Season 2 |
Bonus Episode S2Bonus2: How to turn field [mis]adventures into life lessons
[00:00:00] RORI: Can you imagine being dropped off from a helicopter in this Alaskan mountain range and then hiking for miles and miles in places where humans are rarely there?
[00:00:11] EMILIA: I mean, I'm a little bit jealous that these folks who do field work get to experience the beauty that we will never see because they go to these places where they have to be dropped off.
by a helicopter and picked up by a helicopter.
[00:00:26] RORI: Yes, and you and I, Emilia, we don't do that so much in our little computational genomics kinds of labs. That hasn't been our style. But, you know, Lisa White told us, like, geologists have more fun, and I see what she's saying in terms of the adventurousness.
[00:00:41] EMILIA: Definitely, they are an adventurous bunch. I can see that.
[00:00:49] RORI: Listeners, welcome back. This is our bonus episode about the lessons we learned from our conversation with Dr. Lisa White. So, Emilia, what's the first lesson that you got from our conversation with her?
[00:01:02] EMILIA: For me, one of the lessons was that new students come into our fields with new eyes. And that's, you know, that's something that, that could, that can be actually quite good, I think, you know, we, we as scientists have so much experience.
[00:01:19] RORI: Right? Well, as a, the experience, you and I. Yeah, you and I, you and I already. Experienced scientists, like, we've developed some ideas.
[00:01:26] EMILIA: Yeah, but one of the things that Lisa White said was that she was taking students out to the fields, I think it was in Utah, and she wanted students to see some rock formations, and when they arrived, one of the students said, Asked her, is this real?
[00:01:46] RORI: Like disbelief. Like this rock formation is so remarkable that it can't be real. Oh, that's, that's what I understood.
[00:01:53] EMILIA: Yeah. Disbelief in natural beauty. And at first, she mentioned that this was surprising to her because she had prepared a bunch of materials. She had described about geology and how these rock formations get formed.
And so this took her a little bit by surprise, but at the same time, she realized that we need to meet students where they are.
[00:02:15] RORI: Yeah, yeah, like this student hadn't seen something like this rock formation and needed a little guidance to be like, no, this isn't right. actual rock formation that is created by the forces of erosion in particular kinds of rocks over time.
You know, she had a negative experience with a mentor early on where she was, I think she was actually in a helicopter. Again, field work moments here. She was in a helicopter and her supposed mentor was asking her if she saw a particular geological formation in the mountainside like there was a fold, I think she said, and she couldn't see it.
She couldn't see it at that time, in that context.
[00:02:55] EMILIA: Right, and then I think the mentor said, if you can't see it, you have to leave geology.
[00:03:00] RORI: Ah
like, I mean, what reduces sense of belonging like telling somebody that they need to leave?
[00:03:07] EMILIA: I know.
[00:03:08] RORI: And it's like, she didn't not see it because she didn't have potential as a geologist.
She didn't see it because her experiences so far in her life had not led her to be able to see folds in mountains. Like, she did grow up in San Francisco. Like, that's, that wasn't the landscape that she was around.
[00:03:25] EMILIA: Yeah, which I think it's similar to, to what happened to the student in this case, right?
Like, the student was from a city somewhere, and for them, it was so unbelievable, this rock formation. But I think here the lesson too, right, is that instead of acting like her first mentor, she did not. She, yeah,
[00:03:46] RORI: she made a different choice.
[00:03:47] EMILIA: Yeah, she made a different choice. She didn't put the student down.
She did not say, Oh, you think this is not real? Oh, you can't be a geologist.
[00:03:55] RORI: It sounds like she was stunned by the question for a minute, but then she was like, Okay, no, let me explain how this is real. Like, this is an actual natural process.
[00:04:03] EMILIA: I think she, she had to meet students where they are. Rori, what about lesson number two?
