February 24, 2020 • 42 mins
In our ongoing takedown of the idea that the arts and sciences are polar opposites, we bring you Dr. Aomawa Shields and Amy Secunda: two actresses turned astronomers! They tell us exactly how they made the transition from studying scripts to stars and trusted what the universe was telling them. Plus, the ultimate selflessness of self-care, how to know when to focus or diversify, and why your 12-year-old self might not actually have known what’s best for you.
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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. Have
(00:44):
you ever wondered why people think the arts and the
sciences are polar opposites. It's weird, right. There seems to
be this idea that you're either a creative or you're
a stem nerd. But we certainly know people who not
only love both but also fundamentally believe that they actually
have a lot in common like us. That's right, and
pretty much every guest we've ever had on our show true,
(01:06):
and today we are adding two more names to that list.
Dr Aloma was Shields is an assistant professor of physics
and astronomy at u C Irvine. She's also a TED
Fellow with a fantastic TED talk about how we'll find
life on other planets. And she's the founder of Rising
Star Girls, a program to help middle school girls of
color see themselves in astronomy and plot twist. She also
(01:30):
is a classically trained actor with an m f A
from U C. L A. And if you thought one
actor astronomer was unexpected, well hold onto your seats, because
we actually have two of them. Amy Sekunda is a
PhD student at Princeton in astrophysics and was formerly a
hell and Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History.
But before her path took her into astronomy, she was
(01:53):
a child actor and majored in theater at Northwestern University.
We figured that if there were two in this actor
astronomer up, there are probably a lot more out there. Wait, Kate,
did you just make this club up? Or is it
an actual thing I can join? No, Christina, you made
up the club. I just decided that the clubhouse was
on Mars. Oh okay, let's meet, Ohma and Amy. Shall
we let's do it? Oh mohile, We're going to start
(02:22):
with you. You started down the science path with an
undergraduate degree and planetary science from m I T. And
you even started a PhD in physics, but then you
went and got an m f A in acting at
U C l A. So what was it that made
you step off that research science path at that moment?
(02:42):
And why was it acting that you went toward. I
had put myself on this path from the age of twelve,
actually when I when I had seen this movie Space Camp,
auster contender perhaps not, but I loved it, Like a
movie about these kids who get accidentally launched into space
(03:03):
on while they're at space camp, and it's just like
rocked my world. And I went home after school that
day and like pulled out my World book Encyclopedias and
grabbed the volume that was labeled A, and I looked
up astronomy astronaut and kind of plotted out this huge,
long career trajectory of like I'm gonna get my PhD
(03:25):
in astronomy, I'm going to go to the best science
school in the world and my T and I'm going
to apply to NASA. And but I never really actually
stopped during that evolution of that path to sort of
ask myself, how am I doing? Do I still love
what I'm doing, um do I still want to do this? Um?
So when I had started to do acting in prep school,
I had gone to Phillips Exeter Academy, which I had
(03:47):
gone to because it had its own observatory, and I
was like, I'm in. But I had sort of stumbled
into an audition. They were auditioning for the play Steel Magnolias,
which like a girl on campus wanted a role that
shall be monologue, Yeah right right. I had just gone
(04:10):
on a whim with some girlfriends who were like, come
with me, and I was like I could care less,
but fine, um, And I showed up and I ended
up getting cast and I was cast as Truv Dolly's
character in the film. It was so great, Like they
actually built an entire beauty salon as part of the set,
like it was the whole, you know, And like I
(04:31):
got to I had to go get a manicure so
I would learn how to do manicures. This is very method,
a very role research. One play led to another play,
and I just became this sort of theater person and
I also was proctoring at the observatory and these things
were able to coexist. In high school, there was kind
(04:54):
of this undercurrent of like she was the thing you
want to do. She was the college that's the best
in that thing. And no one actually told me to
do that, but I think there was this kind of like, well,
I had this astronomy path that set out for myself,
I'm going to stick to that. And so you know,
I went to M I T and then a senior
year UM, I did apply to both acting grad schools
(05:17):
and astronomy grad schools. I applied to like the top
three acting grad schools, like and Why You, Yale and
like the Globe. I didn't get into any of those,
but I did get into astrophysics grad school. I got
like a free full ride to University of Wisconsin Madison.
Started off did one year, but during that year I
(05:37):
was definitely distracted. I would be trying to do astronomy
aster physics homework and then I would think about a
movie or somebody would be talking about the oscars or
the latest film, and like then I would perk up.
The fact that I wasn't focused led to not having
all of my mental energy and one focused on one thing.
(05:57):
I naturally started to do a little bit poorly in classes.
Not all classes, but some classes, and that led to
this sort of like identity crisis. Do I want to
do this? I want to do that? And I decided
to differ from that program and snuck away and applied
to acting grad schools again, got on buses to Chicago
(06:18):
to audition, and you know, got into acting grad school
at u C l A. And decided to go and
do that. Wow. So you followed that acting path for
a while. You eventually merged it with your love of
science when you became the host of a TV show
called Wired Science, which is produced by PBS and Wired magazine.
(06:38):
But eventually you went back to that PhD. You you
completed a PhD in astronomy and astrobiology at the University
of Washington. So what pulled you back in and how
was that experience ultimately influenced by that time off acting
and doing science communication. I felt like when I was
(07:00):
in acting grad school for many reasons, and it was
almost like playtime. Not that it was easier than astronomy
grad school. It was sort of harder in a different way.
And that like my brain, which was supposed to be
working so hard all the time as an astrophysics grad student,
needed to take a kind of hiatus when I was
as an acting grad student, I had to really kind
(07:22):
of turn the brain off and the heart on. It
was all about the feelings, which was encouraged to kind
of wear on my sleeve for like easy access. And
the thinking really could get me into trouble. Um, especially
like Shakespeare and you're supposed to it's supposed to be
living thought where there is no subtext, you know, and
acting it's kind of saying how what they're thinking as
(07:44):
soon as the thought comes out, and so this sort
of like hyper thinking and over analysis can be a
detriment as an actor. And so that's why it felt
like it was sort of a vacation for that overcritical,
analytical side of me. But after you know, several years
of acting grad school and then working as a professional
actor off and on, paying the bills with sort of
(08:06):
tempt jobs here and there, I found that I missed
being a part of the community of people who were
trying to learn more about the universe. UM. I didn't
want to learn about discoveries on the news with everyone else. UM.
I wanted to be a part of those discoveries. So
I ended up reaching out to an undergrad advisor and
got some encouragement, and she was like, you know, there's
(08:29):
this website at cal Tech where they post jobs. Um,
you might think to look there. And I the day
a job was posted that it was perfect for me.
It was working as a health desk operator for the
Spitzer space telescope and support of that mission, and I
did that. I kind of went after that job like
it was like the last job on Earth. And I
got that job, and that led to like scheduling observations
(08:50):
on the spacecraft, which was wonderful and very fun. And
that was kind of my re entrance into the astronomy
community after almost a decade away, and I kind of
stabbled in, like I would go to astronomy talks, and
I found that the ones that were focused on exo planets,
which is this field that had really just taken off
while I had been gone from the field, those were
(09:11):
the talks that really caught my eye and made me
want to learn more. I ended up combining the two.
