Asking for Help: Stories about needing assistance

This week we present two stories from people who didn’t ask for help until it was too late.

Part 1: Determined to fit in as a PhD student, Aparna Agarwal decides she'll never ask for help -- even if it means fitting in to much smaller gloves.

Aparna Agarwal is a graduate student in Dr. Deepa Agashe’s lab at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India, by day, and a random thoughts compiler whenever inspiration strikes her. Currently, she is trying to understand adaptation and the role of microbes in that process using the red flour beetle. She is, on an average day, clueless but curious and trying to find answers. In that quest, she loves to travel in person, as well as through the magic of books, articles, blogs, conversations and in general, stories. She enjoys using these stories to help her share and build her science.

Part 2: On a snorkeling trip of his dreams, Jesse Hildebrand doesn’t want to admit he has no idea what he’s doing.

Jesse Hildebrand is the VP of Education for Exploring By The Seat of Your Pants, a digital education non-profit that connects scientists and explorers with kids (http://www.exploringbytheseat.com/). He's also the founder of Canada's Science Literacy Week (http://www.scienceliteracy.ca/) and a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (http://www.rcgs.org/). Jesse suffers from an excess of personality, watches too many Blue Jays games for his own good, and can enter into a spirited debate on the merits of the Marvel films.

Episode Transcript

Part 1: Aparna Agarwal

So I joined graduate school when I was 20 years old, right after my undergraduate degree and I was completely clueless about what I wanted to do with my life. I mean really, really clueless. I applied to management programs and a job at the bank and a PhD program just for the fun of it.

I essentially did anything that at that time anybody told me was the thing to do. Then I ended up joining the PhD program because I just had so much fun at the interviews. And I know that interviews are not generally supposed to be fun, but I was still convinced that I am not going to get in, that I just ramble my mind off. For the first time in my life, explaining every single detail of every single assumption that I had made was something that people appreciated. And so they let me in, which I was convinced was a mistake but I was not going to let them know that.

So I joined the graduate program and then slowly good things started to happen. I would always crack jokes and then, for the first time in my life, people actually laughed. Because you see, I come from a family which is very, very supportive but they don’t know science. So anytime I started telling them a joke, I then had to tell them all about the background science to which my very supportive parents would fall asleep listening to.

Aparna Agarwal shares her story with the Story Collider audience at the Evolution 2019 event co-organized by the Diversity Committees of the ASN, SSB, and SSE in Providence, RI in June 2019. Photo by Davide DelPoio.

So here, for the first time, people laughed or, quite often, they groaned, but the point was they understood what I was saying. And so I was having the time of my life. But at the same time, I felt incredibly lonely because I had always taught myself about science from books, from the internet and I knew that in my family when I was telling them those stories or when I was telling them about the science, they weren’t going to fact-check me. But here, everybody was so amazing and brilliant and knew their science. if I made a mistake now, they're going to know.

They're also going to know that it was a mistake putting me into this program and they're going to kick me out. So I decided that I’m not going to let that happen. The best way to do that is to make sure that I don’t make any mistake and I never, ever ask for help. Because if I do, then they'll know.

So this is me in my lab. It’s barren because (a) it’s a new lab and there aren’t that many instruments. And (b) it’s 6:30 a.m. because I’m just that kind of a person. I go all out. And I’m determined to make a really, really good impression. So I've decided to do an experiment on my own, which I've never done before. But I know that it comes with a list of instructions and I know that I can follow that.

So even though I've never seen fancy equipment like pipettes before in my life, I have decided that I’m going to do this experiment entirely on my own and I’m going to make the best, most fantastic first impression ever made.

So I go in. I collect everything that I need and then I see that on the self is a box of gloves that is labeled ‘small’. Now, this is a problem because my hands aren’t small. In fact, growing up, little boys used to always compare their hand sizes to my hand size to see if it was big enough. Once I went on a date and this guy actually held my hand very romantically, only to look down and say, “Oh.”

