Blending In: Stories about trying to belong

In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers are scientists struggling to feel like they belong -- in and out of science.

Part 1: Neuroscientist Pardeep Singh feels more than out of place when he ends up as a contestant on The Bachelorette.

Pardeep Singh is a neuroscientist, podcaster, Brooklynite and the first Indian-American to ever get a rose on The Bachelorette.

Part 2: When Thiago Arzua comes to the United States from Brazil to study science he doesn’t know how to fit in.

Born and raised in Curitiba, Brazil, Thiago Arzua is now a postdoc at Columbia University. There, he studies how trauma can pass through multiple generations. Outside the lab, he helped create Black In Neuro, a non-profit organization aiming to diversify the neurosciences by celebrating and empowering Black scholars. He's also a triathlete and in the small amount of time remaining he paints.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

It's a special night. It's a beautiful summer evening. It reminds me of the last time I saw my father.

When I last saw my father it was a sweltering June afternoon in 2017. I was in a courthouse in downtown Brooklyn with my mom. I remember seeing him about 30 people ahead, waiting in line to go through the metal detectors.

I ended up in that situation after a phone call with my mom earlier that day where she casually informed me that she was on her way to see him to collect that paid child support. The tenor in her voice made it sound like that was a normal thing.

Pardeep Singh shares his story at Caveat in New York, NY in August 2022. Photo by Zhen Qin.

It had been a few years since I've seen him before that and, every time I do, it feels like I'm standing in a silent tornado, just the world spins around me. Everything becomes a blur. I don't know how to feel when I see my father. I become overwhelmed with emotions and questions. Does he look like me? Would he even recognize me? Do I hug him? Should he hug me?

After all, what do you say to the man who abandoned your family, leaving your mom to work two part‑time jobs and raise three kids in one of the poorest communities in Brooklyn, New York? What are you supposed to say? “Hey? What's up, dad? What's new?”

In that moment I realized that that was the first time I had my parents together alone in a room with me probably since I was a baby. I was 26 at the time and I'm 31 now. I didn't have the best role models for marriage. I'm open to it, sure. But like any early‑30s millennial from New York, I find that more and more of my conversations are steering towards the topic of marriage.

I wasn't thinking about this when I got cast for The Bachelor, though. I hate to break it to you but there isn't a tell-all book or folder full of notes that can get you casted. There isn't an Oz‑type figure that has all the answers.

Like any early‑30s millennial from New York, I was swiping on dating apps. Admittedly, I am a chronic unmatcher. Like I swipe right on everybody and then, after the matches come in, I match all the people I don't like in one motion.

One day, I was chilling in my bedroom just swiping on these apps and my phone goes off. It's a match. Take a look, she's pretty cute. She had the obligatory photo by the ocean, a group photo with friends. She was even into LARPing. And if you don’t know what LARPing is, it's when you dress up like a fantasy character and go into the woods and pretend you live in the middle ages. You should try it sometime.

But seriously, though, she was fun, sarcastic, up to date with modern satire. I was digging it.

So just before I ask her out, I see that she was living in Miami. I wasn't planning on visiting Miami anytime soon, so my exit plan started to kick in. How do I politely exit this conversation without relying on the unmatch button?

So I said, “Hey, I think you're great but I don't plan on visiting Miami anytime soon. But add me on Instagram. It's nice to meet you.”

And just before I close the app, she's like, “Wait, wait, wait. I'm actually casting for The Bachelorette. I think you should definitely apply.”

“The Bachelorette? Like the show?”

And she said, “Yeah. I know you're single because you're on this app.”

Touché.

And if you don't know what The Bachelor is, I can't explain it in less than 30 seconds. It's like trying to explain how you play monopoly in less than 30 seconds. Just imagine your favorite soap opera where if you like somebody, give them a flower. Just go with that for now

My first reaction was, well, you know, this is bullshit. I've been around New York long enough to know that nothing is the way it seems, at first.

As a neuroscientist, I put my principal investigator skills on and started creeping on her LinkedIn. Turned out she was on a casting team.

Though nervous and ambivalent, I was generally excited about the prospect of getting down on one knee. In a way, being on The Bachelorette was my first foray to dating with the intent to marry. The feeling was analogous to being a kid on your way to Six Flags or counting down those last few seconds of your thermocycler during its run.

On the run-up to night one, the mood of my surroundings began to slowly change from the real world into The Bach world, where everything had perfect romantic lighting, all of my clothes were wrinkle‑free and my skin and hair were just perfect.

But on the run-up to night one, more and more of my doubts started to creep in. Being in The Bach world also meant that my life would now become public, where America may see that I come from a broken family and been through poverty and struggle. That I have a funny name and I had no idea how America would react to seeing someone like me presented on your screen as a viable romantic partner when there really hasn't been one like that before.