I didn't expect to do that, but because I worked
at cal Tech, when like science TV shows were casting,
they would kind of go to cal Tech and send
the breakdowns to email addresses there, and so like a
breakdown got passed to me and it was like again
(09:31):
the last day of auditions and like I showed up
there and they were like, we have to get you
in here. It's very that's incredible. Yeah, I was able
to host that show. So it was real a series
of wonderful circumstances that made me feel like I was
being led at every point, reaching out and getting the
help I needed. In the course of doing that Science
(09:53):
TV show, I was put in touch with Neil deGrasse
Tyson who had seen the pilot for that show and
was like, you without a PhD, you're just you know,
another person who wants to be on television, but a
PhD will give you like the street cred. I really
was able to hear that um in a way that
that helped me improve in terms of my trajectory. And
I also had applied to the Astronaut Candidate program along
(10:16):
the way. During this whole during dinner was working, I
had gotten like laser eye surgery. I like you like,
put me in coach, I'm ready. I was going after
that and again, like I barely met the minimum qualifications
for that because I didn't have a PhD yet, So
I did not get passed on to the next level,
(10:37):
and so it seemed like all roads were saying, like,
go back and get that PhD. Girl. So so like
I finally became willing to go through the whole process
of applying again to graduate programs. Amy, you are currently
a PhD student in astrophysical sciences at Princeton. But of
course this wasn't always your path. Your first degree was
(11:00):
in theater from my alma mater, Northwestern, also a theater
major there, and you pursued a professional acting career after that.
So what did theater, film, and improv offer you and
why did you ultimately decide to take a turn to science.
When did that happen for you? I started out as
an actor. I was actually a child actor. So you
(11:23):
have the head shots to prove it, so shot to
prove it. Oh, I have some of the cutest little
head shots. Oh my goodness. It was sort of a
similar thing in that, you know, I was twelve years
old and I was like, this is what I want
to do with my life, And you know, I was
I was always working and trying to build a career,
and I wanted to do more. So I went to
university and studied theater with the intention of moving back
(11:45):
to New York and going back to acting after I graduated.
And it's interesting that I always really enjoyed math and
science in school. I took a couple of math classes
for fun at Northwestern because that was the sort of
thing you actually could do in that program. So I
did some of that, and I always found it very calming,
because in acting you're expected to be very emotional and
(12:07):
and not very analytical. For me, it was nice to
have this kind of analytical thing that always made sense,
you know, to to come and sit down and do
some math and and think critically in that way. And
after I graduated, I acted for a while, but I
missed the different side of my brain. I missed using
that side of my brain. And I had never been
(12:27):
acting but not also in school. I just woke up
one morning and I realized that you're not always employed
when you're an actor, So you're not you know, you're
not always working, but you should always be doing every
day something proactive for your career, always auditioning. And I
just woke up one morning and I was like, I
haven't been to an audition in weeks. Am I really
an actor if I'm not even auditioning, and so, you know,
(12:50):
I'm very driven. I you know the things I want
to do. I go out and I fight for every day.
And I was like, something's wrong. I didn't wake up
that more and go online and fill out an application
for Columbia Continuing Education. But a few weeks later I
did do that, and I went back to school, and
kind of in a similar way, things just started clicking
(13:12):
and pushing me down a path. I went back to school,
and I didn't know what I was gonna do. So
I took a history class and then intro to astrophysics
class and a physics class. The history class didn't go great,
and they as your physics class went great, and you know,
next thing, I know, um in the second semester of that,
and then I'm doing research for that professor. And then
(13:34):
I'm going all over doing these different research things and
getting really lucky. And I'm talking to an adviser there
and saying, I really want to do a gap year
for research because I'll finish with classes but not really
be ready for grad school. And so then I mean
another professor in another class who connects me to the
Bridge up STEM program so here I am doing a
year of research and education work, and it just like
(13:57):
everything on my path just started kind of laying out
for me. And I just think the theater thing never
was a good fit for me as an adult. Once
I found something that actually fit, my whole trajectory just
took off really fast. You're in your second year of
your PhD. You're almost done with classes, your researches, I'm
sure going like gangbusters. Do you have a sense of
(14:19):
how you might be able to keep acting in your
ven diagram of interests as a scientist. Obviously, as an
actor you learn a lot of communication skills which I
think aren't taught a huge amount in my experience to
a scientist. It's certainly not what's valued, at least in
my experience. I give a lot of talks to high
(14:43):
school students, um especially I high school women, and trying
to kind of advertise the field science in general, but
specifically astronomy. I actually have a few times gone down
in lobbied Congress for various astronomy funding that we need.
I even had a fun thing last year. One of
the graduate students who has graduated last year, he did
(15:05):
a dance performance piece of his thesis. He asked a
bunch of people to be in and and so I
did that. So I got to use dancing training. And
you know, he studies what drives supernova, when a massive
star dies, how it actually explodes, since theoretical astronomers don't
actually fully understand how you get a star to explode.
(15:29):
And so he had a friend of his from high
school who choreographed an entire dance piece. I think, like,
I want to say, ten minutes long. The video of this.
There is video of this. I guess I could share it. Yeah,
it's uh, it's I mean, it actually turned out really well,
like I believe it. I was skeptical. I thought it
would be fun, but it might be very goofy. But
(15:51):
it actually turned out really well. Listening to both of
you talk about your paths, I'm so struck by your
ability to go It feels like I'm being led in
(16:14):
this direction and I'm going to go there. And oh,
I'd love to throw this to you. Thinking about where
we left off in your story of you jumping back
into this PhD program after a lot of years away
from academia and working as an actress, et cetera. Was
(16:35):
there a challenge, either internally in your own mind and
or externally with your family, friends, colleagues, on really getting
aboard this big change, Like, how were you able to
double down on trusting this decision to go back to
your PhD. Did you ever feel like there was a
(16:56):
culture shock there? Yeah, oh my goshment Yeah, so I
had a lot of support in terms of family. That
was an area that I felt completely supported. In fact,
my book, my parents are musicians and performing artists and
retired professors of music. So when I went to the
(17:18):
acting part, they were like, oh my god, Like they
were so worried because they knew what it was like
to try to make a living as an artist. And
so when I came back to sciences, I think in
their mind they were like, Okay, good, she's got kind
of career that will probably, you know, for sure, get
her a job, although that's of course guaranteed in this
(17:38):
um you know, funding age. When I went back to
grad school, I had gotten married. I'd married someone in
my it was a classmate in my m f A program.
He's a complete hundred percent actor, so there's no hyphen career,
you know, a hundred percent actor. And when he met me.
I was, you know, working as an actor and trying
to be an actor, and so all of a sudden
(17:59):
it was like, oh, by the way, I'm gonna go
back and be an astronomer. I hope that's okay, and
I think that, you know, that was a shock for him.
He was willing to uproot himself move with me to Seattle,
leave his well paying day job to kind of be
unemployed for a year and a half up there until
he found his people and his connections and did some
(18:21):
acting up there. But it was that was a struggle
at first. I couldn't have been busier at first. He
couldn't be less busy. And at the beginning, you know,
I was a thirty four when I returned to grad school,
and I was I had forgotten. At times, I would
forget that I was thirty four, and I'd be like, oh, yeah,
(18:41):
you guys are all going out for happy hours. Students
were like twenty three, let me go. My husband would
be like, um, I thought we were gonna like watch
shows together. I thought it was gonna carve pumping in
and I was like, oh my god, I'm married. I forgot.
So it was like I'm sort of I'm sort of
minimizing it, but that was certainly it was clunky at first. Yeah,
(19:02):
and then and then of course there was this sort
of trifecta of issues for me that made for the
internal challenge to be that was certainly a big Probably
the most influential part of my first couple of years
was that sort of I was an older student. I
was a an African American woman, um, you know, in
(19:23):
a predominantly white male field. And I was a classically
trained actor, you know, And so there were these three
things that made me feel very different from the norm
in terms of the environment that I was in. Although
my program had a much broader idea of what a
grad student can be there, certainly you weren't that many
people who had as unusual background as I did, and
(19:45):
no one looked like I did in my program. If
I missed a class, people were going to know. At first,
I felt like I had to downplay that theater background
because I thought I'm not going to be taken seriously.
