February 3, 2020 • 45 mins
What do you do when you find yourself in a major life transition with no apartment, no relationship, no job, and no idea what you want to do next? This week’s guest Dr. Sabriya Stukes took a “radical sabbatical” to discover what she cared most about and how she wanted to make an impact in the world. Whether you’ve got a lot of change happening all at once or the desire to switch things up a bit, listen in. This episode is full of real talk about what to do you’re not okay, when and how to ask for help, and why the biggest challenges can be the greatest guides.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Limit Does Not Exist is a production of I
Heart Radio. Okay, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm Kate Scott Campbell.
We're here to help you follow your curiosity, celebrate your individuality,
(00:20):
and embrace the and not the ore so you can
turn everything you love into a custom built career that's
as unique and dynamic as you are. If you feel
that one path may not be your only path, and
you call yourself a human bend diagram, then you are
in the right place, because when it comes to pursuing
your passions, we believe the limit does not exist. What
(00:44):
do you do when you find yourself at a major
life transition point and somehow you're utterly unmoored with no apartment,
no relationship, no job, and no idea what you want
to do next. One option is to take a three
month radical sabbatical that involves a West Coast road trip,
a couple of short term gigs, some group therapy, and
(01:06):
a parental intervention. That's what this week's guest Dr Sabria
Stukes did, and it helped her discover what she cared
most about and how she wanted to make an impact
in the world. Sabria is the assistant director of the
Masters in Translational Medicine program at the City College of
New York and a lifelong science communicator and storyteller. And yes,
(01:27):
translational medicine is a thing, and Sabria will explain it
real talk. This episode gets straight to the core of
so many fears for human ven diagrams, how to find
your path when it's not the obvious one, how to
let your community support you when you need it the most,
even how to say no when your default is always
to say yes. It's just the inspiration you might need
(01:49):
to get out of a rut or through the week ahead.
So let's meet, Sabria. Let's do it. How do you
introduce yourself? I am working at the City College of
New York and I'm helping them build and run a
new Master's program UM in Translational Medicine. And so then
(02:12):
of course the follow up question is always well, what
is translational medicine? And yeah, it's this really new and
I mean, I think quite interesting UM discipline where we
are taking scientists and engineers and we are teaching them
the process of medical technology commercialization. So what actually goes
into identifying on met clinical need designing a solution around
(02:37):
that and then evaluating that solution so that when it
goes out into the market, it's a sustainable product. So
that's kind of the more like the very traditional definition
of translational medicine this kind of bench to bedside. So
when we refer to the bench, we say, or we
generally mean, you know, scientific ideas, engineering devices, um, things
(02:58):
like that, like how do we get those things out
into the world. And so for us, we decided to
kind of like remix that definition because if you think
about it, that can feel very uni directional. Right, It's
like scientists and engineers just saying, here's the solutions to
the problems of the world. But what if we went
to the bedside, right, or the patients or the communities
(03:19):
that are going to be using those solutions, and we say,
do you need this before we start building it? Right? Like,
what if we took the feedback and the comments from
the communities that need these things back to the quote
unquote bench, right back to these kind of design labs,
and in that way, everyone is involved in the solution.
(03:40):
You know, when you are a scientist or an engineer,
you go through a grad program or even an undergrad program,
you're taught that thing. You're taught how to do an experiment,
you're taught how to build the thing. But a lot
of times if you want to put it out into
the world, you're not necessarily taught, you know, the business
aspects of that, or how do I like what is
intellectual pretty, how do I work with f DA? What
(04:01):
patents do I need to file? And so, you know,
we teach all that to, you know, people who are
really curious and interested in building better medical devices. It's
also interesting because to your point, it's not just about
what are the technologies or what are the inventions that
we could go commercialize. It's equally important to say, what
(04:22):
do patients need? Problems are they having that we might
then go and discover something to solve. Yeah, And it's
not when we say the communities that are going to
be using them. It's patients, it's doctors, it's it's everyone. Right.
So I think one of the really nice things that
I have been able to do with the program is
(04:45):
integrate some of the things that I feel like are
missing from these conversations. So, uh, social justice aspects, when
we think about who gets access, when we think about
who can afford these devices? Right? I teach a class
in the spring, and the first class that I have,
you know, I kind of present much bigger questions than
(05:06):
how do you build this thing? It's who are you
building it for? Um? Can they afford it? Uh? You know,
what does it? We go through this activity of you know,
what does it mean to be poor in America? What
does it mean to be rich in America? What does
it mean to be wealthy in America? And then now
let's talk about that in terms of one's health. And
(05:27):
I just feel like those types of questions are not
really being asked, or if they are being asked, I
mean I'm not hearing that in terms of you know,
just like when things are being designed, you know, I
know we are kind of in this heyday of technology
in terms of everyone wants to start their own company
and everyone wants to be a CEO. And so you know,
(05:48):
the thing that I hope for is that no matter
what our students do when they graduate, UM, as long
as to me, they are asking the right kinds of questions. UM,
then I've kind of done my job. What kinds of
students come into this program Sabria? Like, what kind of
backgrounds do you look for or reach out to who
(06:12):
might be a great candidate for this kind of work.
That's such a great question, and we are actually kind
of still determining who the like ideal you know MTM
some Masters in Translational Medicine student is. So when I
was kind of first presented with this opportunity to build
this program, they had already had four students, so this
(06:33):
was in August. They had four students in a curriculum,
and they said, okay, build this program. And so at
the time it was to biomedical engineers, someone who had
undergraduated with a biology degree, and then someone who was premed.
And so the structure of the program is such that
we there is a core curriculum, so it's one year,
(06:55):
thirty credits. But then we also put students on multidisciplinary
teams to build an actual working prototype for an unmet
clinical needs. So we go through the the bio design process,
which many people might know from Stanford. So we teach
them how do you identify on met clinical need? How
do you then design the solution? Then hygate valuate the
solution on a team right of other people who maybe
(07:18):
have different backgrounds than you. We really encourage anyone with
a STEM background to apply. If you take a look
at our curriculum or is not like pure engineering or
pure science or let's say, like pure math courses. And
we do that because really what we're it really is
like a blend of science, business, engineering, entrepreneurial aspects of
(07:40):
you know, bringing a technology to markets. So we really
think that we can kind of teach that to anyone.
But the idea being that you should have a STEM
background and on some level be interested or curious about
what does it take to design a solution, but then
have it go out into the market and actually be
like a sustainable product because if you think about it,
(08:03):
how many devices, how many things that are born out
of labs never make it to the people that need
them because they weren't involving the customer. Right, So there's
some business aspects to this. To right, our students have
to go out and do customer discovery. We do a
very condensed um like lean launch pad model in the spring.
(08:25):
I mean they have to go out and interview a
hundred customers and then bring that information back to the
bench as it were. I say that after five years
of you know, working to build the program. You know,
we can read someone's resume or application, we can interview them,
and once they're in the program, that's when we're still like, Okay,
we think we did a good job building this. Here's cohort.
(09:00):
Do you have an undergraduate degree in microbiology and immunology
and then you did a PhD in biomedical science? This
is correct? How did you end up as the assistant
director of this master's program and an assistant professor in
the program rather than the much more traditional path of
(09:21):
a research scientist with a lab and a bench doing
the thing instead of, you know, building the program. I think,
like many individuals who go through PhDs in the life science,
when you're in graduate school it can feel very binary,
meaning it can feel like you are either talking to
people or p i s who say you should do
(09:43):
a lab, or you should go into industry, or you
should teach. And so there's not a lot of I
would say, breathing room to discuss I mean, this was,
of course when I went to graduate schools to maybe
like five years ago, and the conversation now is changing,
for sure, but there just didn't seem to be a
lot of wiggle room to say, oh I want to
(10:03):
do something else, and for me, like, I think my
job title generically falls under academic administration, which if you
had told me that that's what I would be doing
when I graduated, I would have been like boring, Like
no way. I was kind of asking myself these types
of questions as I was nearing graduation, and you know,
(10:26):
I was seeing my friends get jobs or they were
pursuing post docs, which is, you know what you do
if you want to kind of maybe take a little
bit more time to figure out what you want, or
if you know definitively you want to go on into
the path of having your own lab. I was seeing
a bunch of my friends go on to medical communications agencies.