Being in The Bach world also meant that I've given tacit permission for anyone and everyone to overanalyze and pick apart everything I do, say and wear, send me racist messages and break me down because I'm just so vulnerable for love. I had to be alright with all that.

How am I supposed to succeed on a show about marriage when I don't have any role models for what marriage is supposed to be about? In a way, hiring somebody to find me a spouse felt like a personal failure. Meant I didn't have the swag to do it on my own. But, still, I went in with an open mind, hoping to tie the knot with Michelle.

For better or for worse, my talents for cultivating creeping doubts is only surpassed by my even greater talent of chopping them right above the root. So I put on my best suit, stepped out that limo into the 109‑degree weather that is Palm Springs, with a new sense of confidence that I should care less about what people think about me and more about shining as an individual.

And meeting Michelle for the first time on night one, it's the first night where filming is, meeting her felt like I was standing in a silent tornado. The world spun around me, everything became a blur. I was overwhelmed with emotions and questions. After all, what are you supposed to say to the person that you might be spending the rest of your life with? “Hey? What's up?”

Well, actually, that's what you’re supposed to say. Instead, I reference dopamine for some reason.

But those first few seconds with Michelle felt like hours. Like the way time slows down when you flex from a hot stove or when you count down the last ten seconds before a new year. I felt every heartbeat and every breath that I took. For a few moments, that sound tornado gave way to clarity and familiarity and implicit trust.

When her eyes locked onto mine, it made me blind to everything else. I tuned out the glamour of being under a literal spotlight, the pitter patter of producers around us and gave way to a sense of ease that none of my creeping doubts mattered. I wanted to stand there all night.

But, like lightning, it's gone in a flash. I said my goodbyes and went to the mansion.

Now, I don't know what love at first sight is supposed to feel like. I mean every soulmate starts off as a perfect stranger, until one day that soulmate, that perfect stranger loves you despite your imperfections and that's the point. Stay together no matter what.

At the end of every episode, there's something called a rose ceremony where the lead hands out the flowers to all the people she likes. In traditional Bachelor fashion, all the men line up shoulder to shoulder and they patiently wait for the lady to come through and hand out the flowers.

In that space, it's quiet. Like being in a library. One by one, Michelle calls our name. She had this way of staring at you and locking eyes with you just before she calls your name and I had this feeling, this gut feeling that she will call mine, and she did.

The weight of being the first Indian‑American to ever get a rose on The Bachelorette was overwhelming, because it meant that that viable romantic partner that I hope to see on my screen suddenly became me. So with that rose in my chest, I became that role model that I so desperately needed.

Thank you.

Part 2

My high school friends and I used to sit on the outskirts of someone else's soccer practice to discuss our nerdy things. And I say someone else's soccer practice because, unlike all the other Brazilian kids around me, I did not play soccer. But we knew that we could at least look cool pretending to know what was going on.

On one of those days, we started debating something that I think every teenage boy wonders about, which was why do brains exist. There's this TED talk going on at the time. You might have seen it. It's quite old now, but it argues that brains evolved for the simple reason of movement. Not to think, not to feel but to move, and I hated that.

Already, at the time, I was reading a lot of neuroscience books and, to me, neuroscience has always been this so philosophical, such passionate science. The human brain specifically, they adapt. They evolve. They make our whole personality. Why would movement, like kicking a dumb ball for 90 minutes be the one thing that makes them special?

Thiago Arzua shares his story at Caveat in New York, NY in August 2022. Photo by Zhen Qin.

I think that summarizes a little bit of my growing up in Brazil. On one hand, I was lucky enough to have those nerdy friends who support me and a good education to know about neuroscience. But, on the other hand, I had all those stereotypes of growing up in Brazil: the toxic family, the horrible masculinity standards and the never-ending pressure to play soccer.

But at some point I think I realized that I was also very ambitious where I was and deeply, deeply bored with my hometown, which is a dangerous combination for a teenager. So when that same friend went abroad for a high school exchange program, I follow him to his advisor and ask how can I do the same before college.

At the time, I was 17 years old. My whole English vocabulary was 2000's lyrics, Linkin Park and Eminem, and the bare minimum to play online video games. So I had to start studying for the weirdest test I've ever taken in my life, the SAT.

On one hand, the algebra questions were things that I learned in sixth grade. On the other hand, they want me to know the meaning of words like sanctimonious, which, if you don't know, it's just a fancy way to call someone pretentious or self-righteous. The reason I know that is because I started gluing SAT word‑of‑the‑day flashcards all over my bedroom and ‘sanctimonious’ was standing on top of my bed so I saw that every morning for a whole year. I think it worked.

Like many other International students that apply all over the US, I didn't really know that the US had different cities or anything like that. Cincinnati, Seattle, New York, all the same to me. It's a little bit embarrassing to say but I did not know that California was different than Florida, until I got accepted into one of those.