People would bring this up and they'd be like, oh, yeah,
but in my fan theater, and I'd sort of be
like guy who tried to change the subject, you know,
I didn't want it to be this thing that again
(20:06):
separated me and was a reason for people not to
take me seriously as a budding scientist. But something wonderful
happened about I think it was the end of my
second year. I enrolled in kind of a mentorship program
for minorities in STEM fields and was matched with a
mentor who was a professor at the time at UC
Riverside and Chemical Engineering, This incredible woman from Ghana. Her
(20:30):
name is Professor Quia Asauku, and she said to me,
you know, your theater background is your superpower. Oh I
love that. And that just sort of like changed my
life in in those years because I began to see
it more as something that would make me a better scientists,
not something that was sort of this achilles heel that
(20:53):
I had to ignore or downplay, but rather it helped
me communicate my science to the broad range of audiences
um in ways that my counterparts in my program really
hadn't been trained to do. As Amy said, And you know,
I'm glad to be able to be helping to change
this because this spring at u C I, I'll be
teaching the first ever communications course for astronomers and physicists
(21:18):
in our department. That's so exciting because it's like, that's
so much of what we do is communicating our science
not just to the public, but to our own colleagues
and in peer reviewed journal articles. There's no course that
I took as a grad student that's basically how to
write a journal article. You know, how to write a proposal.
We had a bit of that by one of my
(21:39):
PhD advisors. She had a professional development class that really
was taught kind of as a an extra add on
thing that really wasn't part of the curriculum at the time.
I hope hopefully it is now. But this is so
much of what we do depends on our ability to
communicate the significance of our research to others, to a
broad range of audiences. Once I began to understand that,
(22:01):
and I became more empowered, and I think that was
reflected and how I was perceived by others, how I
felt about myself and my own confidence level. I want
to talk about mentorship. You both have found ways to
include mentorship with especially young girls, middle school girls, high
school girls who are thinking about where they fit in
(22:23):
in the world and whether there's a place for them
in science Almo, you founded an organization called Rising Star Girls,
which uses science in theater and writing to inspire girls
to explore the universe. Amy you were an educator through
Bridge up Stem with their high school program. Can you
talk a little bit about what that meant for you
(22:45):
as someone who's only a few years older than these
high school girls in the grand scheme of things, but
what that offers you in that opportunity to kind of
play that mentor role in addition to being someone who's
still seeking mentorship in your science career. I've been very
lucky in the mentors that I've had so far in
this career. That's part of the reason I feel like
(23:08):
my path has been so smooth. When I was first
at Columbia, I worked with a post doc and a professor,
and both of them were women, and that was like
a very special experience, I think, to just have that
mentorship right off the bat, especially coming from the theater
field which is pretty dominated by women, to the physics
or astrophysics, which is kind of flipped in terms of
(23:31):
demographics men to women, so a lot more men. That
was a really cool adjustment when I mentor younger women,
I kind of see myself in that I made the
choice when I was in high school, even though I
was really interested in physics and math, to not do that.
And I think a lot of other high school girls
(23:54):
make the same choice just because they don't see themselves
as scientists, as physicist sur mathematicians. In particular, being a
woman who does this now, I think it's important to
just show my face, if nothing else, so that people
can see that a scientist can look like I look,
or look like anyone. And so I think that, if
(24:17):
nothing else, that's important supporting high school girls. When I
was at the Museum and Natural History doing the Bridge
up STEM program, there were five of us fellows, and
the three of us actually were in astronomy that year,
and only one was in the biology and so the
girls get to choose which kind of science they want
(24:38):
to do a project in, and almost all the girls
chose biology. And that was really heartbreaking that, you know,
because if if you look at undergrad nowadays, there are
a lot of women who go into biology, and so
that's great, but there are just these areas that still
you don't get as many women. And so I was like,
(24:59):
can I vert anyone over to physics? So I don't
know if I succeeded, but I tried. And how about you,
Dr Shields, tell us about rising Star girls and the
work that you're doing. It was born out of the
desire to try to find ways to marry those two
parts of myself. Even though I had committed to a
(25:21):
career in astronomy and really had to as a grad
student to be able to get to the next level,
I kind of had to um put the myriad of
things that I'm interested in kind of a little bit
um into the background so that I could do what
needed to be done, you know, get through the qualifying exam,
advanced to candidacy, published the papers I needed to be
(25:42):
able to finish UM. But when I was looking to
get a post doc fellowship, one of the fellowships I
applied for was with the National Science Foundation, and of
course you have to have this sort of broader impacts component,
and I was able to leverage what I had already
been doing because occasionally I would have these little pockets
of time that I what I would where I would
do outreach activities with UM girls of color who were
(26:06):
associated with the university through existing middle school or high
school programs. And I thought, how about put putting together
in astronomy workshop where we engage these these middle school
girls from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the sciences, which I
mean African American, Hispanic, Latino, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Native American, UM,
(26:31):
those groups. UM, how do we engage them in astronomy
but getting but develop a personal connection between them and
the universe you know, of which they are a part.
This sort of artistic element is inherently personal. You know,
a poem, painting, UM, any sort of thing that is created, UM,
(26:53):
it feels personal because it comes from you and no
one else would do do it the exact same way. UM.
And for those reasons, that kind of the visual arts,
the performing arts UM are inherently personal. And so I
thought maybe that would be an avenue or a gateway,
because it's been shown the literature shows that middle school
(27:13):
is the age when girls start to get quiet, they
raise their hands less often, they begin to become more
concerned about how they look and less concerned about how
they think and feel about the world. UM. So that's
the age that UM that we wanted to target. UM.
And so it was sort of like helping them develop
this sort of strong personal connection to what we were
(27:36):
what they were learning about the universe, so that if
they continue on in the field, and you know, the
heavy math comes in, obstacles come in, as they do
for everyone, they will hopefully be less likely to abandon
their interests in the field just because it gets hard. Alma,
(28:09):
as the more senior scientist an actor here, what advice
might you offer Amy as she is setting out on
a similar path in your footsteps, Well, it sounds like
she's on an incredible path already. Any advice or experience
that I would share is that even though it was
so important for me to embrace and understand how my
(28:33):
non traditional background actually informs and and it is an
advantage in my science life, it was also hard for
me to are important for me to make the hard
decision to for a while focus for me, It's like,
for now, I'm focusing on kind of improving and developing
my own research scholarship and kind of making my mark
(28:55):
in the field that I've chosen in astronomy. And that
does mean doing the things that you need to do
to be able to be seen as a scholar in
your field, and that means publishing papers and mentoring students
and advising students and helping them with their papers. And
it's not that I don't involve myself in other creative
arts pursuits. But I think I'm very clear as to
(29:17):
what my primary focus is for what I want to do.
But I was encouraged by a professional development organization to
think about my life as a book with many chapters,
you know. And I can't do every single thing in
the next five years, you know. But but if I
think about the current chapter of my life, what's my focus?
(29:37):
You know? And when I was a grad student, it
was get the PhD, you know. And so is this
going to help me get my PhD? Um? You know,
given what my advisor has said, I need to be
able to get my PhD um? And then the next
is this going to help me get a faculty job
or a job in industry or a job at you
(29:58):
know whatever, X, Y, Z order zation And then kind
of make decisions from that filter question. Rather than letting
other people's priorities dictate my own agenda um or in
some cases UM whether rather than let myself be driven
by the many interests that I have, I have to
(30:20):
sort of develop my own prioritized list of things that
are that that matter. Otherwise I can sort of be
my own worst enemy, where I'm like, I want to
do everything and then um, and then I don't make
forward movement in any direction. I appreciate that advice. I
think when you're younger, though, I think when you're in
high school or even your first few years of college,
(30:40):
just being open to trying something new, because I think
at that point you still have so many options left
and you never know if that thing you try that's
a crazy idea, actually will be the right thing for you.
So I would advise that and not to be afraid. Um,
(31:00):
you know, you're you're always limited by having to make
enough money to put a food on your table. But uh,
I think for my the first half of my twenties,
I definitely tried a bunch of different things, and I'm
grateful that I did that because I don't have to
look over my shoulder and say, but what if I
had done that? So I think as long as you're
(31:22):
able to provide for yourself, trying, being brave enough to
try different things, uh, is a is a good thing.