[00:04:10] RORI: Okay. Pass advice through your own filter. And we see this lesson actually in Dr. White's Revise and Resubmit. She talked about how she was again, field work, this time on a vessel, a ship, and she was kind of like being treated unfairly by the senior scientist and she didn't know how to navigate it and she was given the advice to just completely cut him off.
The advice didn't quite feel right to her. It didn't kind of fit her personality or her style, her interpersonal style, but she was like, I'm going to take that advice. She completely cut him off. And then she got cut out of all of these scientific projects and publications. And she's like, ah, she wished she hadn't done that.
She wished she had taken a different approach.
[00:04:54] EMILIA: It must be really difficult. It's happening in real-time, but you have a colleague or a peer who's, who's upset for you and is trying to. Be like, oh no, no, you have to do this and you have to do that and it's easy to sort of Become even more upset by it, by what's happening to you.
[00:05:12] RORI: Yeah, it sounded like what she wished she had done was kind of like taking that advice but not run with it, like taking it in I mean, but not run with it to like kind of pass it through the filter of her own heart Like does this actually feel like the right approach for her? And maybe even discussed it with her More different scientists.
You could have talked with her mentor about like, how can she negotiate a better working relationship with this person. And it actually reminded me of advice from Dr. Ive Rubio, where I think she said, you've got to follow your heart. You'll be given lots of advice, but you have to decide whether that advice is right for you.
And only that you can't just take somebody's advice, including us who are out here dispensing advice.
[00:05:56] EMILIA: Exactly. I think there's. There's a lot of advice that you can get through Science Wise, but you have to think about what advice applies to you.
[00:06:06] RORI: Okay, so Emilia, what about lesson number three?
[00:06:09] EMILIA: Well, this is the first guest we have who's done a lot of fieldwork in very remote locations.
And I think there were a couple of things that she said in passing that I was like, whoa. Like, you need to have gun training, or you need to
[00:06:25] RORI: Right, because there are bears.
[00:06:27] EMILIA: Yeah. You know, the field, just You're by yourself with a small number of people and it's not like you can, you know, work for a day and then be like, Oh, I'm going home.
[00:06:39] RORI: Not in these remote places.
[00:06:41] EMILIA: Exactly.
[00:06:41] RORI: She's talking about voyages for like a month. You're like on a boat with a certain set of people.
[00:06:47] EMILIA: Especially in the boat situation. That just thinking about that gives me a little bit of claustrophobia. Not necessarily in the field. You could potentially escape somewhere.
[00:06:55] RORI: Oh my god, Emilia, you and I are so clearly not field scientists.
[00:07:00] EMILIA: We're not, we're not.
[00:07:01] RORI: No, we don't have that expertise.
[00:07:03] EMILIA: There's a lot of, like, physical risks of being out in the field. I mean, one of the stories too was about how that person died when they, uh
[00:07:12] RORI: Oh, the volcanologist.
[00:07:13] EMILIA: Yeah. Yeah. Like, that's crazy.
[00:07:15] RORI: Yeah, it's tragic.
[00:07:16] EMILIA: It's tragic and it's, it's, all these things could happen, right? There's danger out there. But there's also Obviously because you're in a small group, there's also emotional safety that needs to be considered. And so, in addition to everything else.
[00:07:35] RORI: Like in Lisa White's experience, her emotional safety, sense of well-being, and sense of belonging in the field were just like not at all prioritized by at least that one mentor who she spoke about.
And so the lesson is maybe for people in a mentoring or a faculty position to prioritize student well-being and sense of belonging when they're in the field.
[00:07:56] EMILIA: Yeah, and I think offering Super clear expectations of what to expect.
[00:08:05] RORI: For people who have like very little experience, this almost goes back to the first point a little bit.
Some of these students have no experience in the field, so helping onboard them by letting them know what is going to happen.