So, this is a problem, but I’m not going to let this come in my way. I am going to do this experiment. I decide that the best thing to do is to pull on those small gloves and continue with the experiment anyway.

Here’s the thing, though. When you put on a small glove on a large hand like mine, the degree of movement that you have between your thumb and your finger, not much. This is what I realize as, five seconds later, I only have the cap of the bottle that I’m holding in my hand and the bottle itself is on the floor.

Okay, good. This happened. I can book my flight to go back. I should call up the management people and see if they will take a person six months late. I've made friends. I’m sure I can keep in touch with them over email. They'll remember me. They like my jokes. And this is it. It’s good that it happened so early on because clearly I’m not meant to do science. I can’t even open a bottle safely.

So I clean the spill up then I rush to my computer so see how much the chemical costed. I realized that there's a roadshow going on so I run up to the executive and explain to him that I need this chemical right now. And then he tells me that he's going to try and bring it to me as soon as he can. And then I realize that I have to now go and tell my advisor this.

I am scared. I am really scared at this point. I know that I’m going to get the shouting of my life. She's going to tell me to leave. And I’m just bracing myself as I climb up the stairs to her cabin. I knock on her door and she says, “Come in.”

I go in and I just blow everything out. To which she replies, “Aparna, I have no idea what you just said. Calm down. Take a deep breath and tell me again.”

So I repeat my story, this time a little bit slowly. At the point when I tell her that I put on the wrong size gloves, she just looks at me and says, “Wait. Why didn’t you just buy a box for yourself?”

And I’m like, “What?” Like that’s a possibility? I’m allowed to do things for convenience? See, I’m so used to, at this point, for always fighting for things, for always learning things on my own without asking for help that I didn’t even realize that this was a possibility.

And then she walks down with me and we go back to the bench. She stays with me for the rest of the experiment. She puts on the gloves because it’s right for her hand. And then she does something. She goes to the next lab and she asks for a bunch of gloves for me.

Because she herself was a new PI, she didn’t really know what was where. So she then went ahead and asked graduate students in the other lab for help. Again, I’m like, “What?” Because I know that she is brilliant. I've spoken to her, I've seen her give talks and there's no doubt in my mind that she is brilliant at her science. And she is asking help from a graduate student.

Then she stayed with me for the rest of the experiment explaining to me tiny details, teaching me how to do things, and just telling me, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about the chemical. It’s not expensive and we have a lot of it in the back. Just make sure you don’t do this again.”

Something in the middle of all of this just clicked. Not dramatically. It’s not that I never made a mistake again. It’s not that I never, ever had anxiety again. I did. I had a whole bunch of mistakes. I was in a new lab. I was standardizing things. I made mistakes almost daily. But I finished my graduate program.

I am towards the end of my PhD and the one thing I was convinced of during the course of it all was that I, as an individual, am allowed my own box of gloves.

Part 2: Jesse Hildebrand

I've booked a manta ray tour in Kona on the west side of Hawaii's beautiful Big Island and I am breathlessly excited. When I booked the tour there were two options. For $100 you go out for a night dive where they shine lights in the water and attract the plankton which bring in the mantas. Or for $125, only 25 extra, you do that same dive and another one earlier in the afternoon where you get a chance to see, in the light, some of the other amazing creatures off the coast. Well, frugal guy that I am, 25 extra bucks for almost an extra hour in the water, sign me up.

I'm standing in the lobby of the dive shop and it's an exercise in absolute patience. I cannot wait to be in the water. Afraid of scaring off the other 15 or so tourists with my sheer, rampant, ridiculous enthusiasm, I idly finger the goggles and dive paraphernalia and hope not to be noticed. And I'm a little intimidated, frankly. The professionalism of the place, the clear signs that all the other tourists there have lived a life in and on the water, the selection and cost of all the dive gear are astonishing. And these pictures of dive trips to Indonesia, other remote places all around the world are leaving me a little bit out of my depth as a rookie, shall we say.