I totally agree. I think that's that's so key to know.
So one thing that I think I did, maybe a
little too early, was sort of set myself on this
this tightrope path of like he said, you were going
to be an astronaut, so you know, and everything to
(31:43):
be an astronaut. But if I had kind of remembered that,
oh my god, I'm only twelve. Yeah, I knew things.
There's one other thing I if I might add. So
it can be difficult, I'm finding because we as women,
and then you know, even those of us who are
women of color are so few in this field of astronomy.
(32:07):
There is often the pull of you know, I have
to represent or I have to be that one female
person on the committee because otherwise they won't have anyone,
or um, you know, I have to you know, do
that project X because it's important for other people to know,
um that we exist, and it's so is it's very
(32:30):
important to be visible. But what I was reminded of
by a mentor many years ago is that just by
continuing successfully in my own program, making progress, just by
being in my program or as a professor in my department,
I am an example in a role model. I am
(32:50):
acting just by existing, I am telling someone that they
can do it too. A lot of those things are
so valuable that the but you know, what I will
say is that people who are not in those in
these demographical groups, they are spending their time on those
things like scholarship and and moving their career forward, whereas
(33:11):
those of us who are having to do both scholarship,
move our career forward and be an example with all
of that, kind of that heaviness that that comes with that,
that's a lot of that's a lot of energy out
And so with each decision comes the evaluation of, like,
you know, do I have the emotional energy as well
as the time to do this? Um, what is my
(33:32):
first priority? And you know, I'm not saying that those
things are should not be a priority, But I guess
what I'm saying is that it's okay if you find
and I'm sort of speaking to anyone out there who's
in that place of thinking that they have to that
they have a responsibility, you know, to others. Just by
doing what you're doing, taking all of the business of
(33:53):
becoming a professional astronomer, that's enough. Um you know you're
and then you can have some energy left over for
your life. But I think I just want to to
remind both myself and others listening that taking care of
ourselves means that we will be around to be able
to affect change institutional change at those higher senior levels,
(34:14):
and that I think is quite important. So we have
to do what we need to do to be able
to take care of ourselves first so that we can
move those mountains later on for those of us who
would like to follow in our footsteps, you know, Kate.
The conversation at the end about focus versus exploration reminds
(34:37):
me of the episodes that we've done about the different
seasons of our careers and the times that we need
to focus versus the times we want to flare more
broadly and experiment with new ideas and opportunities. I think
we we talked about this, you know, in several episodes,
but specifically an episode thirty five Explore Experiment. Execute that's
been such a takeaway of do this show is the
(35:01):
real power of defining these different seasons in your life.
And I loved Dr Shields point about how focus has
been so valuable for her. And it's interesting too that
they both mentioned that they had this extreme focus at
the age of twelve and that they set out on
that path without really checking in as they got older
(35:22):
to see if that still worked for them. You know,
like Amy said, while acting was great for her as
a child, it didn't really fit her as an adult.
And Christina, it reminded me of my high school admissions
essay that I recently found that I wrote when I
was in eighth grade, and the question was twenty five
years from now. Time magazine is doing an article on you,
(35:46):
where are you basically in your life? And it's a
two paragraph long essay. The first paragraph says, I'm performing
on Broadway eight shows a week. I think I was
doing My Fair Lady was the play that was my
bagining myself as lies to Doolittle, right, And then second
paragraph literally goes and then when I'm off at the stage,
(36:08):
I'm performing open heart surgery for many patients, right. And
it's so interesting. It really gave me a lot of thought,
because you know, I really get being this driven child, right.
And when I look at that essay, certainly there's a
case for the fact that I had an early interest
in both stem in the arts, but it's also so
(36:30):
apparent to me that I really had no idea what
the lifestyles of each of those fields would be do
you know what do you mean there isn't time between
eight shows a week to do exactly I'm reading this
and that I'm like, what are these patients? Okay, Like
when did you sleep? There's also this whole narrative about
(36:52):
like I have this beautiful family, Like I'm like, I
have no sense of how many hours in the day. Yeah, right,
I mean so that's it's such a great point because
while we do have the same number of hours in
the day as Beyonce Um, I think there's this huge
awareness when you get to your twenties your thirties, when
you start trying to put together your life right, your relationships,
(37:14):
your friends, your family, and a career that you know,
depending on what field you're in or what the demands are,
it really can affect what other choices you get to make. Right, So,
if you're in a job that requires frequent travel and
you're on a plane a hundred thousand miles a year,
(37:34):
it's a lot harder to be a human ven diagram
with lots of other projects. I think similarly, when I
was thinking at one point about going to law school,
I remember reading on all of these legal blogs of
you know, people giving each other advice and you know,
existing lawyers chiming in and one says, well, hey, you know,
I work at a white shoe private practice and I
(37:55):
work on average seventy to eighty hours a week. And
someone jumps in and says, well, I'm not worried about
seven eight hours a week. What you know, what I
want to know is X, Y, and Z. And the
first person replies and they said, have you ever worked
eighty hours a week? Like, do you know what that
feels like? Because in your body like that, Yeah, like repeat,
not just one week that's eighty hours, but repeatedly, because
(38:19):
that is going to really define, you know, the rest
of the frame that you can to put your life into.
And I think, you know, to Amy's point about auditioning,
to Omoa's point about service that you have to do
as a professor, or you know, all of the other
pieces that's not just teaching and research. Until you are
(38:42):
further down that path, it is really hard to imagine
what that looks like. That makes me think of something
else that we've really talked about a lot on the show,
which is deciding what you really like about the work
that you're doing and what you don't like. And we
talked about this in episode one oh five with Keith
Kirkland when we were talking about determining what your next
(39:03):
step on your path might be and assessing what you
like and what you don't like about your work. Certainly
what the day in and day out of that work is.
Is it consistent? Is it flexible? Are there projects that
take up a lot of time and then a lot
of downtime? These are all really important questions that certainly
(39:23):
my twelve year old self had no idea about. You know,
I also really loved Omoa's advice about doing what you
need to do to be healthy and happy and that
that will ensure that you are around to continue to
be an example in your field that as an underrepresented group,
you don't have to say yes to every single committee
(39:45):
or talk or service opportunity if it's going to burn
you out. I know I struggle with this a lot.
I want to make sure that there's a woman. I
want to make sure that there's, you know, a voice
that I can offer if I'm being asked to do it,
I feel obligated to do it. But majority groups don't
have that emotional tax on their time and it was
really helpful to hear that from her. Christina. I thought
(40:07):
that was such an important point that Dr Shields made,
and it's so true, right, It's so important to really
continue to forge a path, and it's important to understand
that you are the resource at the end of the
day and to say, you know, I know that I
feel a great sense of responsibility here and that is
(40:28):
so important and great. And how can I take some
of the pressure off of myself so that I can,
like Dr shield said, be happy and be healthy so
that I can contribute as much as I can write.
How exciting to know two incredible actor astronomers. This club
is already awesome, so we have to know how many
(40:51):
more of you are there. And if you're a member
of an actual club for scientists and artist let us know.
We would like to join. It's true we would. We
love hearing your updates and questions and you know, invitations
to clubs um. You can reach us on Twitter or
Instagram at t L d any pod or email us
at hello at t L d any podcast dot com Yes,
(41:14):
or you can leave us a voicemail or I don't
know of singing telegram at three high t L d
n E. That's eight three three four eight five three
six three and don't forget to dial the extension eight
oh three when you call it to leave a voicemail
and we'll link to Dr Shields. Ted talks information about
Rising Star Girls and Bridge Up stem at the American
(41:35):
Museum of Natural History, all of which you can find
at t L d n E podcast dot com, slash even.