[00:08:16] EMILIA: I think we can put out a lot of information. information, right? We can say, Oh, this is what you should expect, but we should be a little cognizant of the fact that the way they're receiving that information and how they're interpreting those expectations may be a little bit different than what we expect them to understand.
And so I think it's still important, important to meet students where they're at, where they are.
[00:08:39] RORI: You still have to be responsive to where the students are at, what they're understanding, what they're prepared for, and what they're not prepared for. Okay. I mean, that really would have helped Lisa when she went on that rock-collecting thing.
field trips, like the day trip or whatever. And, uh, she brought her cassette tapes because she thought that there would be time to listen to them and she didn't understand, like, that she needed these bags to be empty for the rocks. There's, like, the logistical clarity of those expectations that could have been better.
And then there's, it would have been nice if the mentor met her where she was at and was like, oh, you made a mistake. You didn't know that we can't take this. Leave it in the helicopter or whatever. Like, that would have been a lot more manageable.
[00:09:17] EMILIA: Yeah. Exactly. Basically being aware that there could be little things that arise in the field and everything is heightened in the field.
These are sensitive situations.
[00:09:29] RORI: So like all the things that we worry about in the university and in a classroom, in a computational genomics lab, it's just like all the emotional safety things are just heightened. They're just elevated.
Well, thank you always, Emilia, for chatting with me about our wonderful conversation with Lisa White.
[00:09:47] EMILIA: She's amazing and she's been through a lot of stuff and I'm glad that she loves her field. And,
[00:09:56] RORI: oh yeah, she is so lucky to have her.
[00:09:59] EMILIA: Exactly. And that, you know, she's making all these opportunities for students that's now, just amazing. And so I thank Lisa White for creating all those opportunities for students, and I'm sure they also appreciate them as well.
[00:10:14] RORI: Yeah, for doing the work, for being a model in prioritizing student well-being in the field.
[00:10:18] EMILIA: I would love to go on the field with Lisa White.
[00:10:22] RORI: Oh my god, me too. Please take us! Do you think she ever takes faculty?
[00:10:25] EMILIA: Take us!
[00:10:27] RORI: Okay, Emilia. Okay, listeners. We will see you next time. Bye!
[00:00:11] EMILIA: I mean, I'm a little bit jealous that these folks who do field work get to experience the beauty that we will never see because they go to these places where they have to be dropped off.
by a helicopter and picked up by a helicopter.
[00:00:26] RORI: Yes, and you and I, Emilia, we don't do that so much in our little computational genomics kinds of labs. That hasn't been our style. But, you know, Lisa White told us, like, geologists have more fun, and I see what she's saying in terms of the adventurousness.
[00:00:41] EMILIA: Definitely, they are an adventurous bunch. I can see that.
[00:00:49] RORI: Listeners, welcome back. This is our bonus episode about the lessons we learned from our conversation with Dr. Lisa White. So, Emilia, what's the first lesson that you got from our conversation with her?
[00:01:02] EMILIA: For me, one of the lessons was that new students come into our fields with new eyes. And that's, you know, that's something that, that could, that can be actually quite good, I think, you know, we, we as scientists have so much experience.
[00:01:19] RORI: Right? Well, as a, the experience, you and I. Yeah, you and I, you and I already. Experienced scientists, like, we've developed some ideas.
[00:01:26] EMILIA: Yeah, but one of the things that Lisa White said was that she was taking students out to the fields, I think it was in Utah, and she wanted students to see some rock formations, and when they arrived, one of the students said, Asked her, is this real?
[00:01:46] RORI: Like disbelief. Like this rock formation is so remarkable that it can't be real. Oh, that's, that's what I understood.
[00:01:53] EMILIA: Yeah. Disbelief in natural beauty. And at first, she mentioned that this was surprising to her because she had prepared a bunch of materials. She had described about geology and how these rock formations get formed.
And so this took her a little bit by surprise, but at the same time, she realized that we need to meet students where they are.