So finally, the van arrives to pick us up and takes us to our dive site. Finally, I'm going to get a chance to see these mantas. I grew up in love with animals. Crocodile Hunter was my hero, then David Attenborough was my hero, they still are. And whenever I travel, I travel in pursuit of wildlife and wild places. But I'd never pursued anything beneath the waves before, and this would be my first.

Most of my favorite animals are apex predators, things with lots of teeth. Sharks, crocodiles, lions and tigers and bears, oh, my. And mantas are the only exception to that. They are, simply put, magical. They can be over 20 feet: bigger than this room, wingtip to wingtip. They're black or deep blue with white lines in them. They look like nothing else. They move like nothing else. They're the most graceful and elegant creatures in the ocean. They're the gentle giants of the sea. And I cannot wait to finally see one.

Jesse Hildebrand shares his story with the Story Collider audience at Burdock Brewery in Toronto, ON in October 2019. Photo by Stacey McDonald.

Our guide is a baked-to-the-bone tanned guy with long, flowing, blond hair like Fabio, who has the mannerisms of Jack Sparrow peak-rum in Pirates of the Caribbean, whose first line to me, I kid you not, is, “Hey, bro. The name is Flipper.”

Now, you'd think this would be disconcerting but, no. Any man who is so sure of himself as to choose a name that I liken to a movie Dolphin, I figure is going to be perfectly adept in the water. I'm very confident in Flipper.

And so our van gets to the boat. We take the boat out to the dive site and the deckhand jumps off the deck and ties up our boat to a buoy under the waves. The scuba half of our contingent gets into the water and they head out. Now, it's our turn as the snorkel team to get ready.

So, first, we have to put on our wetsuits. Everyone else slips into theirs like a second skin and I struggle mightily with mine. It doesn't fit, it's tight, it chafes, it's hot. I barely get it on. There's a zipper that's sort of at the back that I manage, after much struggle, to get up.

It's at this point that Flipper looks to the group and asks, “has everyone used a snorkel before?”

Now, I have never used a snorkel before. In fact, up until the dive shop this morning, I've never even seen a snorkel in real life. My only ocean experience is splashing in the light surf and making a sandcastle on the beach the day before. And yet, even though we're about to embark on a 45-minute swim in choppy seas with a wetsuit for the first time and fins for the first time, I say yes.

Because I don't want to seem like an idiot in front of these other obviously adept tourists. And besides, it's a piece of plastic tubing. One end goes in your mouth, one end goes above the water. How hard could it possibly be?

So we jump in the water and pretty much instantly, with my snorkel not in properly, I begin to inhale a little bit of saltwater. I'm also unduly alarmed at the fact that my wetsuit is filling with water which, fortunately, once it stops, I realize that's probably okay.

But the fins, which are supposed to propel us so nicely through the waves, for me are an impediment. I keep kicking myself in the legs with my fins. And while everyone else paddles away like a fish, I cycle like mad just to keep at the end of the pack of tourists that are following Flipper.

So after about 50 feet of swimming, flipper looks back to the group and says, “Is everyone all right?”

Now, rather than say, “Help me, I'm slowly drowning and I've inhaled some salt water and I can't swim. Please,” I flash a stupid grin. I give a hearty thumbs up as my legs beat furiously into the water, and I say, “Yes.”

And so Flipper goes, “Great!” He turns around and the grin is instantly removed from my face as a little wave hits me and I inhale a little bit more saltwater.

So over the next 40 minutes I come to realize that swimming, previously second nature to me, is incredibly difficult when you're choking and inhaling saltwater. Little waves come in the top of my snorkel and I can't clear them. My mask fills with water and the only way I know how to get rid of it is to take the mask off and so more water gets in.