Thanks so much to our producer Maya Coole and Tu
for tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate, and review
(41:56):
on Apple Podcasts if you like what you heard, it
really helps us get the it out to fellow human
ven diagrams. Until next time, remember the limit does not exist.
The Limit does not Exist is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
(42:17):
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. Have
(00:44):
you ever wondered why people think the arts and the
sciences are polar opposites. It's weird, right. There seems to
be this idea that you're either a creative or you're
a stem nerd. But we certainly know people who not
only love both but also fundamentally believe that they actually
have a lot in common like us. That's right, and
pretty much every guest we've ever had on our show true,
(01:06):
and today we are adding two more names to that list.
Dr Aloma was Shields is an assistant professor of physics
and astronomy at u C Irvine. She's also a TED
Fellow with a fantastic TED talk about how we'll find
life on other planets. And she's the founder of Rising
Star Girls, a program to help middle school girls of
color see themselves in astronomy and plot twist. She also
(01:30):
is a classically trained actor with an m f A
from U C. L A. And if you thought one
actor astronomer was unexpected, well hold onto your seats, because
we actually have two of them. Amy Sekunda is a
PhD student at Princeton in astrophysics and was formerly a
hell and Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History.
But before her path took her into astronomy, she was
(01:53):
a child actor and majored in theater at Northwestern University.
We figured that if there were two in this actor
astronomer up, there are probably a lot more out there. Wait, Kate,
did you just make this club up? Or is it
an actual thing I can join? No, Christina, you made
up the club. I just decided that the clubhouse was
on Mars. Oh okay, let's meet, Ohma and Amy. Shall
we let's do it? Oh mohile, We're going to start
(02:22):
with you. You started down the science path with an
undergraduate degree and planetary science from m I T. And
you even started a PhD in physics, but then you
went and got an m f A in acting at
U C l A. So what was it that made
you step off that research science path at that moment?
(02:42):
And why was it acting that you went toward. I
had put myself on this path from the age of twelve,
actually when I when I had seen this movie Space Camp,
auster contender perhaps not, but I loved it, Like a
movie about these kids who get accidentally launched into space
(03:03):
on while they're at space camp, and it's just like
rocked my world. And I went home after school that
day and like pulled out my World book Encyclopedias and
grabbed the volume that was labeled A, and I looked
up astronomy astronaut and kind of plotted out this huge,
long career trajectory of like I'm gonna get my PhD
(03:25):
in astronomy, I'm going to go to the best science
school in the world and my T and I'm going
to apply to NASA. And but I never really actually
stopped during that evolution of that path to sort of
ask myself, how am I doing? Do I still love
what I'm doing, um do I still want to do this? Um?
So when I had started to do acting in prep school,
I had gone to Phillips Exeter Academy, which I had
(03:47):
gone to because it had its own observatory, and I
was like, I'm in. But I had sort of stumbled
into an audition. They were auditioning for the play Steel Magnolias,
which like a girl on campus wanted a role that
shall be monologue, Yeah right right. I had just gone
(04:10):
on a whim with some girlfriends who were like, come
with me, and I was like I could care less,
but fine, um, And I showed up and I ended
up getting cast and I was cast as Truv Dolly's
character in the film. It was so great, Like they
actually built an entire beauty salon as part of the set,
like it was the whole, you know, And like I
(04:31):
got to I had to go get a manicure so
I would learn how to do manicures. This is very method,
a very role research. One play led to another play,
and I just became this sort of theater person and
I also was proctoring at the observatory and these things
were able to coexist. In high school, there was kind
(04:54):
of this undercurrent of like she was the thing you
want to do. She was the college that's the best
in that thing. And no one actually told me to
do that, but I think there was this kind of like, well,
I had this astronomy path that set out for myself,
I'm going to stick to that. And so you know,
I went to M I T and then a senior
year UM, I did apply to both acting grad schools
(05:17):
and astronomy grad schools. I applied to like the top
three acting grad schools, like and Why You, Yale and
like the Globe. I didn't get into any of those,
but I did get into astrophysics grad school. I got
like a free full ride to University of Wisconsin Madison.
Started off did one year, but during that year I
(05:37):
was definitely distracted. I would be trying to do astronomy
aster physics homework and then I would think about a
movie or somebody would be talking about the oscars or
the latest film, and like then I would perk up.
The fact that I wasn't focused led to not having
all of my mental energy and one focused on one thing.
(05:57):
I naturally started to do a little bit poorly in classes.
Not all classes, but some classes, and that led to
this sort of like identity crisis. Do I want to
do this? I want to do that? And I decided
to differ from that program and snuck away and applied
to acting grad schools again, got on buses to Chicago
(06:18):
to audition, and you know, got into acting grad school
at u C l A. And decided to go and
do that. Wow. So you followed that acting path for
a while. You eventually merged it with your love of
science when you became the host of a TV show
called Wired Science, which is produced by PBS and Wired magazine.
(06:38):
But eventually you went back to that PhD. You you
completed a PhD in astronomy and astrobiology at the University
of Washington. So what pulled you back in and how
was that experience ultimately influenced by that time off acting
and doing science communication. I felt like when I was
(07:00):
in acting grad school for many reasons, and it was
almost like playtime. Not that it was easier than astronomy
grad school. It was sort of harder in a different way.
And that like my brain, which was supposed to be
working so hard all the time as an astrophysics grad student,
needed to take a kind of hiatus when I was
as an acting grad student, I had to really kind
(07:22):
of turn the brain off and the heart on. It
was all about the feelings, which was encouraged to kind
of wear on my sleeve for like easy access. And
the thinking really could get me into trouble. Um, especially
like Shakespeare and you're supposed to it's supposed to be
living thought where there is no subtext, you know, and
acting it's kind of saying how what they're thinking as
(07:44):
soon as the thought comes out, and so this sort
of like hyper thinking and over analysis can be a
detriment as an actor. And so that's why it felt
like it was sort of a vacation for that overcritical,
analytical side of me. But after you know, several years
of acting grad school and then working as a professional
actor off and on, paying the bills with sort of
(08:06):
tempt jobs here and there, I found that I missed
being a part of the community of people who were
trying to learn more about the universe. UM. I didn't
want to learn about discoveries on the news with everyone else. UM.
I wanted to be a part of those discoveries. So
I ended up reaching out to an undergrad advisor and
got some encouragement, and she was like, you know, there's
(08:29):
this website at cal Tech where they post jobs. Um,
you might think to look there. And I the day
a job was posted that it was perfect for me.
It was working as a health desk operator for the
Spitzer space telescope and support of that mission, and I
did that. I kind of went after that job like
it was like the last job on Earth. And I
got that job, and that led to like scheduling observations
(08:50):
on the spacecraft, which was wonderful and very fun. And
that was kind of my re entrance into the astronomy
community after almost a decade away, and I kind of
stabbled in, like I would go to astronomy talks, and
I found that the ones that were focused on exo planets,
which is this field that had really just taken off
while I had been gone from the field, those were
(09:11):
the talks that really caught my eye and made me
want to learn more. I ended up combining the two.
I didn't expect to do that, but because I worked
at cal Tech, when like science TV shows were casting,
they would kind of go to cal Tech and send
the breakdowns to email addresses there, and so like a
breakdown got passed to me and it was like again
(09:31):
the last day of auditions and like I showed up
there and they were like, we have to get you
in here. It's very that's incredible. Yeah, I was able
to host that show. So it was real a series
of wonderful circumstances that made me feel like I was
being led at every point, reaching out and getting the
help I needed. In the course of doing that Science
(09:53):
TV show, I was put in touch with Neil deGrasse
Tyson who had seen the pilot for that show and
was like, you without a PhD, you're just you know,
another person who wants to be on television, but a
PhD will give you like the street cred. I really
was able to hear that um in a way that
that helped me improve in terms of my trajectory. And
I also had applied to the Astronaut Candidate program along
(10:16):
the way. During this whole during dinner was working, I
had gotten like laser eye surgery. I like you like,
put me in coach, I'm ready. I was going after
that and again, like I barely met the minimum qualifications
for that because I didn't have a PhD yet, So
I did not get passed on to the next level,
(10:37):
and so it seemed like all roads were saying, like,
go back and get that PhD. Girl. So so like
I finally became willing to go through the whole process
of applying again to graduate programs. Amy, you are currently
a PhD student in astrophysical sciences at Princeton. But of
course this wasn't always your path. Your first degree was
(11:00):
in theater from my alma mater, Northwestern, also a theater
major there, and you pursued a professional acting career after that.