I was seeing my friends go into industries or smaller
biotech startups, and I felt a little adrift. I had been,
(10:49):
as you said, Christina, kind of in the life sciences
for over a decade at that point. Um I had
been working in labs. I worked on HIV for a year,
I worked on tuberculosis for a few years. I did
my thesis research on a fungal pathogen. So I was
like really into infectious diseases and yeah, right, And I
felt like if after ten years of being in labs,
(11:10):
which are still truly like, I get a little flutter
in my heart whenever I visit my friends who have labs,
because it just is like a very comfortable space for me.
If after ten years of doing that, I didn't have
this kind of burning desire to continue doing that, maybe
I should take a step and breathe a little bit
and say, what is it that I want to actively
(11:33):
be spending my time on. And so towards the end
of my grad career, I was going, as I'm sure
many people do. It's going to listen to pianos, going
to seminars, meet ups, you know. I was like, I'm
going to meet someone who's going to tell me exactly
what to do with my life. And the woman who
I met, her name is u Dr gilded Barrebino, who
(11:56):
is the Dean of Engineering at the City College of
New York UM. She is I believe, one of four
one of six African American women to head college of
Engineering in America, and she just actually got elected to
the National Academy of Engineering, which is you know, a
huge fee for for anyone. And anyway, so I saw
(12:16):
her on this panel. She had said some stuff about
her trajectory that really resonated with me, and I simply
went up to her, like at the kind of coffee lunchline,
and I said, I really appreciated some of the things
you said. I'm I'm a little adrift. Could we chat?
She said, sure, you know, here's my email. Why don't
you come. We can get coffee or something. So, as
you can imagine of the dean of a school of engineering,
(12:38):
she's quite busy. So it took a few weeks for
us to really nail down a date. And when I
went to go talk to her, it was like I
felt an instant connection where I could really tell her
exactly how I felt about being so adrift after being
on a very particular path for a while. And she listened.
(12:59):
She listened with such empathy and compassion, And when I
was kind of done, you know, giving her my spiel,
she said, listen, it may be the case that in
a few months there might be an opportunity for you
to work in this office to build this program. It's
going to be brand new in a you know, this
field of translational medicine is still really really really new.
(13:22):
Only like a handful of schools have these type of
kind of real world practical degree programs. She's like, that's
all the information I have, but let's continue talking. So
I said sure, And then maybe like a month later,
her office called and said, hey, can you come back in.
We have some more updated information for you about the positions,
(13:43):
and she offered me a job. She said, I really
liked you. I really feel like you could be really
good for this position. And I said, no, my joy. Also,
I didn't have a job. I was kind of in
the space in my life where I didn't like, kind
of trust what was going on around me, and I
(14:03):
was also figuring some other things out. And I said
to her, you know, I am not in a space
right now to take on this job and do a
good job at it. And it was like this very
awkward moment of silence because I really, like I'm in
the past have been a person that has just said yes,
because I wanted to just say yes to everything, you know,
(14:26):
and even if I didn't know if I was going
to do it or not. So there was like this
very awkward moment because I was like, I do not
have a job. I need a job. This woman is
offering me a job and I am like saying no.
And so she took a beat and then she looked
at me and she said, okay, but when will you
be ready? And I was like, this was maybe like
(14:47):
October off and I said January one, and she said okay, fine.
She's like, I will give you until January to like
figure out whatever it is you need to figure out,
and then I expect you here. Yeah, Sabria, there's so
many parts of the story that I love, and I'd
say the thing that connects them all is your courage.
(15:07):
I mean, I love that you even from the get
go went up to her and said, Hey, I'm Sabria.
I love what you said. I'm adrift. Like to even mention,
you know, i'd like your advice, like that's incredibly vulnerable
to do. Then to say no when you get the
job offer is also incredibly courageous. And so we have
(15:28):
to ask tell us about the decision to take a
career sabbatical and what it looked like. I don't know
if it was so much a decision more than I'm
just going to wake up and not do that. I don't.
I mean I tell my students all the time that
sometimes when you don't make a decision that in and
of itself is a decision. And so I actually had
(15:50):
a really challenging time transitioning out of graduate school. I
think a lot of things came to an end for
me as it pertained to how I saw myself as
a person in the world. After I graduated with a PhD.
My partner at the time decided that our five year
(16:11):
relationship was not something he felt like continuing. I would
say so many words but also maybe lack of words. Um.
Not only did that the idea of me being a
scientist kind of end, but then this very long relationship ended.
I had already moved out of my apartment and like
moved some stuff into his apartment, so I also didn't
(16:32):
have an apartment, and I completely unmoored, super unmoored, and
all I have is like this piece of paper that
says I have a degree in biomedical sciences. And so
without wall to hang out exactly. I feel this so deeply,
Cria and um, yeah, it was just really challenging because
(16:56):
for me, as a Capricorn, you know, I planned things.
I like to know what the next step will look like,
even if I don't know all the steps, and so
for the first time in my life, I had zero plans.
You know, what do you do when you don't have
a plan. You book a flight to Seattle, UM, and
(17:17):
then you like have a two and a half week
road trip down the West coast, stopping kind of wherever
you want and hoping that by the end when you
drop off the rental car and Palm Springs, you will
have some answers. I had zero answers. I had a
very dusty car. At the end of that, I just
(17:37):
started telling people. A friend of mine used the phrase
radical sabbatical, UM, so that's kind of what I started
telling people, and interestingly, people really connected with that. I
was really fortunate enough too, when I was telling people
that I was doing this, and I said, hey, I'm
you know, I'm looking for work. I really don't know
what that looks like. Here's what I'm good at, or
(17:58):
here's what I think I'm good at. Two friends separately
reached out to me and said, hey, you know, there
might be these kind of three month positions that we
think you could be good at. Why don't you take them? Weirdly,
I went from having zero jobs to having two full
time jobs, and then I also decided to take a
part time job with the science startup that was based
(18:19):
on the West Coast because I was like, well, like
there's a time difference, so I can figure this out.
And it was not a very good decision, one because
I was not doing good at either of the jobs.
And two I was not doing a good job at
taking care of myself, almost to the point where my
(18:40):
parents came to visit me and they said that if
I didn't get my act together, I would have to
move home. It was how old were you at this point,
like thirty three, So they're they're issuing the ultimatum even
at thirty three, because you are clearly in a place
that said as I'm not making good decisions. Yeah. I
(19:02):
think that's an accurate summation of everything that was going on.
I understand the instinct of like having this total blank canvas, right,
like this groundlessness and this wipe out too then like
fill it with opportunity, especially when that comes in. It's
sort of almost like physics, right, it's empty, and then
you have this flood coming in, and then it sounds
(19:24):
like what you're saying is you went, whoa too much flood? Yeah,
And I think it really also was like, I have
to afford to live, you know, I need to pay
my rent. I had kind of made an enormous dent
in my savings just by not working and being on
the West Coast and driving wherever I wanted, and you know,
ordering broom service when I wanted, and and I think
(19:46):
I just was in such a state of I mean,
I think it was really utter sadness that the only
thing I could really look towards was being quote unquote busy.
I really started leaning in to therapy, so I um
around that time, I was doing group therapy, which was
(20:07):
phenomenal for me, just to get grounded again. You know,
I was exercising all the time, I was going out
with my friends all the time. I was making some
decisions that I look back on now. And and so
it was around this time too that that it was
when I got the job offer, and I had a
gut feeling that saying no in that moment was the
right thing to do, even though it was very scary
(20:31):
because this was like a full time job with health insurance. Again,
I just didn't want to put myself in a situation
where I was letting not just myself down, but someone
who was relying on me to do something. And so
what kind of advice would you give to listeners who say,
you know, I need a radical so radical, I need
(20:54):
some space. I recognize that maybe I'm making the wrong decisions,
or I'm burnt out, or this doesn't fit me anymore.
But I can't take three months off. How could they
maybe get a flavor for that space without having the
safety net or even the ability to, you know, have
(21:17):
other people not depend on you for a period of time.
