This week, our host Erin Barker is joined on the podcast by the hosts of our online live shows, Gastor Almonte and Paula Croxson, to introduce two fan-favorite stories from the past year of Story Collider’s online live shows.
Part 1: Just as she’s doubting her identity as a scientist, Johana Goyes Vallejos is asked to give a presentation about her work to high school students.
Dr. Johana Goyes Vallejos is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Missouri. She graduated with a B.Sc. in Biology in Colombia and received her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut. Her research has taken her to many tropical forests across the world, including Panama, Costa Rica, Guyana, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam. At the University of Missouri, Dr. Goyes Vallejos continues her research on mating behavior and parental care strategies using frogs with elaborate parental behaviors as study systems.
Part 2: Growing up, Sam loves learning about biology from his scientist mother until one day, when he asks her, “Can you change if you're a boy or a girl?”
Sam Long is a Chinese-American-Canadian trans man and a high school science teacher. He is a co-founder of GenderInclusiveBiology.com and the Colorado Transgender/Non-binary Educators Network.
Story Transcripts
Story 1: Johana Goyes Vallejos
Johana Goyes Vallejos is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Missouri.
Finishing my PhD was like pushing a huge rock up a steep mountain to ultimately just push it off the cliff. I had no postdoc waiting and, because I'm an alien, the term that affectionately is used by the government to refer to international students, I knew that once the graduate school finalized the paperwork I will have 30 days to uproot my life of this last six years and leave the U.S.
I had successfully defended my dissertation yet I did not feel successful. And whenever people ask me what's next, I would start sobbing uncontrollably. As a result, I started avoiding people and I'm pretty sure people started avoiding me.
Around that time, my friend Justin, who I met in grad school, he had gone on to become a high school teacher in New York City. He called me and asked me if I would like to speak in his science class.
“It'll be good for them to meet a real scientist,” he said. But am I a real scientist? In any case, I had nothing better to do and I said yes.
To prepare for my visit, I told him to ask the students to write in a piece of paper what they think a scientist is. Then we put together their responses in a work cloud. The words “lab coat,” “white,” “tall,” “Bill Nye” stuck out like a fly in a glass of milk.
Johana, in the field.
The day of, Justin and I make it to the school and I hide in the prep room while students trickle into the classroom. As I see them coming in, talking about the things you talk about in ninth grade, it hit me. Almost all the students were, or at least looked, Hispanic. Their teachers, mostly white.
Justin starts introducing me without making any references that may give away my gender or ethnicity. Then I made my grand entrance. Five-foot-nothing, Latina, Dr. Goyes Vallejos.
My goal was to get them excited about research, about science, so I spent hours preparing slides with images of cool amphibians and reptiles. I tell them that I'm a herpetologist and I study frog behavior. I tell them about my journey coming from the Andes of Colombia to the United States to pursue a PhD. I talk about my discoveries, my experiences across the world and all the places my research has taken me.
As I speak I see the images of my travels, my study organisms, my science. It almost feels like I put together a tribute to my research, to myself. Will I be able to continue doing research? Will I get to see my frogs again? Will I have to give it up so I can pay the bills?
As I flipped through the slides, these feelings are creeping inside of me. I have to snap out of it and have to end up my talk with the usual, “Any questions?”
The students splayed out on their seats seem unamused. I wait for a few minutes, that feel like an eternity, and then I hear it.
“How much money do you make?”
They could have asked anything about frogs and I almost certainly would have known the answer, but this? This question? I'm not sure if I can answer, or at least not honestly if the goal is to get them interested in a career in science.
I stand up tall and I said what I've been telling myself and my family for years. “I didn't get into science because I wanted to be a millionaire. I got into science because I love research and I live well and I have everything I need.” And that was the truth, or at least partially, knowing that in just a couple of weeks my paycheck would stop coming all together.
As I answered, I was also having flashbacks of my parents. “You want to be a biologist? You will starve to death,” they say. Were they right after all?
Another question yanks me back to the classroom. “But how do you get the money for the research and all that stuff?”
I gather my thoughts and I say, “Research is funded through grants and fellowships that you can apply for.”
But before I can add another sentence, another student interjects and says, “Yeah, but you got to be real smart for that.”
And again, I feel the wind knocked out of my sails. The truth of the matter is that I sucked at getting grants. And throughout my PhD, I never got any of the fancy fellowships. So maybe this student is right.
At this moment I feel tiny and I'm not sure what to say or do. I take a deep breath and I say, “Listen. In life there are two kinds of people. Those who are smart and those who work hard. And we Latinos, for better or worse, are no quitters. You know what we are? We are resilient, and that is our superpower.