So what did theater, film, and improv offer you and
why did you ultimately decide to take a turn to science.
When did that happen for you? I started out as
an actor. I was actually a child actor. So you
(11:23):
have the head shots to prove it, so shot to
prove it. Oh, I have some of the cutest little
head shots. Oh my goodness. It was sort of a
similar thing in that, you know, I was twelve years
old and I was like, this is what I want
to do with my life, And you know, I was
I was always working and trying to build a career,
and I wanted to do more. So I went to
university and studied theater with the intention of moving back
(11:45):
to New York and going back to acting after I graduated.
And it's interesting that I always really enjoyed math and
science in school. I took a couple of math classes
for fun at Northwestern because that was the sort of
thing you actually could do in that program. So I
did some of that, and I always found it very calming,
because in acting you're expected to be very emotional and
(12:07):
and not very analytical. For me, it was nice to
have this kind of analytical thing that always made sense,
you know, to to come and sit down and do
some math and and think critically in that way. And
after I graduated, I acted for a while, but I
missed the different side of my brain. I missed using
that side of my brain. And I had never been
(12:27):
acting but not also in school. I just woke up
one morning and I realized that you're not always employed
when you're an actor, So you're not you know, you're
not always working, but you should always be doing every
day something proactive for your career, always auditioning. And I
just woke up one morning and I was like, I
haven't been to an audition in weeks. Am I really
an actor if I'm not even auditioning, and so, you know,
(12:50):
I'm very driven. I you know the things I want
to do. I go out and I fight for every day.
And I was like, something's wrong. I didn't wake up
that more and go online and fill out an application
for Columbia Continuing Education. But a few weeks later I
did do that, and I went back to school, and
kind of in a similar way, things just started clicking
(13:12):
and pushing me down a path. I went back to school,
and I didn't know what I was gonna do. So
I took a history class and then intro to astrophysics
class and a physics class. The history class didn't go great,
and they as your physics class went great, and you know,
next thing, I know, um in the second semester of that,
and then I'm doing research for that professor. And then
(13:34):
I'm going all over doing these different research things and
getting really lucky. And I'm talking to an adviser there
and saying, I really want to do a gap year
for research because I'll finish with classes but not really
be ready for grad school. And so then I mean
another professor in another class who connects me to the
Bridge up STEM program so here I am doing a
year of research and education work, and it just like
(13:57):
everything on my path just started kind of laying out
for me. And I just think the theater thing never
was a good fit for me as an adult. Once
I found something that actually fit, my whole trajectory just
took off really fast. You're in your second year of
your PhD. You're almost done with classes, your researches, I'm
sure going like gangbusters. Do you have a sense of
(14:19):
how you might be able to keep acting in your
ven diagram of interests as a scientist. Obviously, as an
actor you learn a lot of communication skills which I
think aren't taught a huge amount in my experience to
a scientist. It's certainly not what's valued, at least in
my experience. I give a lot of talks to high
(14:43):
school students, um especially I high school women, and trying
to kind of advertise the field science in general, but
specifically astronomy. I actually have a few times gone down
in lobbied Congress for various astronomy funding that we need.
I even had a fun thing last year. One of
the graduate students who has graduated last year, he did
(15:05):
a dance performance piece of his thesis. He asked a
bunch of people to be in and and so I
did that. So I got to use dancing training. And
you know, he studies what drives supernova, when a massive
star dies, how it actually explodes, since theoretical astronomers don't
actually fully understand how you get a star to explode.
(15:29):
And so he had a friend of his from high
school who choreographed an entire dance piece. I think, like,
I want to say, ten minutes long. The video of this.
There is video of this. I guess I could share it. Yeah,
it's uh, it's I mean, it actually turned out really well,
like I believe it. I was skeptical. I thought it
would be fun, but it might be very goofy. But
(15:51):
it actually turned out really well. Listening to both of
you talk about your paths, I'm so struck by your
ability to go It feels like I'm being led in
(16:14):
this direction and I'm going to go there. And oh,
I'd love to throw this to you. Thinking about where
we left off in your story of you jumping back
into this PhD program after a lot of years away
from academia and working as an actress, et cetera. Was
(16:35):
there a challenge, either internally in your own mind and
or externally with your family, friends, colleagues, on really getting
aboard this big change, Like, how were you able to
double down on trusting this decision to go back to
your PhD. Did you ever feel like there was a
(16:56):
culture shock there? Yeah, oh my goshment Yeah, so I
had a lot of support in terms of family. That
was an area that I felt completely supported. In fact,
my book, my parents are musicians and performing artists and
retired professors of music. So when I went to the
(17:18):
acting part, they were like, oh my god, Like they
were so worried because they knew what it was like
to try to make a living as an artist. And
so when I came back to sciences, I think in
their mind they were like, Okay, good, she's got kind
of career that will probably, you know, for sure, get
her a job, although that's of course guaranteed in this
(17:38):
um you know, funding age. When I went back to
grad school, I had gotten married. I'd married someone in
my it was a classmate in my m f A program.
He's a complete hundred percent actor, so there's no hyphen career,
you know, a hundred percent actor. And when he met me.
I was, you know, working as an actor and trying
to be an actor, and so all of a sudden
(17:59):
it was like, oh, by the way, I'm gonna go
back and be an astronomer. I hope that's okay, and
I think that, you know, that was a shock for him.
He was willing to uproot himself move with me to Seattle,
leave his well paying day job to kind of be
unemployed for a year and a half up there until
he found his people and his connections and did some
(18:21):
acting up there. But it was that was a struggle
at first. I couldn't have been busier at first. He
couldn't be less busy. And at the beginning, you know,
I was a thirty four when I returned to grad school,
and I was I had forgotten. At times, I would
forget that I was thirty four, and I'd be like, oh, yeah,
(18:41):
you guys are all going out for happy hours. Students
were like twenty three, let me go. My husband would
be like, um, I thought we were gonna like watch
shows together. I thought it was gonna carve pumping in
and I was like, oh my god, I'm married. I forgot.
So it was like I'm sort of I'm sort of
minimizing it, but that was certainly it was clunky at first. Yeah,
(19:02):
and then and then of course there was this sort
of trifecta of issues for me that made for the
internal challenge to be that was certainly a big Probably
the most influential part of my first couple of years
was that sort of I was an older student. I
was a an African American woman, um, you know, in
(19:23):
a predominantly white male field. And I was a classically
trained actor, you know, And so there were these three
things that made me feel very different from the norm
in terms of the environment that I was in. Although
my program had a much broader idea of what a
grad student can be there, certainly you weren't that many
people who had as unusual background as I did, and
(19:45):
no one looked like I did in my program. If
I missed a class, people were going to know. At first,
I felt like I had to downplay that theater background
because I thought I'm not going to be taken seriously.