I think for me, the thing that I valued the
most was just the quiet moments that I allowed myself
to have, whether they were a ten twenty minutes to
really say, okay, well what is like can I identify
what I'm really struggling with? Um? I know that there's
(21:38):
a conversation around affordable therapy for all UM, and I
think it's so important that, however you define therapy, whether
that's talking to someone a professional, talking to a friend,
going for bike ride, like trying to carve out, you know,
small moments for yourself to to really identify, you know, well,
(21:59):
what is causing my anxiety? What is you know, what
am I really struggling with? Really helped me And so
I know that, as you said, and as I've said,
not everyone can just press like a pause button on
their life, because even when I did, like it was
still quite stressful, because I was still like, well, am
I going to pay for the stuff? Or like, you
know what, am I I still have to find a
(22:20):
job I need. I didn't have health insurance, and so
I know that there are people that have to take
care of their families, have to take care of children,
and so it can be really hard. But I think
just learning the language of how to verbalize what is
really going on when you are having these moments of
kind of feeling overwhelmed of needing help. It took me
(22:41):
so long to learn how to ask for help and
not just say I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Allowing
people to take care of me. I think was really
a huge shift for me um during this time in
my life. And so I would say that, you know,
there are obviously people who are approaching burnout and still
have to go to work. Do they have relationships with
(23:03):
their bosses or other employees where they can say, like
I need to take half a day, I just need
to recharge. Are their friends on the weekends they can say, look,
I just can you babysit or can you watch my kid?
Can you help out? Like I'm financially strapped right now,
So to really allow the compassion that I'm sure like
people's friends have for these situations, to really sit down
(23:26):
and say, you know, how can I work with the
people that I have in my life in a way
that is productive. It also sounds like you really made this,
Like you said, whether or not it felt like a
conscious decision, right, but you made this choice to really
find moments of slowing down, to stop this full on,
(23:48):
busy speed momentum that it's so easy to get into.
I know, I myself have many times, you know, to
just find like even pockets of stillness, whether that looks
like a group therapy session every week, you know, once
a week or once every other week or whatever. And
also I love the questions that you started asking yourself
(24:10):
to really try to get to the heart of what
was really going on. Yeah, And I think the other
thing too is you know, as you were saying that,
I was kind of like, you know, running through a
few scenarios in my mind. It really was just telling
people that I wasn't okay. That's so hard, I know,
but I like, I am not good at that statement. Well,
(24:32):
I think for me, it also boiled down to the
fact that even if I was saying I was okay,
I didn't look okay. It took work, I mean, like
it was actual mental emotional work to say to my
friends like, I know, you see this happening, and I
know I don't know how to ask for help, but
(24:52):
I know that I need it. And so it wasn't
just the work of saying that, but then of not
being dismissive of my friends when they offered the help
because I didn't know what it looked like. You know,
I was just like, you know, for so long, I
was like, oh, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. I
love that. I think you made such crucial points there
that it's both a skill to figure out how to
(25:15):
ask for help and to be able to do that
and then be to also then receive that help. But
those are things that don't come naturally too many of
us at all, And those are not small things either,
you know. I think Christina, you and I have talked
about this. I'm I'm increasingly aware of how often I
present as everything's okay when everything's not and that's not
(25:37):
even intentional, you know. I mean you could say maybe
it is on a subconscious level, but that's often what
it is is just this like it's in my my
upbringing my DNA to just like stiff upper lip, you know.
And then I wonder why people aren't checking in on
me because they don't think they have to, you know,
(25:57):
absolutely well. I think is also just a default answer,
right that we're trained with, like how are you? I'm great? Yeah,
that's actually that is one thing that group therapy really
challenged me on, which were these kind of what could
feel like flippant answers to like sometimes flippant questions, right,
(26:18):
I think again, people say well, how is your day
or how's it going, because like that's just very natural
to say, and then everyone says, ohm, okay, I'm fine,
like sucks its training today, And in the group, whenever
I was like I'm fine, they would say what does
that even mean? You know, like can you talk about
that a little bit more? And so now it's really
(26:39):
deciding who I then allowed to know when things are
not fine, versus saying it's fine, you know, because it's
also a lot of work and energy to allow someone
in to know when things are not going well, and
that's even worse sometimes when someone says like how are
you when you're like, actually, I'm having a really bad day,
(27:01):
you know, like like thumbs upgrade. Yeah, Like I'm not
emotionally prepared for that response. I need to go to
the bathroom now, that's right, Like, not everyone is going
to yeah, be the person to be really vulnerable with storytelling,
(27:35):
talking about the stories we tell ourselves. Storytelling has been
part of your career science communication. You had your own
podcast as you mentioned you were writing, You've done creative
and marketing work as now part of your day job
to help get the word out about this program. How
did you develop that skill of talking about science and
(27:56):
sort of what experiences helped you build that muscle. I
think most people do not assume that scientists are also storytellers,
So how did you maybe break out of that mold.
I think that when people talk about science and then
they talk about storytelling, it can often feel like those
(28:16):
are two disparate things. When a lot of times, especially
when we have to write our research papers or when
we have to give presentations, we are telling a story.
We are telling the story of a question that we had,
how we then found the answer for that, and then
what were the answers? And so it might not be
a gripping novel um that you know, someone would want
(28:38):
to pick up off the shelf, but the bare bones
of it is that it is a story about how
the world works around us. And I think for me,
I never really differentiated the two. So I think that's
what really helped. I think that whenever I had to
give lab meetings or whenever I had to present in
front of other people, specifically as it pertained to scientific research,
(29:02):
you know, the question was always, well, what is the
story that I am trying to tell? And I find
that that question has followed me around, especially as I
think about building this program. What is the value of
this degree? Why would people want to get this master's?
How does what we are teaching fit into the narrative
(29:22):
of what they want their story to be. You know,
if you go online, there's a huge community of science
communicators who are actively and thoughtfully thinking about what does
it mean to kind of ground yourself in science communication
and be a scientist. You know, obviously always two sides
(29:43):
of the coin, where some people say, oh, well, we
just need to do the science. Don't worry about you know,
if you can't communicate it to like your mom or
your librarian, like it doesn't matter. And then there's other
people who say, well, these are the people that your
research is affecting, so of course you want to be
able to h have a conversation with them about it.
So I think that it is a skill that everyone
(30:07):
should or I mean a skill and a muscle right
that everyone should exercise. Um. And there's so many, especially
in New York City, there's so many opportunities for people
to do that, you know, one of them being I've
done a few story colliders, um, which is a great
What I really appreciate about story colliders, you know, they
do help you craft your narrative, right. So it's science
(30:30):
stories by scientists or people who are passionate about science.
For some people, it's the first time they've ever gotten
on stage, or it's or the first time they've ever
even thought, oh, this thing that happened to me could
be a story. For me, it's kind of always been
something that has been in my blood since I was
like a little kid. I was always telling stories and
and so these are things that I hope I bring
(30:52):
to my job every day I think about, um, you know,
it's just like this narrative of you know, what is
my story? You know, Sabria is something that I read
in an article that that Christina found about you, that
you said something like, even though a good bit of
your time is spent in an office, that you still
view a lot of what you do now as small
(31:13):
experiments to see what will work and what won't work,
and to to learn more. Right. And I'm so struck
by that that sort of scientists approach, you know, to
to failure and to experimenting and to trying things out.
And I'm so curious about now being in this role,
where as we've talked about, you are using so many
(31:34):
different skills all at once, including marketing skills, outreach, all
kinds of things. How much does that sort of original
training in the lab still influence how you work? Just
like you said, I kind of view everything as well,
maybe like the little secret as an academia, if you
(31:54):
tell everyone it's a pilot, then like they sort it's there,
It's like the pressure for it to work is kind
of lifted, and everyone's just like, oh, well, we'll just
see what happens. So we're just gonna pilot this program,
and we're just going to pilot this initiative. And so
I think that that's in the beginning. I would say
my first year, I was very like everything had to
(32:15):
be perfect. I had to know how to do everything.
And then I realized one that really boxed me in
and and kind of almost left me like paralyzed. Right,
So saying your progress over perfection, right, So like, just
get the thing done, put it out in the world,
and then you can always kind of change it a
little bit later. And so I think for me, when
I think about small experiments, if I go back and
(32:38):
I think, okay, obviously when I was doing experiments, there
was a protocol, but that was all that. It was
just like a recipe. I had an idea of what
or hope write a hypothesis of what the outcome would be.
And if it wasn't that that, it wasn't a failure.
It was like, this is what the answers were, So
what do those answers tell me? Now? Normally, and maybe
(32:59):
you know, for people who identify with being scientists, it's like,
will those answers generally lead to more questions and data
that then helps drive or reshape your original hypothesis um
or framework of thinking. And so that's kind of how
I try. I don't always doesn't always work to approach
new things where I say, well, if it doesn't work,
(33:21):
I learned something, and it's like that thing that I
learned and do something else. And so I kind of,
you know, again, tell my students that, especially because a
lot of them are, you know, in their early twenties,
and they feel like, oh, well, if I take this
next job, if I do this next thing, like this
is the thing I'm gonna be doing for the rest
of my life. And I'm always like, yeah, like no,
like well, first of all, like not in this economy,
(33:42):
but also like you know, like you can change your mind.