If Abuelita can wake up every morning and cook food for the whole family and some more without fail, then we can crack open a book and study, and study hard, if that is what you want.”
As I said this, I can feel how my breathing is fast and my voice is trembling and my eyes are welling up. I snap out of it. And as I put myself together, I see on the back of the room two girls with tears rolling down their eyes. I can feel the emotions are running high and so does Justin, so he steps in to thank me for my visit and joins the students in a round of applause that sounds muffled in my head.
I go into the prep room while he dismisses the class with my heart still pounding in my chest. I'm pushing the knot in my throat down when I feel a tap on my shoulder, and it's one of the girls from the class.
She said to me, “My father does not want me to be a veterinarian, because I won't make any money. But I'm going to tell him that I don't care and that I'm going to become a veterinarian and take care of animals.”
I smile and tell her that it sounds like a good plan.
On my drive back, I ponder if me telling these kids to chase their dreams was the responsible thing to do. After all, I chased mine and now I'm stuck.
Later that night, I open my computer and I see an email with the subject line “Thank You.” Justin asked the students to write again on a piece of paper what they think a scientist is and they put together another word cloud.
The word “lab coat” was gone, and so was “Bill Nye.” And the words “young,” “Latino,” “Hispanic” showed up in this new, beautiful version. But the most striking word right there in bright red in the middle of it all was “person.”
Staring at the screen, I got teary eyed and my heart feels heavy. I may not be the most successful, and certainly not the smartest scientist out there, but if telling my story opens a world of possibilities and clears a path for others so they can be whatever they want to be, I'll take it.
Story 2: Sam Long
When I was eight years old, I thought my mom was the smartest, most amazing person in the world. It was an honor any time she asked me for help, whether it was folding sheets together, getting dinner ready or helping her with work. "Yes," she said with a smile, "you can help me with my science work." And so I leapt up onto her queen-sized bed and she handed me a sheet of paper covered with these hundreds of thin, wavy lines. They were in red, blue, green and black ink. Above each wave's peak was a capital letter, which my mom asked me to read out loud.
Sam Long is the founder of GenderInclusiveBiology.com and the Colorado Transgender/Non-binary Educators Network.
A. A. C. T. T. C. G. T. A. A. G. G. A. T. C.
I lay across the bed, propped up on my elbows, reading out sequence after sequence. Mom sat her petite frame on an oversized office chair and she compared my letters to the ones on her paper. If they were different, she would mark it down. I asked, "Mom, why are there only four letters here? What is this?" Mom looked up and pushed back her long, fine hair. She said, "This is DNA. The strands of DNA contained instructions for life, for making all living things. And I thought, "Wow, four letters only for making every living thing, including me." Mom explained that a machine used the waves to read the DNA code, but it made some mistakes, so we had to check it. By helping her, I was helping scientists understand more about biology. It wasn't just mother-daughter time. It was like a job. I was helping with science. As early as I understood the idea of a family, I understood that science was at the core of my family, my mom and dad had both studied biology at Sichuan University in China. As the top students in their class, they were able to continue their training in the United States. Here they became parents to twin girls, my sister and me. My dad studied bacteria, the tiniest of life. But when we were just babies, he died in a car accident.
My mom studied plants and later yeast, and every time we moved to a new city, it was because she got a new job there. My stepdad had been a science teacher, but he was training for a new career, making computer programs for science research. One day I was helping prepare vegetables for dinner. My mom gave me a bowl of long green beans, and I sat at the table snapping them into bite-sized pieces, removing the thick string that wasn't digestible. As I repeated this task, a question popped into my head, so I asked it. "Mom, can people change their names? Can you change if you're a boy or a girl?" Mom stayed facing toward the kitchen sink, acting hesitant. Was she unsure of the answer or unsure of why I was asking? She eventually just said, "No, not really." And that was it. By the time I was a junior in high school, I found the answer on my own and I knew why I had been asking. I was a boy. Yes, you can become a boy. The realization of who I had been all along was joyous, but I kept that joy inside. I transitioned gradually, first by cutting my hair and going by a new name and wearing the clothes that I liked.