People would bring this up and they'd be like, oh, yeah,
but in my fan theater, and I'd sort of be
like guy who tried to change the subject, you know,
I didn't want it to be this thing that again
(20:06):
separated me and was a reason for people not to
take me seriously as a budding scientist. But something wonderful
happened about I think it was the end of my
second year. I enrolled in kind of a mentorship program
for minorities in STEM fields and was matched with a
mentor who was a professor at the time at UC
Riverside and Chemical Engineering, This incredible woman from Ghana. Her
(20:30):
name is Professor Quia Asauku, and she said to me,
you know, your theater background is your superpower. Oh I
love that. And that just sort of like changed my
life in in those years because I began to see
it more as something that would make me a better scientists,
not something that was sort of this achilles heel that
(20:53):
I had to ignore or downplay, but rather it helped
me communicate my science to the broad range of audiences
um in ways that my counterparts in my program really
hadn't been trained to do. As Amy said, And you know,
I'm glad to be able to be helping to change
this because this spring at u C I, I'll be
teaching the first ever communications course for astronomers and physicists
(21:18):
in our department. That's so exciting because it's like, that's
so much of what we do is communicating our science
not just to the public, but to our own colleagues
and in peer reviewed journal articles. There's no course that
I took as a grad student that's basically how to
write a journal article. You know, how to write a proposal.
We had a bit of that by one of my
(21:39):
PhD advisors. She had a professional development class that really
was taught kind of as a an extra add on
thing that really wasn't part of the curriculum at the time.
I hope hopefully it is now. But this is so
much of what we do depends on our ability to
communicate the significance of our research to others, to a
broad range of audiences. Once I began to understand that,
(22:01):
and I became more empowered, and I think that was
reflected and how I was perceived by others, how I
felt about myself and my own confidence level. I want
to talk about mentorship. You both have found ways to
include mentorship with especially young girls, middle school girls, high
school girls who are thinking about where they fit in
(22:23):
in the world and whether there's a place for them
in science Almo, you founded an organization called Rising Star Girls,
which uses science in theater and writing to inspire girls
to explore the universe. Amy you were an educator through
Bridge up Stem with their high school program. Can you
talk a little bit about what that meant for you
(22:45):
as someone who's only a few years older than these
high school girls in the grand scheme of things, but
what that offers you in that opportunity to kind of
play that mentor role in addition to being someone who's
still seeking mentorship in your science career. I've been very
lucky in the mentors that I've had so far in
this career. That's part of the reason I feel like
(23:08):
my path has been so smooth. When I was first
at Columbia, I worked with a post doc and a professor,
and both of them were women, and that was like
a very special experience, I think, to just have that
mentorship right off the bat, especially coming from the theater
field which is pretty dominated by women, to the physics
or astrophysics, which is kind of flipped in terms of
(23:31):
demographics men to women, so a lot more men. That
was a really cool adjustment when I mentor younger women,
I kind of see myself in that I made the
choice when I was in high school, even though I
was really interested in physics and math, to not do that.
And I think a lot of other high school girls
(23:54):
make the same choice just because they don't see themselves
as scientists, as physicist sur mathematicians. In particular, being a
woman who does this now, I think it's important to
just show my face, if nothing else, so that people
can see that a scientist can look like I look,
or look like anyone. And so I think that, if
(24:17):
nothing else, that's important supporting high school girls. When I
was at the Museum and Natural History doing the Bridge
up STEM program, there were five of us fellows, and
the three of us actually were in astronomy that year,
and only one was in the biology and so the
girls get to choose which kind of science they want
(24:38):
to do a project in, and almost all the girls
chose biology. And that was really heartbreaking that, you know,
because if if you look at undergrad nowadays, there are
a lot of women who go into biology, and so
that's great, but there are just these areas that still
you don't get as many women. And so I was like,
(24:59):
can I vert anyone over to physics? So I don't
know if I succeeded, but I tried. And how about you,
Dr Shields, tell us about rising Star girls and the
work that you're doing. It was born out of the
desire to try to find ways to marry those two
parts of myself. Even though I had committed to a
(25:21):
career in astronomy and really had to as a grad
student to be able to get to the next level,
I kind of had to um put the myriad of
things that I'm interested in kind of a little bit
um into the background so that I could do what
needed to be done, you know, get through the qualifying exam,
advanced to candidacy, published the papers I needed to be
(25:42):
able to finish UM. But when I was looking to
get a post doc fellowship, one of the fellowships I
applied for was with the National Science Foundation, and of
course you have to have this sort of broader impacts component,
and I was able to leverage what I had already
been doing because occasionally I would have these little pockets
of time that I what I would where I would
do outreach activities with UM girls of color who were
(26:06):
associated with the university through existing middle school or high
school programs. And I thought, how about put putting together
in astronomy workshop where we engage these these middle school
girls from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the sciences, which I
mean African American, Hispanic, Latino, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Native American, UM,
(26:31):
those groups. UM, how do we engage them in astronomy
but getting but develop a personal connection between them and
the universe you know, of which they are a part.
This sort of artistic element is inherently personal. You know,
a poem, painting, UM, any sort of thing that is created, UM,
(26:53):
it feels personal because it comes from you and no
one else would do do it the exact same way. UM.
And for those reasons, that kind of the visual arts,
the performing arts UM are inherently personal. And so I
thought maybe that would be an avenue or a gateway,
because it's been shown the literature shows that middle school
(27:13):
is the age when girls start to get quiet, they
raise their hands less often, they begin to become more
concerned about how they look and less concerned about how
they think and feel about the world. UM. So that's
the age that UM that we wanted to target. UM.
And so it was sort of like helping them develop
this sort of strong personal connection to what we were
(27:36):
what they were learning about the universe, so that if
they continue on in the field, and you know, the
heavy math comes in, obstacles come in, as they do
for everyone, they will hopefully be less likely to abandon
their interests in the field just because it gets hard. Alma,
(28:09):
as the more senior scientist an actor here, what advice
might you offer Amy as she is setting out on
a similar path in your footsteps, Well, it sounds like
she's on an incredible path already. Any advice or experience
that I would share is that even though it was
so important for me to embrace and understand how my
(28:33):
non traditional background actually informs and and it is an
advantage in my science life, it was also hard for
me to are important for me to make the hard
decision to for a while focus for me, It's like,
for now, I'm focusing on kind of improving and developing
my own research scholarship and kind of making my mark
(28:55):
in the field that I've chosen in astronomy. And that
does mean doing the things that you need to do
to be able to be seen as a scholar in
your field, and that means publishing papers and mentoring students
and advising students and helping them with their papers. And
it's not that I don't involve myself in other creative
arts pursuits. But I think I'm very clear as to
(29:17):
what my primary focus is for what I want to do.
But I was encouraged by a professional development organization to
think about my life as a book with many chapters,
you know. And I can't do every single thing in
the next five years, you know. But but if I
think about the current chapter of my life, what's my focus?
(29:37):
You know? And when I was a grad student, it
was get the PhD, you know. And so is this
going to help me get my PhD? Um? You know,
given what my advisor has said, I need to be
able to get my PhD um? And then the next
is this going to help me get a faculty job
or a job in industry or a job at you
(29:58):
know whatever, X, Y, Z order zation And then kind
of make decisions from that filter question. Rather than letting
other people's priorities dictate my own agenda um or in
some cases UM whether rather than let myself be driven
by the many interests that I have, I have to
(30:20):
sort of develop my own prioritized list of things that
are that that matter. Otherwise I can sort of be
my own worst enemy, where I'm like, I want to
do everything and then um, and then I don't make
forward movement in any direction. I appreciate that advice. I
think when you're younger, though, I think when you're in
high school or even your first few years of college,
(30:40):
just being open to trying something new, because I think
at that point you still have so many options left
and you never know if that thing you try that's
a crazy idea, actually will be the right thing for you.
So I would advise that and not to be afraid. Um,
(31:00):
you know, you're you're always limited by having to make
enough money to put a food on your table. But uh,
I think for my the first half of my twenties,
I definitely tried a bunch of different things, and I'm
grateful that I did that because I don't have to
look over my shoulder and say, but what if I
had done that? So I think as long as you're
(31:22):
able to provide for yourself, trying, being brave enough to
try different things, uh, is a is a good thing.
I totally agree. I think that's that's so key to know.