So like do something, whether it's a job and internship,
you know, sending out like a cold email, and then
you're going to get some data back about that thing
that you did, and then use that data to then
inform your next decision and then kind of building on that.
So it's taken an enormous amount of work for me
(34:05):
to get to a place where I feel comfortable even
saying some of the things that I've been saying in
this interview. But again, I think it's just little experiments
that kind of propelled me forward. You care quite a
bit about the importance of diversity, inclusion, representation, and STEM,
and now you are in a gatekeeper position. How do
(34:27):
you ensure that the students, or really anyone who becomes
a part of the community for this graduate program meets
that bar for diversity and inclusion. It's interesting because for
a while when I was a grad student, I was like, yeah,
like diversity inclusion, diversity inclusion, Like I want to be
on all the panels. I want people to I want
(34:48):
people to ask me about my opinion about this. And
then over time, a lot of these conversations can feel stale,
especially when they are the same kinds of people are
having them. Whenever people hire individuals, right, it's like your
VP of diversity inclusion, your provost of diversity and inclusion, Like,
(35:09):
what is your actual job description? And also, if it
is this thing that everyone should be you know, kind
of on board with, why does it fall to one
person to manage? And also, I mean maybe this is
the scientist to me, but it's how do you actually
know when you're community or your organization is an inclusive one,
(35:30):
How do you know that you know? We can we
can show charts and graphs of diverse companies. What is
your inclusion metric, what's your where's your graph for that?
What does that even mean for you? Like what is
your definition of inclusion? And also like how do we
know or how does your company know that that is
(35:50):
the direction that they're going in, because then what happens
like once you say that your company is diverse and inclusive,
does that person get fired? Like I don't understand, Like
so I just feel like you know it there it's
a lot of word salads sometimes. I think when we
talk about this, for sure, I know that there are
people doing very very good work around this, but the
work that they're doing around it, they're just doing it.
(36:12):
And sometimes a lot of the people who are doing
the work don't have these fancy titles. So in some
ways I would say, I don't pointedly talk about it,
I just kind of do it. And I hope that
the end goal was that people see that I am
building a program that over the past five years, even
though our cohorts are quite small, the gender breakdown, as
(36:32):
always has generally been one to one, which is wonderful.
How people report their ethnicities has been a wide spectrum,
and that again just creates I think, better conversations, better
dynamics with the student teams. What I really try to
do is I try to see, like, well, what is
this person's story, Like I can see your application we
(36:53):
talk in an interview, but how can we create a
cohesive cohort with a diverse group of people? Oh Man, Christina,
this conversation is one that I've rarely connected with deeply,
you know, I think it's such an interesting line of
(37:15):
conversation about the fact that change can happen in little bits,
or it can happen in these sort of huge moments
of upheaval or something in between. For sure, you know,
certainly I've gone through a similar upheaval twice in my
adult life, one and one in this last year. And
(37:37):
you know, when that happens, it really feels like it's
often unanticipated, and it can feel like it's just a
total slate clean, you know. And and in my case, certainly,
my relationship ended, the job I currently had ended, I
moved like much like Sabria, it felt like all the things.
(37:58):
And while I was going through that, this friend of
mine uses great metaphor. She was like, you know, Kate,
it's just like you're like a hermit crab without a shell.
She's like, you have one shell, hermit crab. And you
know I had hermit crabs as a kid. I loved them.
Want to have You didn't have hermit crabs? No? I
had a box turtle. What that's cool, that's super cool
(38:23):
for people with allergies. Well, I think we had a
couple in my classroom in school, and then we definitely
had a couple in my house. But you know, that's
what they do. They have a little shell, and then
you can go to the pet store and pick out
a bigger shell, and then when they outgrow the little shell,
they shuffle along out of the shell into this new
(38:43):
and improved one, but there shell less in between. So
that's like, probably feels really weird and I'm comfortable, Okay,
I see the metaphor weird, We're there. It feels super
weird and untethered, and it can feel like you don't
have any footholds, you know, And I think that I
know what happened to me in that time, much like
(39:04):
Sabria is. I just said, okay, I've got to ask
for help, everything from crashing on friends couches to storing
stuff in my friend's parents garage. Like it was a
big dose of humility, But what it allowed me to
do was let go of the pride that was getting
in the way and really like discover this real connection
(39:29):
with people that I might not have otherwise connected with.
I honestly, I really appreciated how open Sabria was in
talking about her mistakes and her choice to go to therapy,
and even that moment when her parents were like, we
don't care that you're thirty three years old. We're going
to bring you back to Virginia if you don't make
a change, which just proves that well, number one, you're
(39:50):
always your parents child. Number two, there's no age limit
on needing a restart, you know, Like this isn't just
limited to those couple of weird uncom years after college.
You can have these moments, as you've mentioned several times
in your life. I think that's such a great point too,
that like we think, oh, we can only have these
(40:10):
moments up until a certain point, and after that point
we're like, yeah, that's right, you're supposed to know. But
I really do believe the more that I go through
this this crazy ride of life, that it really is
the cycle, you know, and there's often like things often
have to change or dissolve in order for new stuff
(40:33):
to come. And sometimes that can feel really kind of
gradual and organic, and other times it can. And if
you're experiencing one over the other, it doesn't mean that
there's anything wrong or right with you. I think it's
just sort of how your change is happening, you know.
And I think that while it's true that not everyone
can take weeks or months off from their real life,
(40:55):
I think that Sabria have really great suggestions for how
to build some space for those moments of self reflection
and vulnerability and community building in your everyday life. Right Like,
this doesn't have to feel super dramatic necessarily. It reminded
me a lot of Stephanie Pereira's episode one oh three
about community building, and it also reminded me of Caesar
Curyama's episode, which is in which yeah, Caesar talks about
(41:19):
how he really strategically planned to take this really dedicated
time off to figure out what he was going to do,
and he really methodically saved for it. So that's a
really fun one to go back and listen to. Also
well so speaking of Stephanie Pereira and you know her
time at Kickstarter. This conversation with Sabria also made me
think of Amanda Palmer. Do you know Amanda. She's a musician. Uh,
(41:41):
And she gave this fantastic TED talk a couple of
years back called the Art of Asking. Very relevant to this.
Amanda talks about how she left her music label and
built a relationship directly with her fans, first through a
campaign that was at the time the largest music project
in the history of Starter, and now through Patreon, alongside
(42:03):
blogging and tweeting. And she talks about the vulnerability but
also the incredible gift of letting people help you. Yes,
oh my gosh. You know. That also makes me think
about how we often think that taking time off is
like taking us away from what we're doing, when often
that quote unquote time off, which sometimes just means not
(42:25):
pursuing something in the traditional way, like taking time off
from auditioning or from a music tour or whatever, allows
us to really not only cultivate our voice, but are people.
And this week we want to challenge our listeners to
consider how often you let people help you, and to
(42:47):
find one concrete way to ask for help from someone
who genuinely cares about you. I personally find it is
so much easier to be the helper than the person
asking for help, and yet it's a skill that we
need just as badly. So true, I mean, really both
need to exist in order for the other to survive. Right.
(43:08):
I also have such an easier time helping than receiving help.
And something that helps me is to just kind of
like tap into the joy that I have when I
can help others and just think, Okay, well, then if
I ask someone for help, it might give them a
similar sense of purpose or contribution or even just connection. Right. So,
(43:30):
when we can really start opening up ourselves to receiving help,
and that's what we want you guys to practice this week,
we can really kind of start getting in this mindset
of well, what else is trying to make its way
into our lives? Right? So, let us know how this
goes asking for help and also how you've made space
for self reflection. Have you taken a radical sabbatical? We
(43:52):
love hearing your updates and your questions. You can reach
us on Twitter or Instagram at tld n E pod,
or you can email us at hello at t l
d any podcast dot com, or you can leave us
a voicemail at eight three three Hi t l d
n E. That's eight three three eight five three six three,
and don't forget to dial the extension eight oh three
when you call to leave a voicemail. Tell us all
(44:14):
about your mini sabbaticals well. Link to Sabria's Masters in
Translational Medicine program and our show notes, along with Amanda
Palmer's Ted Talk and Caesar and Stephanie's episodes that we
mentioned to. Thanks so much to our producer Maya Cole,
(44:37):
and to you for tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate,
and review on Apple Podcasts if you like what you heard,
it really helps us get the word out to fellow
human ven diagrams. Until next time, remember the limit does
not exist. The Limit does not Exist is a production
(44:58):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah
The Limit Does Not Exist is a production of I
Heart Radio. Okay, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm Kate Scott Campbell.
