: Yeah. Yeah. And I feel lucky I had like enough of a relationship with her that she like,
[00:11:15] EMILIA: I think sometimes it could be intimidating to ask somebody for information.
[00:11:20] RORI: Oh yeah.
[00:11:20] EMILIA: And so I think it helps to talk to your peers. And it's possible that they have already asked some of those questions to people who have more experience and they can connect you or they can tell you, well, you know, that person would be good at answering that question.
[00:11:35] RORI: Well, you know, Emilia, okay. In that same time, when I had these job offers and I was figuring out how to deal with it, I called you, of course, of course, I called you because I would call you no matter what, even if I wasn't actively seeking mentorship, but I called you and I was like, Ooh, what does this mean? How do I do this? And you had some ideas from your own experience. But you also knew people who would have useful information. And you were like, Oh, I know this person recently got this job offer, and you can probably approach them and ask them and they would be happy to tell you. And I did, and it was really useful.
So it's kind of like diving into the network for mentorship too. And this is, I'm not talking about like a social media network. Some people do that. I don't know how to do that. But it was like our actual social relationships network.
[00:12:16] EMILIA: Yeah, exactly. And this could be people that you know from other contexts.
Maybe they were grad students with you or they were postdocs with you or young faculty. I think, and also people might not answer your question, but that's, that's okay.
[00:12:30] RORI: Totally, totally. And those relationships stay, right? The people who you've known, you still know those people.
[00:12:35] EMILIA: Yeah. I think that's actually an important point to make.
[00:12:37] RORI: We have opinions about this.
[00:12:38] EMILIA: Yes, I have opinions about this. My network are the people that I sort of grew up with, uh, who I overlap with as an undergrad, as a grad student, as a postdoc, you know, the people that are my collaborators. I, I work with them at some point in when I was a trainee. So if you're a trainee, meaning a student or postdoc, people that you're surrounded by, those are the people that probably you're going to call sometimes or work with.
[00:13:05] RORI: Yeah.
[00:13:06] EMILIA: They're the ones that will also help you. So. Think about that when you are in those communities, that those are the people you're gonna see in the future.
[00:13:14] RORI: Yeah, so building the relationships is worthwhile, your friendships are gonna continue to matter, and, you know, I would say, like, careful shitting where you eat, because there's still you, like, 20 years later.
Okay, Emilia, it's always a pleasure. I can't wait for the next time we get to chat.
[00:13:32] EMILIA: Hopefully very soon, Rori. And adios, everyone!
[00:13:36] RORI: Okay, hasta pronto!