Becoming: Stories about growing into yourself

In this week’s episode, both our storytellers strive to realize their full, authentic selves in science.

Part 1: After being bullied for his sexuality as a kid, Scott Taylor hesitates to bring his full self to his identity as a scientist.

Scott Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder where he leads the Taylor Lab on hybridization, speciation, and natural history (https://www.colorado.edu/lab/taylor/). He joined the faculty after completing a Ph.D. in ecological genetics from Queen’s University and pursuing postdoctoral training at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Research in his group is focused on using natural hybrid zones and recent radiations to understand the genetic bases of traits involved in reproductive isolation, population divergence, and speciation, and the impacts of anthropogenic change, including climate change, on species distributions, interactions, and evolution. His lab primarily studies birds. Scott grew up on the shore of Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada. He is fascinated by natural history and the intersections between art and science, and is committed to inclusion and diversity initiatives.

Part 2: Kamryn Parker’s high school history teacher unwittingly influences her scientific journey.

Kamryn Parker is currently a graduate student at Boise State University pursuing her Master's in Computer Science with a Data Science concentration. She graduated from Boise State in 2021 with a Bachelor's Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with emphases in Data Science, Computer Science, and Applied Math. She currently works as a graduate research assistant focusing on both election and privacy research. Kamryn is passionate about data science and how you can use data to solve the complex problems of today's world. In her free time, Kamryn enjoys being a trivia night enthusiast, cheering on her favorite sports teams, and watching Marvel movies.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

I once passed out while demonstrating how to take blood from the brachial vein of a bird on my own arm. I was 24 years old. It was the second field season of my PhD, and I was in Chile. I was surrounded by my relatively macho South American collaborators and some people I didn't know.

When I came to, I was being offered chocolate. It worked. And the first thought in my mind wasn't, “I wonder why that happened,” which is weird because it was the first time I've ever passed out and only time I've ever passed out in my life. My first thought was, “I hope they don't think that I'm gay.”

I grew up in Southern Ontario in Canada. I was a figure skater. I collected My Little Ponies. I had a rock and gem collection. I had an orchid garden. I loved the natural world. I had a really amazing childhood. Even after my mom died when I was nine from complications with MS, my father did a very good job at raising his kids.

I was first called gay when I was in grade four. And I wasn't really called gay. I was called a faggot on the school yard by someone who I thought was my friend. I didn't know what that meant. The dictionary said pile of sticks. My brother said something else.

Scott Taylor shares his story at a show sponsored by Evolution Meeting 2019 in Providence, RI in June 2019. Photo by David DelPoio.

At this point in my life, I was known as the boy who figure skates. I was in a gifted program. I was artistic. I had a lot of friends and I even had friends who played hockey.

When I was first called gay, I was gutted. That could not be who I was. That was not an option for me. I went to a Catholic elementary school so, clearly, it wasn't an option. I didn't know anyone who was gay. There were no gay people on TV.

A particularly relevant story comes from a day at the skating rink, of which there were many. I used to skate six days a week. Sometimes, I would get up at 5:00 AM to be on the ice at 6:00 AM. On this day, I was going to practice my free skate. For those of you that don't know, that's when you're on the ice by yourself and you're dancing and jumping to music that you probably love.

I was excited. I was going to practice some really hard double jumps. My music was Lawrence of Arabia, which is indisputably awesome. And my costume was sick. Of course, it involved tights and kind of a sheer, billowy top that really caught the air in the right way.

But my excitement turned to dread as a junior men's hockey team walked into the rink, not to their dressing room but into the stands. I was alone on the ice. I don't know why their coach made them do this. I don't think it was for them to get skating tips. I was a better skater than them, but I'm sure that wasn't the reason.

Some of those people were my friends previously. People who now told others I was a loser, that I had no friends, and that I was gay.

Needless to say, that was not my best day on the ice. They applauded every time that I fell. Their coach encouraged them, and I was humiliated.

I came out publicly when I was 23 years old, the first week of my graduate program. And it was incredible. To those people, I was only ever Scott Taylor, a gay man who was happy. To my advisor, to my friends in graduate school, that first week we were having a party, people who I had just met who knew I was gay invited me to go dancing at a gay bar for the first time in my life. They wanted to interact with me because of who I was fully.

When I started graduate school, I had to figure out how to be a scientist just like many people, but, really, I had to figure out how to be a gay scientist and I do think there's a difference. I had no mentors from the queer community. I barely knew anyone who was gay. Although I was out to my friends and family, I worried about being out professionally, because it's different. Having two coming outs is different.

I didn't come out to collaborators in other countries. I did field work in places where it's not that safe to be open about who you are if you're gay. And not having mentors and not knowing people, especially field biologists. Your sexuality doesn't define your ability to be a field biologist, but I would say I did not know any field biologists who are openly gay.

Last year at the American Ornithological Society meeting, I was awarded a Young Investigator prize for my promise as a leader in the field of ornithology, which feels very weird but also awesome. It was probably the best scientific talk that I've ever given in my entire life.