We're here to help you follow your curiosity, celebrate your individuality,
(00:20):
and embrace the and not the ore so you can
turn everything you love into a custom built career that's
as unique and dynamic as you are. If you feel
that one path may not be your only path, and
you call yourself a human bend diagram, then you are
in the right place, because when it comes to pursuing
your passions, we believe the limit does not exist. What
(00:44):
do you do when you find yourself at a major
life transition point and somehow you're utterly unmoored with no apartment,
no relationship, no job, and no idea what you want
to do next. One option is to take a three
month radical sabbatical that involves a West Coast road trip,
a couple of short term gigs, some group therapy, and
(01:06):
a parental intervention. That's what this week's guest Dr Sabria
Stukes did, and it helped her discover what she cared
most about and how she wanted to make an impact
in the world. Sabria is the assistant director of the
Masters in Translational Medicine program at the City College of
New York and a lifelong science communicator and storyteller. And yes,
(01:27):
translational medicine is a thing, and Sabria will explain it
real talk. This episode gets straight to the core of
so many fears for human ven diagrams, how to find
your path when it's not the obvious one, how to
let your community support you when you need it the most,
even how to say no when your default is always
to say yes. It's just the inspiration you might need
(01:49):
to get out of a rut or through the week ahead.
So let's meet, Sabria. Let's do it. How do you
introduce yourself? I am working at the City College of
New York and I'm helping them build and run a
new Master's program UM in Translational Medicine. And so then
(02:12):
of course the follow up question is always well, what
is translational medicine? And yeah, it's this really new and
I mean, I think quite interesting UM discipline where we
are taking scientists and engineers and we are teaching them
the process of medical technology commercialization. So what actually goes
into identifying on met clinical need designing a solution around
(02:37):
that and then evaluating that solution so that when it
goes out into the market, it's a sustainable product. So
that's kind of the more like the very traditional definition
of translational medicine this kind of bench to bedside. So
when we refer to the bench, we say, or we
generally mean, you know, scientific ideas, engineering devices, um, things
(02:58):
like that, like how do we get those things out
into the world. And so for us, we decided to
kind of like remix that definition because if you think
about it, that can feel very uni directional. Right, It's
like scientists and engineers just saying, here's the solutions to
the problems of the world. But what if we went
to the bedside, right, or the patients or the communities
(03:19):
that are going to be using those solutions, and we say,
do you need this before we start building it? Right? Like,
what if we took the feedback and the comments from
the communities that need these things back to the quote
unquote bench, right back to these kind of design labs,
and in that way, everyone is involved in the solution.
(03:40):
You know, when you are a scientist or an engineer,
you go through a grad program or even an undergrad program,
you're taught that thing. You're taught how to do an experiment,
you're taught how to build the thing. But a lot
of times if you want to put it out into
the world, you're not necessarily taught, you know, the business
aspects of that, or how do I like what is
intellectual pretty, how do I work with f DA? What
(04:01):
patents do I need to file? And so, you know,
we teach all that to, you know, people who are
really curious and interested in building better medical devices. It's
also interesting because to your point, it's not just about
what are the technologies or what are the inventions that
we could go commercialize. It's equally important to say, what
(04:22):
do patients need? Problems are they having that we might
then go and discover something to solve. Yeah, And it's
not when we say the communities that are going to
be using them. It's patients, it's doctors, it's it's everyone. Right.
So I think one of the really nice things that
I have been able to do with the program is
(04:45):
integrate some of the things that I feel like are
missing from these conversations. So, uh, social justice aspects, when
we think about who gets access, when we think about
who can afford these devices? Right? I teach a class
in the spring, and the first class that I have,
you know, I kind of present much bigger questions than
(05:06):
how do you build this thing? It's who are you
building it for? Um? Can they afford it? Uh? You know,
what does it? We go through this activity of you know,
what does it mean to be poor in America? What
does it mean to be rich in America? What does
it mean to be wealthy in America? And then now
let's talk about that in terms of one's health. And
(05:27):
I just feel like those types of questions are not
really being asked, or if they are being asked, I
mean I'm not hearing that in terms of you know,
just like when things are being designed, you know, I
know we are kind of in this heyday of technology
in terms of everyone wants to start their own company
and everyone wants to be a CEO. And so you know,
(05:48):
the thing that I hope for is that no matter
what our students do when they graduate, UM, as long
as to me, they are asking the right kinds of questions. UM,
then I've kind of done my job. What kinds of
students come into this program Sabria? Like, what kind of
backgrounds do you look for or reach out to who
(06:12):
might be a great candidate for this kind of work.
That's such a great question, and we are actually kind
of still determining who the like ideal you know MTM
some Masters in Translational Medicine student is. So when I
was kind of first presented with this opportunity to build
this program, they had already had four students, so this
(06:33):
was in August. They had four students in a curriculum,
and they said, okay, build this program. And so at
the time it was to biomedical engineers, someone who had
undergraduated with a biology degree, and then someone who was premed.
And so the structure of the program is such that
we there is a core curriculum, so it's one year,
(06:55):
thirty credits. But then we also put students on multidisciplinary
teams to build an actual working prototype for an unmet
clinical needs. So we go through the the bio design process,
which many people might know from Stanford. So we teach
them how do you identify on met clinical need? How
do you then design the solution? Then hygate valuate the
solution on a team right of other people who maybe
(07:18):
have different backgrounds than you. We really encourage anyone with
a STEM background to apply. If you take a look
at our curriculum or is not like pure engineering or
pure science or let's say, like pure math courses. And
we do that because really what we're it really is
like a blend of science, business, engineering, entrepreneurial aspects of
(07:40):
you know, bringing a technology to markets. So we really
think that we can kind of teach that to anyone.
But the idea being that you should have a STEM
background and on some level be interested or curious about
what does it take to design a solution, but then
have it go out into the market and actually be
like a sustainable product because if you think about it,
(08:03):
how many devices, how many things that are born out
of labs never make it to the people that need
them because they weren't involving the customer. Right, So there's
some business aspects to this. To right, our students have
to go out and do customer discovery. We do a
very condensed um like lean launch pad model in the spring.
(08:25):
I mean they have to go out and interview a
hundred customers and then bring that information back to the
bench as it were. I say that after five years
of you know, working to build the program. You know,
we can read someone's resume or application, we can interview them,
and once they're in the program, that's when we're still like, Okay,
we think we did a good job building this. Here's cohort.
(09:00):
Do you have an undergraduate degree in microbiology and immunology
and then you did a PhD in biomedical science? This
is correct? How did you end up as the assistant
director of this master's program and an assistant professor in
the program rather than the much more traditional path of
(09:21):
a research scientist with a lab and a bench doing
the thing instead of, you know, building the program. I think,
like many individuals who go through PhDs in the life science,
when you're in graduate school it can feel very binary,
meaning it can feel like you are either talking to
people or p i s who say you should do
(09:43):
a lab, or you should go into industry, or you
should teach. And so there's not a lot of I
would say, breathing room to discuss I mean, this was,
of course when I went to graduate schools to maybe
like five years ago, and the conversation now is changing,
for sure, but there just didn't seem to be a
lot of wiggle room to say, oh I want to
(10:03):
do something else, and for me, like, I think my
job title generically falls under academic administration, which if you
had told me that that's what I would be doing
when I graduated, I would have been like boring, Like
no way. I was kind of asking myself these types
of questions as I was nearing graduation, and you know,
(10:26):
I was seeing my friends get jobs or they were
pursuing post docs, which is, you know what you do
if you want to kind of maybe take a little
bit more time to figure out what you want, or
if you know definitively you want to go on into
the path of having your own lab. I was seeing
a bunch of my friends go on to medical communications agencies.
I was seeing my friends go into industries or smaller
biotech startups, and I felt a little adrift. I had been,
(10:49):
as you said, Christina, kind of in the life sciences
for over a decade at that point. Um I had
been working in labs. I worked on HIV for a year,
I worked on tuberculosis for a few years. I did
my thesis research on a fungal pathogen. So I was
like really into infectious diseases and yeah, right, And I
felt like if after ten years of being in labs,
(11:10):
which are still truly like, I get a little flutter
in my heart whenever I visit my friends who have labs,
because it just is like a very comfortable space for me.