[00:02:15] RORI: Yeah, yeah, like this student hadn't seen something like this rock formation and needed a little guidance to be like, no, this isn't right. actual rock formation that is created by the forces of erosion in particular kinds of rocks over time.
You know, she had a negative experience with a mentor early on where she was, I think she was actually in a helicopter. Again, field work moments here. She was in a helicopter and her supposed mentor was asking her if she saw a particular geological formation in the mountainside like there was a fold, I think she said, and she couldn't see it.
She couldn't see it at that time, in that context.
[00:02:55] EMILIA: Right, and then I think the mentor said, if you can't see it, you have to leave geology.
[00:03:00] RORI: Ah
like, I mean, what reduces sense of belonging like telling somebody that they need to leave?
[00:03:07] EMILIA: I know.
[00:03:08] RORI: And it's like, she didn't not see it because she didn't have potential as a geologist.
She didn't see it because her experiences so far in her life had not led her to be able to see folds in mountains. Like, she did grow up in San Francisco. Like, that's, that wasn't the landscape that she was around.
[00:03:25] EMILIA: Yeah, which I think it's similar to, to what happened to the student in this case, right?
Like, the student was from a city somewhere, and for them, it was so unbelievable, this rock formation. But I think here the lesson too, right, is that instead of acting like her first mentor, she did not. She, yeah,
[00:03:46] RORI: she made a different choice.
[00:03:47] EMILIA: Yeah, she made a different choice. She didn't put the student down.
She did not say, Oh, you think this is not real? Oh, you can't be a geologist.
[00:03:55] RORI: It sounds like she was stunned by the question for a minute, but then she was like, Okay, no, let me explain how this is real. Like, this is an actual natural process.
[00:04:03] EMILIA: I think she, she had to meet students where they are. Rori, what about lesson number two?
[00:04:10] RORI: Okay. Pass advice through your own filter. And we see this lesson actually in Dr. White's Revise and Resubmit. She talked about how she was again, field work, this time on a vessel, a ship, and she was kind of like being treated unfairly by the senior scientist and she didn't know how to navigate it and she was given the advice to just completely cut him off.
The advice didn't quite feel right to her. It didn't kind of fit her personality or her style, her interpersonal style, but she was like, I'm going to take that advice. She completely cut him off. And then she got cut out of all of these scientific projects and publications. And she's like, ah, she wished she hadn't done that.
She wished she had taken a different approach.
[00:04:54] EMILIA: It must be really difficult. It's happening in real-time, but you have a colleague or a peer who's, who's upset for you and is trying to. Be like, oh no, no, you have to do this and you have to do that and it's easy to sort of Become even more upset by it, by what's happening to you.
[00:05:12] RORI: Yeah, it sounded like what she wished she had done was kind of like taking that advice but not run with it, like taking it in I mean, but not run with it to like kind of pass it through the filter of her own heart Like does this actually feel like the right approach for her? And maybe even discussed it with her More different scientists.
You could have talked with her mentor about like, how can she negotiate a better working relationship with this person. And it actually reminded me of advice from Dr. Ive Rubio, where I think she said, you've got to follow your heart. You'll be given lots of advice, but you have to decide whether that advice is right for you.
And only that you can't just take somebody's advice, including us who are out here dispensing advice.
[00:05:56] EMILIA: Exactly. I think there's. There's a lot of advice that you can get through Science Wise, but you have to think about what advice applies to you.
[00:06:06] RORI: Okay, so Emilia, what about lesson number three?
[00:06:09] EMILIA: Well, this is the first guest we have who's done a lot of fieldwork in very remote locations.
And I think there were a couple of things that she said in passing that I was like, whoa. Like, you need to have gun training, or you need to
[00:06:25] RORI: Right, because there are bears.
[00:06:27] EMILIA: Yeah. You know, the field, just You're by yourself with a small number of people and it's not like you can, you know, work for a day and then be like, Oh, I'm going home.