So I was in a plane heading to the University of South Florida, which is not in California, and Miley Cyrus was blasting, playing Party in the USA because I was so ready to finally be here. I think that energy fell down real quick as I arrived in Miami Airport. I watched in horror someone eat a Wendy's burger at 7:00 AM. To this day, I've never eaten at Wendy's. It's not even a joke.

I headed to the crown jewel of the American empire, Starbucks. Do you know when there's that long line and they get the person with a headset and an attitude to come fix it? No one in the line was happy, except for myself. I was completely doe eyed, looking at everything, so excited to be there, up until the moment that the person asked what I wanted.

I don't remember to this day what happened, not because it was a long time ago but because I don't think that was a human language that I spoke. In the two seconds that it took, I went through all the five stages of grief for my comfortable life in Brazil. I panic. I started sweating. I blanked and I walked out of there completely terrified, but with a Frappuccino in hand, and that's all that mattered to me because I got the Frappuccino.

It's kind of how I approach my whole college career. I just ignore social norms and then blame it on my culture. At some point, two months into my freshman year, I approached this professor because I had a question about a molecule. I just wanted to make sure that the molecule is correct, not because of tests or research or anything but because I want to get a tattoo of that molecule.

I did not send an email. I did not schedule an appointment. I just showed up with a Frappuccino in my hand and started asking about tattoos and chemistry. Somehow that worked. A week later, I was working in his lab, still broken English, a horrible Starbucks addiction, but a scientist as a freshman in college. That was amazing to me.

I continued to do research throughout college and then in grad school. And at some point, I think I realized that I was too much of an extrovert to do the science that I was doing. That I needed to make the science sound cooler.

For instance, I could tell you that my PhD thesis was on long non‑coding RNAs and the neurotoxicity involved in methanol during development, or I could tell you that I got baby mice drunk and watched them play with Legos. I chose the latter and just continued to be this extroverted person.

It was a weird beginning, kind of embracing that side and being extroverted in science, but it also was the first time that I feel like I truly belong in science. Science has a horrible way of making you feel like an imposter and that made me feel like I belonged there.

And that, like everything else, changed in 2020. Much like some of you, maybe I blanked for the first few months of the pandemic. I woke up June 2020 with the massive protests that were breaking out across the country in a hot summer day, not in Florida but in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which apparently also has hot summer days.

I glanced where it was probably like 200 cops or so in front of us. At the time, we had this unspoken agreement that non‑black people would go to the front of the lines because of racism. I never considered myself brave, more like reckless and with poor judgment skills, but I went to the front of the line, N95 on because we still didn't get any vaccines at the time and the pandemic was raging on. Goggles, because those rubber bullets will get you blind, and sweatpants and a t‑shirt against body armors, shotguns with less lethal ammunition, and water cannons. I cannot emphasize how terrifying a water cannon is in front of you, and I think everyone was feeling the same way.

So we're all in front linking arms and the guy next to me goes, “What are you doing here? Arent you like Mexican or something?”

Then it hit me. A smoke grenade hit me on my ankle as we started running backwards from the police. We ran for about 20 minutes down the bridge, trying to run away from them and be safe again. And it also hit me that if I get arrested here, it's likely a deportation. It's likely a goodbye to everything that I built in the last ten years.

It was a weird feeling. It was a feeling like I don't belong here. All this time doing science, doing cutting edge research funded by the US government and I still didn't feel right. Like the extrovert that I am, I just went back home, showered the pepper spray off of me and started thinking what do I do now.

I reached out to someone who was doing amazing science at the time but who also has this incredible political sensibility. And like the millennial, like the extroverted scientist that I am, I reached out over Twitter.

I sent a DM that reads something like, “Can we talk about like doing science in 2020?”

She never replied. But I'm stubborn so I sent an email. I think I finally started to learn the social norms and she replied to the email. We set up a Zoom meeting and another and another. So for a whole year, we talked about research, about science, but also what it means to do science right now. What it means to be doing science while the world burns.

And I think I need to win some sort of achievement for like extroverted in science because I can finally say that I have a job at Columbia University because of Twitter. It's an amazing job. I still don't know why brains exist but I now do something called transgenerational trauma, which, if you heard about it, you probably have it. So sorry, we're trying to fix it.

But it also brought me to New York City, which is an incredible place to do this kind of research because, maybe of all the places in the US, this is a city full of other immigrants, full of people who don't feel like they belong. But maybe because we all feel a little bit weird here, we all belong.

It's wild to me, actually. Two days from now, I'm going to complete ten years of living in the US and the journey and all the things that I learned from being nervous about ordering coffee to here, I now order online ahead of time, like everyone else. But I think I also finally am starting to learn to feel comfortable, to feel like I belong here, not just as a scientist, not just as an extroverted scientist but as an immigrant scientist even though I still don't play soccer.