If after ten years of doing that, I didn't have
this kind of burning desire to continue doing that, maybe
I should take a step and breathe a little bit
and say, what is it that I want to actively
(11:33):
be spending my time on. And so towards the end
of my grad career, I was going, as I'm sure
many people do. It's going to listen to pianos, going
to seminars, meet ups, you know. I was like, I'm
going to meet someone who's going to tell me exactly
what to do with my life. And the woman who
I met, her name is u Dr gilded Barrebino, who
(11:56):
is the Dean of Engineering at the City College of
New York UM. She is I believe, one of four
one of six African American women to head college of
Engineering in America, and she just actually got elected to
the National Academy of Engineering, which is you know, a
huge fee for for anyone. And anyway, so I saw
(12:16):
her on this panel. She had said some stuff about
her trajectory that really resonated with me, and I simply
went up to her, like at the kind of coffee lunchline,
and I said, I really appreciated some of the things
you said. I'm I'm a little adrift. Could we chat?
She said, sure, you know, here's my email. Why don't
you come. We can get coffee or something. So, as
you can imagine of the dean of a school of engineering,
(12:38):
she's quite busy. So it took a few weeks for
us to really nail down a date. And when I
went to go talk to her, it was like I
felt an instant connection where I could really tell her
exactly how I felt about being so adrift after being
on a very particular path for a while. And she listened.
(12:59):
She listened with such empathy and compassion, And when I
was kind of done, you know, giving her my spiel,
she said, listen, it may be the case that in
a few months there might be an opportunity for you
to work in this office to build this program. It's
going to be brand new in a you know, this
field of translational medicine is still really really really new.
(13:22):
Only like a handful of schools have these type of
kind of real world practical degree programs. She's like, that's
all the information I have, but let's continue talking. So
I said sure, And then maybe like a month later,
her office called and said, hey, can you come back in.
We have some more updated information for you about the positions,
(13:43):
and she offered me a job. She said, I really
liked you. I really feel like you could be really
good for this position. And I said, no, my joy. Also,
I didn't have a job. I was kind of in
the space in my life where I didn't like, kind
of trust what was going on around me, and I
(14:03):
was also figuring some other things out. And I said
to her, you know, I am not in a space
right now to take on this job and do a
good job at it. And it was like this very
awkward moment of silence because I really, like I'm in
the past have been a person that has just said yes,
because I wanted to just say yes to everything, you know,
(14:26):
and even if I didn't know if I was going
to do it or not. So there was like this
very awkward moment because I was like, I do not
have a job. I need a job. This woman is
offering me a job and I am like saying no.
And so she took a beat and then she looked
at me and she said, okay, but when will you
be ready? And I was like, this was maybe like
(14:47):
October off and I said January one, and she said okay, fine.
She's like, I will give you until January to like
figure out whatever it is you need to figure out,
and then I expect you here. Yeah, Sabria, there's so
many parts of the story that I love, and I'd
say the thing that connects them all is your courage.
(15:07):
I mean, I love that you even from the get
go went up to her and said, Hey, I'm Sabria.
I love what you said. I'm adrift. Like to even mention,
you know, i'd like your advice, like that's incredibly vulnerable
to do. Then to say no when you get the
job offer is also incredibly courageous. And so we have
(15:28):
to ask tell us about the decision to take a
career sabbatical and what it looked like. I don't know
if it was so much a decision more than I'm
just going to wake up and not do that. I don't.
I mean I tell my students all the time that
sometimes when you don't make a decision that in and
of itself is a decision. And so I actually had
(15:50):
a really challenging time transitioning out of graduate school. I
think a lot of things came to an end for
me as it pertained to how I saw myself as
a person in the world. After I graduated with a PhD.
My partner at the time decided that our five year
(16:11):
relationship was not something he felt like continuing. I would
say so many words but also maybe lack of words. Um.
Not only did that the idea of me being a
scientist kind of end, but then this very long relationship ended.
I had already moved out of my apartment and like
moved some stuff into his apartment, so I also didn't
(16:32):
have an apartment, and I completely unmoored, super unmoored, and
all I have is like this piece of paper that
says I have a degree in biomedical sciences. And so
without wall to hang out exactly. I feel this so deeply,
Cria and um, yeah, it was just really challenging because
(16:56):
for me, as a Capricorn, you know, I planned things.
I like to know what the next step will look like,
even if I don't know all the steps, and so
for the first time in my life, I had zero plans.
You know, what do you do when you don't have
a plan. You book a flight to Seattle, UM, and
(17:17):
then you like have a two and a half week
road trip down the West coast, stopping kind of wherever
you want and hoping that by the end when you
drop off the rental car and Palm Springs, you will
have some answers. I had zero answers. I had a
very dusty car. At the end of that, I just
(17:37):
started telling people. A friend of mine used the phrase
radical sabbatical, UM, so that's kind of what I started
telling people, and interestingly, people really connected with that. I
was really fortunate enough too, when I was telling people
that I was doing this, and I said, hey, I'm
you know, I'm looking for work. I really don't know
what that looks like. Here's what I'm good at, or
(17:58):
here's what I think I'm good at. Two friends separately
reached out to me and said, hey, you know, there
might be these kind of three month positions that we
think you could be good at. Why don't you take them? Weirdly,
I went from having zero jobs to having two full
time jobs, and then I also decided to take a
part time job with the science startup that was based
(18:19):
on the West Coast because I was like, well, like
there's a time difference, so I can figure this out.
And it was not a very good decision, one because
I was not doing good at either of the jobs.
And two I was not doing a good job at
taking care of myself, almost to the point where my
(18:40):
parents came to visit me and they said that if
I didn't get my act together, I would have to
move home. It was how old were you at this point,
like thirty three, So they're they're issuing the ultimatum even
at thirty three, because you are clearly in a place
that said as I'm not making good decisions. Yeah. I
(19:02):
think that's an accurate summation of everything that was going on.
I understand the instinct of like having this total blank canvas, right,
like this groundlessness and this wipe out too then like
fill it with opportunity, especially when that comes in. It's
sort of almost like physics, right, it's empty, and then
you have this flood coming in, and then it sounds
(19:24):
like what you're saying is you went, whoa too much flood? Yeah,
And I think it really also was like, I have
to afford to live, you know, I need to pay
my rent. I had kind of made an enormous dent
in my savings just by not working and being on
the West Coast and driving wherever I wanted, and you know,
ordering broom service when I wanted, and and I think
(19:46):
I just was in such a state of I mean,
I think it was really utter sadness that the only
thing I could really look towards was being quote unquote busy.
I really started leaning in to therapy, so I um
around that time, I was doing group therapy, which was
(20:07):
phenomenal for me, just to get grounded again. You know,
I was exercising all the time, I was going out
with my friends all the time. I was making some
decisions that I look back on now. And and so
it was around this time too that that it was
when I got the job offer, and I had a
gut feeling that saying no in that moment was the
right thing to do, even though it was very scary
(20:31):
because this was like a full time job with health insurance. Again,
I just didn't want to put myself in a situation
where I was letting not just myself down, but someone
who was relying on me to do something. And so
what kind of advice would you give to listeners who say,
you know, I need a radical so radical, I need
(20:54):
some space. I recognize that maybe I'm making the wrong decisions,
or I'm burnt out, or this doesn't fit me anymore.
But I can't take three months off. How could they
maybe get a flavor for that space without having the
safety net or even the ability to, you know, have
(21:17):
other people not depend on you for a period of time.
I think for me, the thing that I valued the
most was just the quiet moments that I allowed myself
to have, whether they were a ten twenty minutes to
really say, okay, well what is like can I identify
what I'm really struggling with? Um? I know that there's
(21:38):
a conversation around affordable therapy for all UM, and I
think it's so important that, however you define therapy, whether
that's talking to someone a professional, talking to a friend,
going for bike ride, like trying to carve out, you know,
small moments for yourself to to really identify, you know, well,
(21:59):
what is causing my anxiety? What is you know, what
am I really struggling with? Really helped me And so
I know that, as you said, and as I've said,
not everyone can just press like a pause button on
their life, because even when I did, like it was
still quite stressful, because I was still like, well, am
I going to pay for the stuff? Or like, you
know what, am I I still have to find a
(22:20):
job I need. I didn't have health insurance, and so
I know that there are people that have to take
care of their families, have to take care of children,
and so it can be really hard. But I think
just learning the language of how to verbalize what is
really going on when you are having these moments of
kind of feeling overwhelmed of needing help. It took me
(22:41):
so long to learn how to ask for help and
not just say I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Allowing
people to take care of me. I think was really
a huge shift for me um during this time in
my life. And so I would say that, you know,
there are obviously people who are approaching burnout and still
have to go to work. Do they have relationships with
(23:03):
their bosses or other employees where they can say, like
I need to take half a day, I just need
to recharge. Are their friends on the weekends they can say, look,
I just can you babysit or can you watch my kid?
