The day I realized I was in the wrong place

What’s the distinction between “doing biology” and “being a biologist?” The answer is gatekeeping.

Hindsight brings clarity. Or perhaps, after we gain some time and distance, we allow ourselves to invent clarity and a coherent narrative.

I’ve had a great run over the past seventeen years as a professor at CSU Dominguez Hills, working in a place and with people aligned with my values and priorities. It’s been long enough that prior chapters tend to blur, for there’s a lot to be said for living in the present and building for the future. But then I read this short essay by Holden Thorp and was transported back to a pivotal episode from 20 years ago, when I realized was in the wrong place. Or perhaps I realized that the place I was in was wrong.

No, it wasn’t the time that our small department decided to have the end-of-year lunch celebration at a churrascaria, and one of us (me) was vegetarian. (“Terry, they’ll have plenty of salads.”)

No, it wasn’t the time my chair squashed my efforts to implement active learning by saying, “ditch the Socratic stuff and lecture more." (That is an actual quote, I pinky swear.)

No, it wasn’t the time the department threw an all-hands-on-deck puppy shower for one of the senior professors, only to realize it was extremely awkward that nobody had yet planned a shower for the human who was just about to join my family.

No, it wasn’t the time when my university-assigned mentor told me I was making a big mistake by having a vasectomy.

And no, it wasn’t when my concern was dismissed when all of our biggest non-majors sections were intentionally assigned to the professor with a long and well documented history of sexual misconduct and racial abuse, under the guise of protecting our majors.

Those were are bright red flags, of course, but I thought those were circumstances I told myself I could somehow manage.

The moment I realized this was a bad situation wasn’t a drop-your-mouth-in-aghast incident. It was just a low-key conversation that kept me smoldering for months and months. And, apparently, for a couple decades. Maybe this moment I’m about to recount was not pivotal at all, and maybe I’ve unconsciously built a tidy narrative to make sense of the difficult jumble. Because when you take a job because it’s your spouse’s hometown, when the weather is near-perfect, when you’ve managed to get a foothold in the real estate market, when your parents and siblings are just the right distance away, when your spouse’s career is well on track, when you managed to land a tenure-track job providing the actual opportunity to do the exact thing you want? It’s easy to compromise with yourself. This episode didn’t make me leave, as that decision was eventually made for me a few years later, but (in my hindsight narrative, at least) it crystallized the jam I was in. It let me know that deep down, my values were not compatible with this place, and if I stuck around, how long would it take for my compromises to become a part of me?

About five professors were having lunch in the little kitchen/break room in the new science building. It was a small space, a little table, and the room was full. Just normal chatting about the usual stuff. I mentioned a conversation I recently had with some students in a lab section about how they’re biologists. My students didn’t see themselves as biologists yet¹ but I said that, since they’re doing biology, they’re biologists.

This generated some friendly and gentle pushback. “Are they, though?” Okay, well, then, what does it mean to be a biologist, my colleagues mused. There were a variety of opinions. Someone thought it meant you have to have published a paper, another person thought you needed to be collecting a regular paycheck for doing science. Were high school biology teachers scientists? Well, perhaps not, unless they had a graduate degree in biology. Were our departmental techs who set up the laboratories actual biologists? The verdict wasn’t in, maybe one of them was.

I got back into the conversation: Well, then, after our undergraduates completed our program and left the university with a BS in Biology, would they be considered biologists? According my peers, the answer was a solid no. Maybe if they got a job as a biologist after graduating and got some experience, or if they had done a bunch of undergraduate research and were heading off to grad school, then maybe.

This really bothered me. It bothered me then. It bothers me now. I think this is a destructive educational philosophy. I think we need to break down all the fences around science so that everybody can conceive of themselves as practitioners of science. If someone graduates from a program that I’m teaching with a Bachelor’s degree in biology, then I most definitely for sure without a doubt would be thinking of them as a biologist! And if a first year student is in a lab with me and doing an experiment? They’re a biologist.

What’s the distinction between “doing biology” and “being a biologist?” The answer is gatekeeping.

Whether or not a person is a professional biologist, or an expert biologist, or certified biologist is something else. But if they’re somehow in some way engaged of the enterprise of biology, including as a student, then, yeah, sure, they’re a biologist. What’s wrong with a more inclusive view of our field?

When educators erect tall fences up around a narrow patch of their territory so that others can’t occupy that space? That just chaps my hide. This little conversation put things in perspective, and I realized that most of my peers were trying to keep people out while I was trying to bring people in. There was talk about grade inflation, and maintaining high standards, weeder courses, pedigree, keeping up with comparison institutions, and “student quality.” Ugh, everybody was focused on recruiting “quality students” instead of developing them.

Perhaps all of us have made some substantial compromises and sacrifices to stay in this game of an academic career, and it makes sense to second-guess those choices. Not even just second-guess, but continuously evaluate our path and adapt our route as we see fit. Maybe we chose to live in a place that is far from family, maybe we’re getting paid substantially than we would in other jobs, maybe we’ve got a very long commute, maybe we’ve navigated the multiple-body-problem to nobody’s satisfaction, maybe you have some colleagues who don’t respect your work, maybe you’re more busy with the curriculum committee than any single professor should be, maybe your teaching schedule isn’t compatible with your field research plans, maybe your university needs to offer better parental leave, maybe maybe maybe. We all live in the interstitial space of maybes. I made my peace with those compromises at the time. But if my exit from these circumstances did not happen, how long would it take for this environment to become a part of me? Had it already to some extent? I don’t know.

I’m a different person now, of course, and these years of parenting, spousing, teaching, researching, mentoring, and administratoring have shaped who I am. How much of that shaping of myself has been a passive absorption of the values and practices of where I have been, and how much of this has been of my intentional design? How many of us are capable of living a life as deliberate as Thoreau aspired to? Do we passively absorb the values of those around us on a day to day basis? I feel like if we choose an environment with an ethos that goes against our own, it takes not only great personal strength, but also the continuous use of energy to maintain your own trajectory. Anyhow, that was then, and that then no longer exists and I’ve travelled a different road. I chose a different set of maybes, and here I am. I realize that each day, I can exercise some level of control over that choice, in small steps as well as attempting big leaps. That recognition itself might be important in shaping our own paths, and creating environments around ourselves that are consistent with our values.

1. My weirdly specific recollection is tied connected to a grant that I was writing the time, about an article that I was citing in it that made an impression on me, maybe it was this one?, that highlighted the value of identity and self-conception as a scientist part of improving student outcomes.