So one thing that I think I did, maybe a
little too early, was sort of set myself on this
this tightrope path of like he said, you were going
to be an astronaut, so you know, and everything to
(31:43):
be an astronaut. But if I had kind of remembered that,
oh my god, I'm only twelve. Yeah, I knew things.
There's one other thing I if I might add. So
it can be difficult, I'm finding because we as women,
and then you know, even those of us who are
women of color are so few in this field of astronomy.
(32:07):
There is often the pull of you know, I have
to represent or I have to be that one female
person on the committee because otherwise they won't have anyone,
or um, you know, I have to you know, do
that project X because it's important for other people to know,
um that we exist, and it's so is it's very
(32:30):
important to be visible. But what I was reminded of
by a mentor many years ago is that just by
continuing successfully in my own program, making progress, just by
being in my program or as a professor in my department,
I am an example in a role model. I am
(32:50):
acting just by existing, I am telling someone that they
can do it too. A lot of those things are
so valuable that the but you know, what I will
say is that people who are not in those in
these demographical groups, they are spending their time on those
things like scholarship and and moving their career forward, whereas
(33:11):
those of us who are having to do both scholarship,
move our career forward and be an example with all
of that, kind of that heaviness that that comes with that,
that's a lot of that's a lot of energy out
And so with each decision comes the evaluation of, like,
you know, do I have the emotional energy as well
as the time to do this? Um, what is my
(33:32):
first priority? And you know, I'm not saying that those
things are should not be a priority, But I guess
what I'm saying is that it's okay if you find
and I'm sort of speaking to anyone out there who's
in that place of thinking that they have to that
they have a responsibility, you know, to others. Just by
doing what you're doing, taking all of the business of
(33:53):
becoming a professional astronomer, that's enough. Um you know you're
and then you can have some energy left over for
your life. But I think I just want to to
remind both myself and others listening that taking care of
ourselves means that we will be around to be able
to affect change institutional change at those higher senior levels,
(34:14):
and that I think is quite important. So we have
to do what we need to do to be able
to take care of ourselves first so that we can
move those mountains later on for those of us who
would like to follow in our footsteps, you know, Kate.
The conversation at the end about focus versus exploration reminds
(34:37):
me of the episodes that we've done about the different
seasons of our careers and the times that we need
to focus versus the times we want to flare more
broadly and experiment with new ideas and opportunities. I think
we we talked about this, you know, in several episodes,
but specifically an episode thirty five Explore Experiment. Execute that's
been such a takeaway of do this show is the
(35:01):
real power of defining these different seasons in your life.
And I loved Dr Shields point about how focus has
been so valuable for her. And it's interesting too that
they both mentioned that they had this extreme focus at
the age of twelve and that they set out on
that path without really checking in as they got older
(35:22):
to see if that still worked for them. You know,
like Amy said, while acting was great for her as
a child, it didn't really fit her as an adult.
And Christina, it reminded me of my high school admissions
essay that I recently found that I wrote when I
was in eighth grade, and the question was twenty five
years from now. Time magazine is doing an article on you,
(35:46):
where are you basically in your life? And it's a
two paragraph long essay. The first paragraph says, I'm performing
on Broadway eight shows a week. I think I was
doing My Fair Lady was the play that was my
bagining myself as lies to Doolittle, right, And then second
paragraph literally goes and then when I'm off at the stage,
(36:08):
I'm performing open heart surgery for many patients, right. And
it's so interesting. It really gave me a lot of thought,
because you know, I really get being this driven child, right.
And when I look at that essay, certainly there's a
case for the fact that I had an early interest
in both stem in the arts, but it's also so
(36:30):
apparent to me that I really had no idea what
the lifestyles of each of those fields would be do
you know what do you mean there isn't time between
eight shows a week to do exactly I'm reading this
and that I'm like, what are these patients? Okay, Like
when did you sleep? There's also this whole narrative about
(36:52):
like I have this beautiful family, Like I'm like, I
have no sense of how many hours in the day. Yeah, right,
I mean so that's it's such a great point because
while we do have the same number of hours in
the day as Beyonce Um, I think there's this huge
awareness when you get to your twenties your thirties, when
you start trying to put together your life right, your relationships,
(37:14):
your friends, your family, and a career that you know,
depending on what field you're in or what the demands are,
it really can affect what other choices you get to make. Right, So,
if you're in a job that requires frequent travel and
you're on a plane a hundred thousand miles a year,
(37:34):
it's a lot harder to be a human ven diagram
with lots of other projects. I think similarly, when I
was thinking at one point about going to law school,
I remember reading on all of these legal blogs of
you know, people giving each other advice and you know,
existing lawyers chiming in and one says, well, hey, you know,
I work at a white shoe private practice and I
(37:55):
work on average seventy to eighty hours a week. And
someone jumps in and says, well, I'm not worried about
seven eight hours a week. What you know, what I
want to know is X, Y, and Z. And the
first person replies and they said, have you ever worked
eighty hours a week? Like, do you know what that
feels like? Because in your body like that, Yeah, like repeat,
not just one week that's eighty hours, but repeatedly, because
(38:19):
that is going to really define, you know, the rest
of the frame that you can to put your life into.
And I think, you know, to Amy's point about auditioning,
to Omoa's point about service that you have to do
as a professor, or you know, all of the other
pieces that's not just teaching and research. Until you are
(38:42):
further down that path, it is really hard to imagine
what that looks like. That makes me think of something
else that we've really talked about a lot on the show,
which is deciding what you really like about the work
that you're doing and what you don't like. And we
talked about this in episode one oh five with Keith
Kirkland when we were talking about determining what your next
(39:03):
step on your path might be and assessing what you
like and what you don't like about your work. Certainly
what the day in and day out of that work is.
Is it consistent? Is it flexible? Are there projects that
take up a lot of time and then a lot
of downtime? These are all really important questions that certainly
(39:23):
my twelve year old self had no idea about. You know,
I also really loved Omoa's advice about doing what you
need to do to be healthy and happy and that
that will ensure that you are around to continue to
be an example in your field that as an underrepresented group,
you don't have to say yes to every single committee
(39:45):
or talk or service opportunity if it's going to burn
you out. I know I struggle with this a lot.
I want to make sure that there's a woman. I
want to make sure that there's, you know, a voice
that I can offer if I'm being asked to do it,
I feel obligated to do it. But majority groups don't
have that emotional tax on their time and it was
really helpful to hear that from her. Christina. I thought
(40:07):
that was such an important point that Dr Shields made,
and it's so true, right, It's so important to really
continue to forge a path, and it's important to understand
that you are the resource at the end of the
day and to say, you know, I know that I
feel a great sense of responsibility here and that is
(40:28):
so important and great. And how can I take some
of the pressure off of myself so that I can,
like Dr shield said, be happy and be healthy so
that I can contribute as much as I can write.
How exciting to know two incredible actor astronomers. This club
is already awesome, so we have to know how many
(40:51):
more of you are there. And if you're a member
of an actual club for scientists and artist let us know.
We would like to join. It's true we would. We
love hearing your updates and questions and you know, invitations
to clubs um. You can reach us on Twitter or
Instagram at t L d any pod or email us
at hello at t L d any podcast dot com Yes,
(41:14):
or you can leave us a voicemail or I don't
know of singing telegram at three high t L d
n E. That's eight three three four eight five three
six three and don't forget to dial the extension eight
oh three when you call it to leave a voicemail
and we'll link to Dr Shields. Ted talks information about
Rising Star Girls and Bridge Up stem at the American
(41:35):
Museum of Natural History, all of which you can find
at t L d n E podcast dot com, slash even.
Thanks so much to our producer Maya Coole and Tu
for tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate, and review
(41:56):
on Apple Podcasts if you like what you heard, it
really helps us get the it out to fellow human
ven diagrams. Until next time, remember the limit does not exist.
The Limit does not Exist is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
(42:17):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Yeah
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