Can you help out? Like I'm financially strapped right now,
So to really allow the compassion that I'm sure like
people's friends have for these situations, to really sit down
(23:26):
and say, you know, how can I work with the
people that I have in my life in a way
that is productive. It also sounds like you really made this,
Like you said, whether or not it felt like a
conscious decision, right, but you made this choice to really
find moments of slowing down, to stop this full on,
(23:48):
busy speed momentum that it's so easy to get into.
I know, I myself have many times, you know, to
just find like even pockets of stillness, whether that looks
like a group therapy session every week, you know, once
a week or once every other week or whatever. And
also I love the questions that you started asking yourself
(24:10):
to really try to get to the heart of what
was really going on. Yeah, And I think the other
thing too is you know, as you were saying that,
I was kind of like, you know, running through a
few scenarios in my mind. It really was just telling
people that I wasn't okay. That's so hard, I know,
but I like, I am not good at that statement. Well,
(24:32):
I think for me, it also boiled down to the
fact that even if I was saying I was okay,
I didn't look okay. It took work, I mean, like
it was actual mental emotional work to say to my
friends like, I know, you see this happening, and I
know I don't know how to ask for help, but
(24:52):
I know that I need it. And so it wasn't
just the work of saying that, but then of not
being dismissive of my friends when they offered the help
because I didn't know what it looked like. You know,
I was just like, you know, for so long, I
was like, oh, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. I
love that. I think you made such crucial points there
that it's both a skill to figure out how to
(25:15):
ask for help and to be able to do that
and then be to also then receive that help. But
those are things that don't come naturally too many of
us at all, And those are not small things either,
you know. I think Christina, you and I have talked
about this. I'm I'm increasingly aware of how often I
present as everything's okay when everything's not and that's not
(25:37):
even intentional, you know. I mean you could say maybe
it is on a subconscious level, but that's often what
it is is just this like it's in my my
upbringing my DNA to just like stiff upper lip, you know.
And then I wonder why people aren't checking in on
me because they don't think they have to, you know,
(25:57):
absolutely well. I think is also just a default answer,
right that we're trained with, like how are you? I'm great? Yeah,
that's actually that is one thing that group therapy really
challenged me on, which were these kind of what could
feel like flippant answers to like sometimes flippant questions, right,
(26:18):
I think again, people say well, how is your day
or how's it going, because like that's just very natural
to say, and then everyone says, ohm, okay, I'm fine,
like sucks its training today, And in the group, whenever
I was like I'm fine, they would say what does
that even mean? You know, like can you talk about
that a little bit more? And so now it's really
(26:39):
deciding who I then allowed to know when things are
not fine, versus saying it's fine, you know, because it's
also a lot of work and energy to allow someone
in to know when things are not going well, and
that's even worse sometimes when someone says like how are
you when you're like, actually, I'm having a really bad day,
(27:01):
you know, like like thumbs upgrade. Yeah, Like I'm not
emotionally prepared for that response. I need to go to
the bathroom now, that's right, Like, not everyone is going
to yeah, be the person to be really vulnerable with storytelling,
(27:35):
talking about the stories we tell ourselves. Storytelling has been
part of your career science communication. You had your own
podcast as you mentioned you were writing, You've done creative
and marketing work as now part of your day job
to help get the word out about this program. How
did you develop that skill of talking about science and
(27:56):
sort of what experiences helped you build that muscle. I
think most people do not assume that scientists are also storytellers,
So how did you maybe break out of that mold.
I think that when people talk about science and then
they talk about storytelling, it can often feel like those
(28:16):
are two disparate things. When a lot of times, especially
when we have to write our research papers or when
we have to give presentations, we are telling a story.
We are telling the story of a question that we had,
how we then found the answer for that, and then
what were the answers? And so it might not be
a gripping novel um that you know, someone would want
(28:38):
to pick up off the shelf, but the bare bones
of it is that it is a story about how
the world works around us. And I think for me,
I never really differentiated the two. So I think that's
what really helped. I think that whenever I had to
give lab meetings or whenever I had to present in
front of other people, specifically as it pertained to scientific research,
(29:02):
you know, the question was always, well, what is the
story that I am trying to tell? And I find
that that question has followed me around, especially as I
think about building this program. What is the value of
this degree? Why would people want to get this master's?
How does what we are teaching fit into the narrative
(29:22):
of what they want their story to be. You know,
if you go online, there's a huge community of science
communicators who are actively and thoughtfully thinking about what does
it mean to kind of ground yourself in science communication
and be a scientist. You know, obviously always two sides
(29:43):
of the coin, where some people say, oh, well, we
just need to do the science. Don't worry about you know,
if you can't communicate it to like your mom or
your librarian, like it doesn't matter. And then there's other
people who say, well, these are the people that your
research is affecting, so of course you want to be
able to h have a conversation with them about it.
So I think that it is a skill that everyone
(30:07):
should or I mean a skill and a muscle right
that everyone should exercise. Um. And there's so many, especially
in New York City, there's so many opportunities for people
to do that, you know, one of them being I've
done a few story colliders, um, which is a great
What I really appreciate about story colliders, you know, they
do help you craft your narrative, right. So it's science
(30:30):
stories by scientists or people who are passionate about science.
For some people, it's the first time they've ever gotten
on stage, or it's or the first time they've ever
even thought, oh, this thing that happened to me could
be a story. For me, it's kind of always been
something that has been in my blood since I was
like a little kid. I was always telling stories and
and so these are things that I hope I bring
(30:52):
to my job every day I think about, um, you know,
it's just like this narrative of you know, what is
my story? You know, Sabria is something that I read
in an article that that Christina found about you, that
you said something like, even though a good bit of
your time is spent in an office, that you still
view a lot of what you do now as small
(31:13):
experiments to see what will work and what won't work,
and to to learn more. Right. And I'm so struck
by that that sort of scientists approach, you know, to
to failure and to experimenting and to trying things out.
And I'm so curious about now being in this role,
where as we've talked about, you are using so many
(31:34):
different skills all at once, including marketing skills, outreach, all
kinds of things. How much does that sort of original
training in the lab still influence how you work? Just
like you said, I kind of view everything as well,
maybe like the little secret as an academia, if you
(31:54):
tell everyone it's a pilot, then like they sort it's there,
It's like the pressure for it to work is kind
of lifted, and everyone's just like, oh, well, we'll just
see what happens. So we're just gonna pilot this program,
and we're just going to pilot this initiative. And so
I think that that's in the beginning. I would say
my first year, I was very like everything had to
(32:15):
be perfect. I had to know how to do everything.
And then I realized one that really boxed me in
and and kind of almost left me like paralyzed. Right,
So saying your progress over perfection, right, So like, just
get the thing done, put it out in the world,
and then you can always kind of change it a
little bit later. And so I think for me, when
I think about small experiments, if I go back and
(32:38):
I think, okay, obviously when I was doing experiments, there
was a protocol, but that was all that. It was
just like a recipe. I had an idea of what
or hope write a hypothesis of what the outcome would be.
And if it wasn't that that, it wasn't a failure.
It was like, this is what the answers were, So
what do those answers tell me? Now? Normally, and maybe
(32:59):
you know, for people who identify with being scientists, it's like,
will those answers generally lead to more questions and data
that then helps drive or reshape your original hypothesis um
or framework of thinking. And so that's kind of how
I try. I don't always doesn't always work to approach
new things where I say, well, if it doesn't work,
(33:21):
I learned something, and it's like that thing that I
learned and do something else. And so I kind of,
you know, again, tell my students that, especially because a
lot of them are, you know, in their early twenties,
and they feel like, oh, well, if I take this
next job, if I do this next thing, like this
is the thing I'm gonna be doing for the rest
of my life. And I'm always like, yeah, like no,
like well, first of all, like not in this economy,
(33:42):
but also like you know, like you can change your mind.