I am flailing here. This is really quite pathetic. And so I see ahead of me as, again, I'm beating furiously, the people are pointing at various amazing creatures in the water, and I don't see any of them. I see blobs and dark shapes because my mask is full and I'm choking and it’s horrible.

So we've circled the boat and I'm just about at the stage where I'm willing to ask for help and I realize, oh, we circled back. We’re about to get back on the boat in a minute. And it's then that I throw up in my mouth, which incidentally makes the snorkel even harder to use.

So I take off my mask and snorkel kind of panicking at this point and seriously consider just chucking it to the depths. It's not helping me at all. But I realized that won't be received very well so I sort of half-heartedly put it back on and I throw up a little more in the water.

And I begin to panic a little bit. This isn't good. But with my last bit of muscular effort, I make it to the boat and I climb the ladder and I get on and I have never gotten out of a piece of clothing faster than I got out of that wetsuit. I run to the only bathroom on the boat.

So I heard what happens when you inhale a lot of salt water or drink it but I never experienced it firsthand. My body goes through a complete and total nuclear meltdown. As far as it’s concerned, I've been heavily poisoned. And it does everything, and I mean everything in its power to get rid of that poison.

The bathroom doesn't help matters any. It's about six feet long, five feet tall so you can't stand up properly, and two-and-a-half feet wide. So when you're sitting on the toilet, your knees are touching both walls. It's painted jet-black, don't know why. And there's this little horror movie light above the sink that actually puts my sickness in stark relief. It's quite awful.

So I'm there wishing for death, being sicker than I've ever been in my life and thinking that death might actually be granted. And I realize after a bit of this that the toilet also will be a cause of my problems, because it doesn't flush but instead is operated with a little hand pump on the ground that makes water come through a little hose so you can clean up everything you created nice and close.

At this point, I'm mortifyingly aware having been in here for what feels like eons, but is probably about half an hour, that this is the only bathroom on the boat and other people might need to use it. And so feeling sorry for them and wanting to welcome them into the hellhole of my own creation, I come out and I take two steps out of the bathroom and I go right back in. I'm astonishingly equally sick the second round.

So finally, probably a full hour of this, I come out. I'm Kermit-green in hue. I look awful. And I plop down on the bench and it's at that point that the second night dive is supposed to begin. There's no way I can go.

But Flipper says, “You came all this way. Just try, man. See what happens. It's going to be okay.”

I put one foot in the wetsuit, nausea instantly back. I say there's no way.

Reluctantly, he and the other tourists get into the water and they start heading out to the dive site. And I asked the captain where I can best sit to feel better. He says the bow.

So I curl up in the fetal position on the front of the boat in extremis, just still nauseous, sad, dejected and profoundly disappointed that if I'd had just a little less pride and asked for help with the snorkel at the beginning, I'd be with the other people in the water, having come thousands of miles for this, and seeing this incredible creature. Instead, as far as I can tell, there's four other tour boats in the area. I am the only boat-bound tourist of the lot.

And so as I see their lights dancing under the water for about 40 minutes, I pithily hope that they see absolutely nothing because then at least my immense stupidity will not have cost me anything.

But, no. When they get back on the boat they show pictures and saw many mantas and was pretty much universally decided it was the greatest experience of everybody's life. Curse them all.

And so, sulking, and still dejected, we make the boat-ride back to shore and the van-ride back to the dive shop, and tail between my legs I make the one kilometer walk of shame, still sick, back to my hotel room where I curl up for one of the most necessary sleeps of my entire life.

This year, I got my scuba license pretty much solely so I can go back one day triumphantly with the magical ability to now breathe underwater and see the mantas that I missed with the snorkel fiasco. Although now, with professional training, I can use a snorkel like nobody's business. And until I get that triumphant return, in the meantime, whenever a tour guide or family or friend asks if I can do some potentially dangerous task, I plead absolute ignorance and humbly beg to be told to do whatever simple-minded thing it is. Thank you, guys, so much.