During that talk, I study hybridization and I wanted to define the term for people, and as a child, I was obsessed, not surprisingly, I think, with unicorns and Pegasus, because why wouldn't you be? And as a child, I remember thinking, “What if it was a unicorn with wings,” which is called a pegacorn.

So in this talk, I used an example. I defined hybridization by using pegacorn as an example. At the end of the talk, I had planned on acknowledging that both of the young investigators being awarded that year were members of the LGBT community.

As I approached that point in my talk, I started to get nervous for the first time. I don't usually get nervous giving talks but, currently, pretty nervous. So at that point in my talk, I started to get nervous. I didn't really know how it would be received. I actually forgot to say the member of the community that we're both members of, but I think the pegacorn people knew. It was pretty clear.

I delivered that statement that representation is important, that I felt like a valued member of the community, that I finally felt okay to say who I was. And I waited and there was applause. There was applause just like there was applause on that day on the rink and I was alone again. It was overwhelming in a completely different way. I felt recognized and valued for who I am in a way that is pretty indescribable and I will never forget that moment.

Part 2

I walk into my high school history class on the first day of junior year in the seventh and final period of the day. I walk into this history class thinking it'd be just like any other, full of historical facts, figures, people, time periods that were deemed important for the junior year curriculum, and I'd whiz through it no problem and go back to what I really cared about at the time, which was captaining my high school softball team and not much else during my high school experience.

I figured I'd go on to college and play college softball and major in Architecture, because I was in year three of architecture school in school, and it just made sense. Sense, however, was thrown right out the window when I sat down, looked up, and saw a tall man with ice-white hair wearing a mock neck and a sports coat. I came to learn this man would be my teacher, Mr. Brett Silva.

Now, the first few weeks with Mr. Silva were pretty normal. Getting to know the class and the teacher, and he is quite the character. He loves soccer and he also enjoys school spirit, something I was not accustomed to.

One day, though, he walks into class and he tells us, “Pull out your laptops and go to the high school webpage.” He looks at us and he says, “This website looks like crap and I hate it.”

I kind of had to agree with him. It is in pretty rough shape. But, nevertheless, I'm looking around and everybody else had kind of the same expression of, well, what do you want us to do about it?

He tells us to take the day. Go online, look up different high schools across the nation with much cooler looking websites.

Now, I'm thinking, “Okay, you're telling a high schooler they can go on the internet all class period and not have to do any work? Okay, this is golden. Perfect.”

Kamryn Parker tells her story at The Lookout Room at the Boise State Student Union in Boise, ID at a show sponsored by Boise State University in April 2022. Photo by Chandler Thornton.

Until I started actually looking for these websites. I found myself kind of entranced by them. I wondered, “How did they get that button to present on this website,” or, “I wonder what the structure they needed to use to get it to show up this way,” or, “that theming on there is super vibrant. I wish we could have that for our own website.”

I was so wrapped up in all of this that I didn't even realize class was getting close to over. Mr. Silva tells us to come back together and show them what we found, so we do.

He says, “Great. Okay, well, save it for later.”

What? We just did all this work for you and now we're not going to do anything with it. That's what you're telling me right now?

At this moment, I realized that Mr. Silva would do this quite a lot. He would get the class riled up about something, probably a cheer we could maybe try at the next football game or dressing up for the next spirit week. He'd get the class so excited. We're chomping at the bit, wondering what comes next, and then he'd let it go and say, “Oh, let's talk about the War of 1812. Let's move on.”

I was always wondering what comes next. So this time, though, I'd had it. I marched up to his desk demanding, “So what, Mr. Silva? We're just not going to make a website now after all that work?”

He looks at me and he says, “Parker, I don't know how to make a website. Do you?”

And I say, “Certainly not.”

And he says, “Well, all right then,” and goes back to doing what he was doing.

At this point, I'm ready to turn on my heels, head home, and pretend like none of this ever happened. Except another part of me tells me to, instead, stand firm, look him in the eye and say, “But I'm going to learn.”

And he, without missing a beat, looks at me and he says, “Do it.”

That's all the permission I needed to head home that night and start researching how to make a website.

It was very hard as I was learning.

But in my research, I learned about the field of computer science and that struck my interest a little bit more. Except I was thinking, computer science? That is very hard.

At this point, I had only ever used my laptop to write a couple of English papers, and now you're telling me that you can make full-fledged websites using this thing in something called software design? No, not for me. I will go back to playing sports and pretending like none of this ever happened.

So I go back to Mr. Silva the next day and I tell him the news and I say, “You know, Mr. Silva, I found this thing called computer science, but it looks kind of hard.”

And he tells me, “So what? Life's hard. Do it anyway.”

Okay. Maybe he's right. So I head back home and I do some more research. In this research, I learn of a club that's opening up that's happening across town at the rival high school called Girls Who Code.

And what Girls Who Code is it's an organization meant to empower young women to learn about code and computer science and the like.

I thought, “Perfect. Just what I was looking for. It's everything that I wanted to try and learn.”