So like do something, whether it's a job and internship,
you know, sending out like a cold email, and then
you're going to get some data back about that thing
that you did, and then use that data to then
inform your next decision and then kind of building on that.
So it's taken an enormous amount of work for me
(34:05):
to get to a place where I feel comfortable even
saying some of the things that I've been saying in
this interview. But again, I think it's just little experiments
that kind of propelled me forward. You care quite a
bit about the importance of diversity, inclusion, representation, and STEM,
and now you are in a gatekeeper position. How do
(34:27):
you ensure that the students, or really anyone who becomes
a part of the community for this graduate program meets
that bar for diversity and inclusion. It's interesting because for
a while when I was a grad student, I was like, yeah,
like diversity inclusion, diversity inclusion, Like I want to be
on all the panels. I want people to I want
(34:48):
people to ask me about my opinion about this. And
then over time, a lot of these conversations can feel stale,
especially when they are the same kinds of people are
having them. Whenever people hire individuals, right, it's like your
VP of diversity inclusion, your provost of diversity and inclusion, Like,
(35:09):
what is your actual job description? And also, if it
is this thing that everyone should be you know, kind
of on board with, why does it fall to one
person to manage? And also, I mean maybe this is
the scientist to me, but it's how do you actually
know when you're community or your organization is an inclusive one,
(35:30):
How do you know that you know? We can we
can show charts and graphs of diverse companies. What is
your inclusion metric, what's your where's your graph for that?
What does that even mean for you? Like what is
your definition of inclusion? And also like how do we
know or how does your company know that that is
(35:50):
the direction that they're going in, because then what happens
like once you say that your company is diverse and inclusive,
does that person get fired? Like I don't understand, Like
so I just feel like you know it there it's
a lot of word salads sometimes. I think when we
talk about this, for sure, I know that there are
people doing very very good work around this, but the
work that they're doing around it, they're just doing it.
(36:12):
And sometimes a lot of the people who are doing
the work don't have these fancy titles. So in some
ways I would say, I don't pointedly talk about it,
I just kind of do it. And I hope that
the end goal was that people see that I am
building a program that over the past five years, even
though our cohorts are quite small, the gender breakdown, as
(36:32):
always has generally been one to one, which is wonderful.
How people report their ethnicities has been a wide spectrum,
and that again just creates I think, better conversations, better
dynamics with the student teams. What I really try to
do is I try to see, like, well, what is
this person's story, Like I can see your application we
(36:53):
talk in an interview, but how can we create a
cohesive cohort with a diverse group of people? Oh Man, Christina,
this conversation is one that I've rarely connected with deeply,
you know, I think it's such an interesting line of
(37:15):
conversation about the fact that change can happen in little bits,
or it can happen in these sort of huge moments
of upheaval or something in between. For sure, you know,
certainly I've gone through a similar upheaval twice in my
adult life, one and one in this last year. And
(37:37):
you know, when that happens, it really feels like it's
often unanticipated, and it can feel like it's just a
total slate clean, you know. And and in my case, certainly,
my relationship ended, the job I currently had ended, I
moved like much like Sabria, it felt like all the things.
(37:58):
And while I was going through that, this friend of
mine uses great metaphor. She was like, you know, Kate,
it's just like you're like a hermit crab without a shell.
She's like, you have one shell, hermit crab. And you
know I had hermit crabs as a kid. I loved them.
Want to have You didn't have hermit crabs? No? I
had a box turtle. What that's cool, that's super cool
(38:23):
for people with allergies. Well, I think we had a
couple in my classroom in school, and then we definitely
had a couple in my house. But you know, that's
what they do. They have a little shell, and then
you can go to the pet store and pick out
a bigger shell, and then when they outgrow the little shell,
they shuffle along out of the shell into this new
(38:43):
and improved one, but there shell less in between. So
that's like, probably feels really weird and I'm comfortable, Okay,
I see the metaphor weird, We're there. It feels super
weird and untethered, and it can feel like you don't
have any footholds, you know, And I think that I
know what happened to me in that time, much like
(39:04):
Sabria is. I just said, okay, I've got to ask
for help, everything from crashing on friends couches to storing
stuff in my friend's parents garage. Like it was a
big dose of humility, But what it allowed me to
do was let go of the pride that was getting
in the way and really like discover this real connection
(39:29):
with people that I might not have otherwise connected with.
I honestly, I really appreciated how open Sabria was in
talking about her mistakes and her choice to go to therapy,
and even that moment when her parents were like, we
don't care that you're thirty three years old. We're going
to bring you back to Virginia if you don't make
a change, which just proves that well, number one, you're
(39:50):
always your parents child. Number two, there's no age limit
on needing a restart, you know, Like this isn't just
limited to those couple of weird uncom years after college.
You can have these moments, as you've mentioned several times
in your life. I think that's such a great point too,
that like we think, oh, we can only have these
(40:10):
moments up until a certain point, and after that point
we're like, yeah, that's right, you're supposed to know. But
I really do believe the more that I go through
this this crazy ride of life, that it really is
the cycle, you know, and there's often like things often
have to change or dissolve in order for new stuff
(40:33):
to come. And sometimes that can feel really kind of
gradual and organic, and other times it can. And if
you're experiencing one over the other, it doesn't mean that
there's anything wrong or right with you. I think it's
just sort of how your change is happening, you know.
And I think that while it's true that not everyone
can take weeks or months off from their real life,
(40:55):
I think that Sabria have really great suggestions for how
to build some space for those moments of self reflection
and vulnerability and community building in your everyday life. Right Like,
this doesn't have to feel super dramatic necessarily. It reminded
me a lot of Stephanie Pereira's episode one oh three
about community building, and it also reminded me of Caesar
Curyama's episode, which is in which yeah, Caesar talks about
(41:19):
how he really strategically planned to take this really dedicated
time off to figure out what he was going to do,
and he really methodically saved for it. So that's a
really fun one to go back and listen to. Also
well so speaking of Stephanie Pereira and you know her
time at Kickstarter. This conversation with Sabria also made me
think of Amanda Palmer. Do you know Amanda. She's a musician. Uh,
(41:41):
And she gave this fantastic TED talk a couple of
years back called the Art of Asking. Very relevant to this.
Amanda talks about how she left her music label and
built a relationship directly with her fans, first through a
campaign that was at the time the largest music project
in the history of Starter, and now through Patreon, alongside
(42:03):
blogging and tweeting. And she talks about the vulnerability but
also the incredible gift of letting people help you. Yes,
oh my gosh. You know. That also makes me think
about how we often think that taking time off is
like taking us away from what we're doing, when often
that quote unquote time off, which sometimes just means not
(42:25):
pursuing something in the traditional way, like taking time off
from auditioning or from a music tour or whatever, allows
us to really not only cultivate our voice, but are people.
And this week we want to challenge our listeners to
consider how often you let people help you, and to
(42:47):
find one concrete way to ask for help from someone
who genuinely cares about you. I personally find it is
so much easier to be the helper than the person
asking for help, and yet it's a skill that we
need just as badly. So true, I mean, really both
need to exist in order for the other to survive. Right.
(43:08):
I also have such an easier time helping than receiving help.
And something that helps me is to just kind of
like tap into the joy that I have when I
can help others and just think, Okay, well, then if
I ask someone for help, it might give them a
similar sense of purpose or contribution or even just connection. Right. So,
(43:30):
when we can really start opening up ourselves to receiving help,
and that's what we want you guys to practice this week,
we can really kind of start getting in this mindset
of well, what else is trying to make its way
into our lives? Right? So, let us know how this
goes asking for help and also how you've made space
for self reflection. Have you taken a radical sabbatical? We
(43:52):
love hearing your updates and your questions. You can reach
us on Twitter or Instagram at tld n E pod,
or you can email us at hello at t l
d any podcast dot com, or you can leave us
a voicemail at eight three three Hi t l d
n E. That's eight three three eight five three six three,
and don't forget to dial the extension eight oh three
when you call to leave a voicemail. Tell us all
(44:14):
about your mini sabbaticals well. Link to Sabria's Masters in
Translational Medicine program and our show notes, along with Amanda
Palmer's Ted Talk and Caesar and Stephanie's episodes that we
mentioned to. Thanks so much to our producer Maya Cole,
(44:37):
and to you for tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate,
and review on Apple Podcasts if you like what you heard,
it really helps us get the word out to fellow
human ven diagrams. Until next time, remember the limit does
not exist. The Limit does not Exist is a production
(44:58):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah
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