[00:06:39] RORI: Not in these remote places.
[00:06:41] EMILIA: Exactly.
[00:06:41] RORI: She's talking about voyages for like a month. You're like on a boat with a certain set of people.
[00:06:47] EMILIA: Especially in the boat situation. That just thinking about that gives me a little bit of claustrophobia. Not necessarily in the field. You could potentially escape somewhere.
[00:06:55] RORI: Oh my god, Emilia, you and I are so clearly not field scientists.
[00:07:00] EMILIA: We're not, we're not.
[00:07:01] RORI: No, we don't have that expertise.
[00:07:03] EMILIA: There's a lot of, like, physical risks of being out in the field. I mean, one of the stories too was about how that person died when they, uh
[00:07:12] RORI: Oh, the volcanologist.
[00:07:13] EMILIA: Yeah. Yeah. Like, that's crazy.
[00:07:15] RORI: Yeah, it's tragic.
[00:07:16] EMILIA: It's tragic and it's, it's, all these things could happen, right? There's danger out there. But there's also Obviously because you're in a small group, there's also emotional safety that needs to be considered. And so, in addition to everything else.
[00:07:35] RORI: Like in Lisa White's experience, her emotional safety, sense of well-being, and sense of belonging in the field were just like not at all prioritized by at least that one mentor who she spoke about.
And so the lesson is maybe for people in a mentoring or a faculty position to prioritize student well-being and sense of belonging when they're in the field.
[00:07:56] EMILIA: Yeah, and I think offering Super clear expectations of what to expect.
[00:08:05] RORI: For people who have like very little experience, this almost goes back to the first point a little bit.
Some of these students have no experience in the field, so helping onboard them by letting them know what is going to happen.
[00:08:16] EMILIA: I think we can put out a lot of information. information, right? We can say, Oh, this is what you should expect, but we should be a little cognizant of the fact that the way they're receiving that information and how they're interpreting those expectations may be a little bit different than what we expect them to understand.
And so I think it's still important, important to meet students where they're at, where they are.
[00:08:39] RORI: You still have to be responsive to where the students are at, what they're understanding, what they're prepared for, and what they're not prepared for. Okay. I mean, that really would have helped Lisa when she went on that rock-collecting thing.
field trips, like the day trip or whatever. And, uh, she brought her cassette tapes because she thought that there would be time to listen to them and she didn't understand, like, that she needed these bags to be empty for the rocks. There's, like, the logistical clarity of those expectations that could have been better.
And then there's, it would have been nice if the mentor met her where she was at and was like, oh, you made a mistake. You didn't know that we can't take this. Leave it in the helicopter or whatever. Like, that would have been a lot more manageable.
[00:09:17] EMILIA: Yeah. Exactly. Basically being aware that there could be little things that arise in the field and everything is heightened in the field.
These are sensitive situations.
[00:09:29] RORI: So like all the things that we worry about in the university and in a classroom, in a computational genomics lab, it's just like all the emotional safety things are just heightened. They're just elevated.
Well, thank you always, Emilia, for chatting with me about our wonderful conversation with Lisa White.
[00:09:47] EMILIA: She's amazing and she's been through a lot of stuff and I'm glad that she loves her field. And,
[00:09:56] RORI: oh yeah, she is so lucky to have her.
[00:09:59] EMILIA: Exactly. And that, you know, she's making all these opportunities for students that's now, just amazing. And so I thank Lisa White for creating all those opportunities for students, and I'm sure they also appreciate them as well.
[00:10:14] RORI: Yeah, for doing the work, for being a model in prioritizing student well-being in the field.
[00:10:18] EMILIA: I would love to go on the field with Lisa White.
[00:10:22] RORI: Oh my god, me too. Please take us! Do you think she ever takes faculty?
[00:10:25] EMILIA: Take us!
[00:10:27] RORI: Okay, Emilia. Okay, listeners. We will see you next time. Bye!