Until I saw the time and it said that the club was going to start right as my high school was getting out for the day. Knowing the after-school traffic of trying to get out of a parking lot full of high school students, I was going to be more than 30 minutes late, at least, every single day. So there went that plan, or so I thought.

Back to Mr. Silva I go and I tell him, “Mr. Silva, there's this cool club, but I can't go.”

He looks at me and he says, “So what? Do it anyway. Leave my class 10 minutes early to make it on time.” So I did.

And I learned so much in this club and I was even more excited to come back each week and tell Mr. Silva what I had learned. He'd usually make some sort of, “Keep it up. Keep going. Keep doing it,” and I was. The more I was getting involved in this computer science thing, the more I thought to myself, “Man, Mr. Silva was kind of right about this whole computer science thing. It's pretty fun. I wonder what else he could be right about?”

That's when I decided to try my hand at school spirit. Before that, I was only maybe thinking about going to a football game or only dressing up for an extra credit point, but nothing more. But I thought maybe I'd try this time.

So the more I got involved, the more fun I was having. Eventually, I thought of making what's called a Snapchat geolocation filter for the high school as a way to take a picture and you can say, “Here, I'm at my high school.”

So I go up to Mr. Silva with my idea and, first, he says, “Kid, I have no clue what Snapchat is.” But then he says, “Go. Do it. And show me what it looks like when it's done.” So I did.

Mr. Silva's and my relationship would be like that for quite some time. I'd go to him with an idea and he'd ask, “Well, are you passionate about it?” I'd say, “Yeah,” and he'd say, “Then go do it.” And I would. This happened throughout the rest of my junior year until we finally reached summer break and I was having to email him all this stuff instead. I sent him tons of emails during the summer.

Finally, I got fed up with not being able to just walk to his classroom and tell him all these ideas I had and I think he was getting fed up by the amount of emails he was getting during his summer break. So I sent him another email and I say, “Look, I have a free period my senior year. Why can't I just be your teaching assistant?”

And he says, “Parker, I haven't had a teaching assistant in over 20 years, but sure, let's do it. You're my TA.” So we did.

That started an amazing senior year full of projects that were meant to encourage students to get involved and show a little school pride. I eventually became the spirit club president of my high school. That was weird to say. And I fully realized my passion for computer science with Mr. Silva's help.

One of the projects that I was most proud of that we worked on together was called the spirit scarf. I don't know how many of you are fans of soccer. If you are, you might know. In soccer culture, they have something called a spirit scarf. It's essentially a scarf that acts as a banner that they can hold above their head to cheer on their team and kind of have a sense of community with their fans around them in the stands. We made that happen for my own school.

Mr. Silva even put down his own credit card before I had enough money for the down payment. That's how much he trusted me to get the job done and do what I was passionate about. And, within the first week, we sold out.

As senior year was going on, I thought, “Man, I should probably make a plan for this whole college thing.” I told him. I said, “You know, I'm thinking about pursuing this computer science thing.”

He tells me, I think you can all guess, “Do it and be good at it.” So I did.

I applied to a lot of different colleges, especially Boise State. I was really hoping to hear from that one. After getting in there and having some long conversations with family, we sat down on a random weekend in January and decided that this was going to be the school for me. I was ecstatic. I was so excited. I was happy to finally have a plan to pursue something I felt really strongly about and I was passionate about.

More than that, I was excited to run back to Mr. Silva that next Monday waiting for that coveted, “Go. Do it. And be good at it.”

But I never heard those words because, that very same weekend, I received a phone call telling me that Mr. Silva had been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. I was devastated. I couldn't understand how something so tragic happen to someone who meant so much to our community and so much to me. And more than that, I was mad. I was mad because this person who was going to show me and showed me my newfound passion, something that I still pursue and love to this day in computer science, wasn't going to be around to see it happen.

And I was even more mad because I'd never actually known that Mr. Silva was proud of me for everything we did together. You see, he doesn't give out praise easily. You really have to earn it from him. So never hearing those words of, “I'm proud of you. You did a great job,” it made me feel like I was cheated out of a prize I didn't even know I was trying to win.

I got that moment a little while later attending his funeral. I stayed near the back allowing his family and close friends the room to mourn and I quietly gave my condolences. As I'm headed out the door, I hear my name. I turn around and it's his wife who I didn't even think knew who I was at the time.

She runs up to me, she wraps me in her arms and she tells me, “I buried him in that scarf you two made together. He talked about it and you all the time,” and that's all I needed to know. That everything Mr. Silva and I did together was worth it and that I was doing it.

I have a lot of things I want to thank Mr. Silva for, but I think the biggest thing I want to thank him for is, many months later, I'm attending my first ever computer science class at Boise State. This time, I'm thinking, “I can't do this. This is not for me. I don't know what I'm doing here.” Ready to turn around and go pick a different major.

But instead, I have this voice in my head that makes me pause and it asks me, “What's stopping you?” I think to myself, nothing. And it rings back at me and says, “Then go in there and do it and be good at it.” So I did. And I continue to do it each and every day because, even though life may challenge you and life may be hard, if you're passionate about something, then who cares? Do it anyway.

Thank you.