Dear academics and passion pursuers and outcasts alike,
I'm not sure if I'm being realistic. I think for a long long time I assumed that words and hopes and dreams meant a lot to a lot of people. I still believe they do. I'm just incredibly nervous about my next steps. I am filled with so much disappointment but no regret, and maybe a bit of concern about what is next and how or if I will ever feel a sense of belonging in the world I have dedicated my life to: Scientific inquiry. That's a difficult life to lead. I joined a new lab so that I could not end up in a position where I felt like everything positive I tried, was perceived as negative, or a position in which folks perhaps thought about me differently than others. Maybe I am just less worthwhile or not what ambiguous traits are desired for academia than others in the current sphere of learning (well, if academia is about learning, which most will admit outrightly "it's a business"). History does repeat itself, sometimes it doesn't need a reason We talk so much in transplantation research about graft versus host disease on a subcellular, tissue, or organ level, but, I think we fail to apply this term to the organismal level. For many scientists, this concept is compelling for deciding on how to prepare the host for the donor, in this case the donor being a student, the host being an institution. on the exterior. This process is called "conditioning" to set the environment up for donated cells, for example. However, organismal level transplantation exists as well, but since it has to do with human transplant as whole to a new environment this lens is immediately shunned, or rather, rejected, or perhaps just misunderstood. I don't know why but it seems that when we reach the organismal level outcomes, or apply concepts that we apply cellularly and organismally for other species, it's acceptable to consider environmental conditions for creating model organisms to design an experiment for cellular transplantation, and this is science, but the moment it could be applied to the individuals who work in science then scientific application of concepts is no longer permissable in any form of published or unpublished work or thoughts or discussion. I was told by students when I applied that I would be a good fit. I guess there are plenty of doctors in this world who have never made a bad call, but still picked a graft for a host that did not take. Sometimes history and behaviors repeat themselves, maybe sometimes they really don't have any reason.
I won't say that people didn't try to make it happen. Sometimes the match just doesn't take. We think much about the host in these situations. What about the transplant? I feel like I'm a flower who was just about to bud and is left to dry out. I'm not sure if it's to preserve an example, or if I've just been forgotten, or if it is normal to feel like this. My name is Jacqueline Marie Howells. I was named this by my Chinese grandmother as she looked to Jacqueline O'nassis as an idol of how to be American. My Grandmother lived a difficult life as an adopted child where she was ripped from her home land and grew up in Texas. Similarly, my other Grandmother, who is still alive in Korea, did not live an easy life as she was also torn from her homeland early in age. Both had positive perspectives on intensely strange new situations, my Chinese grand mother passed away from Vascular parkinsinisom, which was misdiagnosed for years as Parkinson's, and the therapy provided had the capacity to increase her mini-strokes. She lived up the street from the household I grew up in, I could climb/scale a small hillside to get to a park that lead to her home. She passed during my time in graduate school, during which I was actively feeling rejected from a community which thought, in agreement with myself, that I would be well suited to engraft in. Sometimes history doesn't repeat itself.
I didn't have the time nor the ability to face my father at the funeral while actively being rejected from the only other source of group engagement that felt steady andgoal-oriented: Lab family. This is why I could spend 60 hours in two lab research/assistant jobs while taking 20 units in my senior year at Berkeley, because it was safe and the people were so kind, and I truly enjoyed learning from them. I never felt unaccepted here, but history sometimes doesn't repeat itself I suppose.
I feel I have had the unfortunate experience of graft versus host disease on an organismal level, me being the California Public Schooled graft, the host being a small private school in New England. I am grateful to have been provided a chance to engraft coming from a hopeless environment. I was raised by two individuals in their early 20s, in San Francisco. One has severe mental illness of obsessive-compulsive disorder that was never addressed, the other who. as most abuse victims, lacks perception of how to manage the narratives being fed to her and now believes herself unable to fill a gas tank despite teaching this skill to the other due to years of being told just this by my father. One can imagine OCD without self-acceptance can lead down some labyrinths no one with a sense of responsibility with children should enter, nor should be seen by bystanders. Sometimes history repeats itself with a cadence that makes it difficult to believe you're not the reason.
But it's never addressed, the reality and the perception of how they are treated and how it's not ok for their family is really non-existentant, perhaps to them, these cognitive capacities are indispensable in the face of constant threats to physical and mental well-being. This is where a daughter comes into the picture, who believes words at face value. A daughter who somehow lives through the obsessions compulsively channeled through her. One who practiced writing 1 & 7s, 4s & 9s, 6 &9s, 5s&6s over and over at the bank teller for hours feeling humiliated while being told if I couldn't get it exact I would end up homeless. I kept this compulsive behavior while labeling eppendorf 1.5mL plastic tubes my entire 14 year time in science. But this training came from high school homework, where after I received my daily 7 pm-midnight "training" for school with my father, each equation solved for algebra 1, he would celebrate by having another glass of Carlo Rossi from the big jug if I got the answer right, and also another glass of Carlo Rossi to cope for when I got something incorrect, usually if my 4 looked like a 9. I was in Lowell High School, which currently has a documentary regarding how competitive it is as a public high school, or any high school. History and dreams do repeat themselves, sometimes without even a reason.
When I was in Lowell, my love for learning had a home. Despite the documentary showing the competition, when I attended, we had an event called arena to sign up for classes, which was determined by random each year starting with a different letter. If your last name started with say H for Howells, you might be grouped with HIJKL names, and for your first-semester pick classes last. This may already seem odd, but when I attended it wasn't always the case that students had internet or a computer, so this event happened in person. Each "subject" math, a science course, an English course, a language course, etc, had a kiosk desk, and we would all run in in our given orders and literally shove each other to sign up for the last spot in a favorite class or a class taught by a teacher who was favored. All of us believed our futures depended on this event which was shuffled every semester in terms of last names, everyone would have a chance to pick first.
I didn't quite understand how intense my work ethic was, as despite the training I received at home from my father, by 11pm after practicing writing numbers over and over, I'd have to stay up to do my actual homework, with the lights dimmed, after he fell asleep. I have much practice in not sleeping from these years. Sometimes history and behaviors repeat themselves, sometimes times they don't need a reason.
Now, I am here, at the edge of the sidewalk, and I’m fighting not to jump. Jumping, I’ve been told, will end things. Is it possible that they did not see my wings? this time, history won’t repeat itself, and in this case, here are my reasons.