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When did you start focusing on writing fiction?įor a while I did do journalism, and then I had a very profound moment.
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It took 8 months, but I got a good thesis out, and then I was like “goodbye, science.” Can I allow myself to just do what gives me most pleasure in the world, which is writing? Can I just do that instead of forcing myself into this shoe that doesn't fit anymore? I decided that I would finish the thesis so that I would have a Master's, so that I could get lucrative jobs afterwards that would support me while I wrote. My third semester in graduate school, I finally hit a wall. It came to me writing for the MIT Tech a column called “I Did It for Science,” and I started taking an improv class. What was that like?Īt MIT I was trying to make science creative in the way that I needed to be creative, and it couldn't be.
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You went straight from undergrad to graduate school in geochemistry. Can I allow myself to just do what gives me most pleasure in the world, which is writing? Every Friday, I would go to the greenhouse at the end of the science center and sit by the fountain and write there, and that ritual just centered me. I was in an a cappella group, and I still made sure that I wrote every week. Even so, that training gave me so much grounding for what I did later. I struggled so much with organic synthesis in organic chemistry, because I could think of 10 different ways to make a certain compound instead of the most efficient way. Creative thinking is encouraged, but it's still about getting problem sets right. I wanted science to be a creative outlet, and it wasn't. It was just magical to me that the world could be so submissive to reason.ĭid you feel like you had a creative outlet in science? How did you feed that part of yourself? When I understood protein synthesis or the concept of limits in calculus, it was the greatest high. Biochemistry would be the best training for being an astrobiologist, and also I loved the lab. Science and math, I had to work really hard at, and I liked working really hard. How did you choose to study biochemistry is college?Ī big part of it was the drive to be an astronaut. All of them were considerably older, so when mom started getting really sick, I was the only kid in the house. I could talk to my siblings about it, but they also didn't get what it was like living there day to day. I didn't trust that anyone would understand. In high school, I barely talked about it, and I never talked about it with friends. She had cancer and the radiation treatments were slowly robbing her of mental faculties. When I was 14 and decided to be an astronaut, I started keeping a diary, and that more than any other single thing in my whole life has just set me on the path I am now, just the daily chronicling and reflecting on one's life. I got hooked on a lot of science fiction and fantasy series, especially, and developed very elaborate rituals around reading where I would only listen to certain kinds of music and only burn certain scented candles while I was reading. What was your life like outside of school? I bent all of my willpower towards that goal for the next 10 years, and that included not caring about whether I was popular, studying really hard, going back to reading, and taking school and my grades really seriously, and I was much happier after that, so much happier. I was much too nerdy and much too sheltered for the kids I was hanging out with more, and I just didn't fit in.Īfter a lot of serious, upsetting bullying, right before I started 9th grade, I decided that I was going to be an astronaut. I found out that I could not pretend to be someone I was not. “How do I get into the popular clique?” became my preoccupation of the next couple of years. I was only interested in art up until about age 12 or 13, and then I hit adolescence. I grew up in the most idyllic, small-town America town that you can imagine. It was this safe place to ride your bikes around in the sunset. Growing up she thought she'd be: about 10 things simultaneously, then an astronaut Where she lives now: Durham, North Carolina
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Grew up with: her mom, dad, and four older siblingsĮducation: Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from Wellesley College and a Master's degree in geochemistry from MIT