My mom wanted to shut this down immediately. She said to me, "I gave birth to you. I know you are a girl." She said, "You can't change nature. Trust me, I'm a scientist." I tried to give Mom more time to accept me as Sam. I focused on keeping my grades up. My favorite class was Biology with Mr. Coulter, where every day I got closer to fully understanding those As, Ts, Cs, and Gs that I have been reading since I was eight. In the winter of junior year, we learned about genetics and reproduction, I learned that XX chromosomes were for women and XY were for men, except me. I learned that a zygote is formed by the union between an egg cell, always made by a woman, and a sperm cell, always made by men, except me. With every gross generalization that we spoke or read, I felt like everyone was looking at me and sensing that I didn't belong. With every sweeping statement that left me behind, making me acutely aware that I wasn't normal, I would say to myself, "Except me." Mr. Coulter may not have noticed my anxiety with genetics, but he saw my aptitude and he signed me up for the national biology competition in the spring.
This was a written exam for high schoolers with the top prize of a college scholarship to study biology. The exam would test us on some complex topics that we hadn't learned yet in class, which I love to reason through and figure out for the first time.
In the weeks before the exam, I studied hard because I loved science and I wanted to make my mom proud. When the scores came back, I had done the best out of all the juniors in my school. Mr. Coulter said, "You know, you should definitely take the exam again when you're a senior. You could probably win that scholarship." So that evening at dinner, I mentioned this to my mom and she seemed happy about it. She asked me what was on the exam. We discussed a few of the topics. I felt like a real child of science talking shop with my mom. It was a lot better than having my mom grill me over my choice to cut my hair. By the spring of my senior year, I learned much more about biology, and I was confident I could ace this exam, but I didn't mention it to my mom. Our relationship had gone cold and hostile. She stopped asking me to help with dinner and we ate dinner in silence. At one point, she said, "If you're not my daughter, you're not a part of this family." I was hurt, but I didn't have time to grieve, I had to make an exit plan. I was going to turn eighteen on April 30th. I could legally change my name, graduate, and then move out on my own. I planned to work minimum wage for a few years to get financially independent, then go to college. It would be a long way to college, but it would be my way.
I had this all sorted out, except one thing. I needed a notary to sign the name-change forms. So I thought of my friend Melissa, whose mom was a lawyer, and Melissa's mom agreed to be my notary. She said we could walk over to her house just down the street from school during lunch to get the paper signed. We set the earliest possible date to do this, my birthday, April 30th, and I couldn't wait. I would be getting the gift of a lifetime: legal recognition of who I was. But I screwed up. It was the same day as the biology exam -- same day, same time, same lunch hour. I thought about staying for the exam and just going on a later day to get the paper signed -- that way I could get a great score and probably win a scholarship to major in biology, this fascinating science that I was born to study. That might even make my mom smile again. It had been so long since she really smiled. But this would mean delaying my name change, delaying it again when I had already been waiting years. I thought about skipping the exam or leaving early. That way I could get my name change filed and it would probably go through by the last day of school, I would leave high school and walk out into the world as Sam Long, the man and the adult. I want it badly to be my own man with a driver's license and a job, and I even wanted that dinky little plastic employee name tag as long as it read Sam.
Maybe I wanted all this even more than I wanted to be a part of my family or even more than I wanted to be a scientist. I couldn't decide what to do. On April 30th at lunch hour, I still couldn't decide. I was sitting hunched at a desk among 30 other students working on this national biology exam. It was 12:10 p.m. and I had blown through all the questions in just the first 20 minutes. I looked at the clock and I thought, "I could leave now." I could turn in my exam and leave. Then I looked down at my answer sheet. For sure, I had missed a few questions by going so fast -- this wasn't like me. A child of science would take this seriously and stay and check every answer, do what it takes to be the number-one student, just like my mom was. I picked up my pencil and I started checking answers. The first question was something about photosynthesis, but then I thought, what am I doing trying to get a better score? What good is that going to do? Get me a scholarship? Why would I want a scholarship where the name inscribed is not my name? What good is it going to do? Do I really think a perfect score is going to be enough to make my mom love me again? Do I even want my mom's love when she has hurt me so badly?
I am 18 today, and it's time for me.
But maybe I could stay for five more minutes, maybe 10, and still have enough time to go see the lawyer. Could I risk it? What's an appropriate amount of time to allocate to a national science competition versus the legal recognition of my own identity? I'm running out of time. I need to go with my gut. I'm not my mother's daughter. I am my own man. At 12:15 p.m., I packed up my pencils and I raised my hand for Mr. Coulter to collect my exam. My hands shook in the air and my heart sounded like galloping horses. It took all of my conviction to keep my hand raised up, but I did. Mr. Coulter seemed surprised I was already done. He knew nothing of my dilemma. He was probably thinking, "Well, there goes your scholarship."
But then I stood up and I could feel my blood running through me. I walked with such momentum through the door, down the hall, through the double doors and into the sunlight. I knew what I was doing and I knew who I was.