 Okay, Steven panelists would you please introduce yourselves to us. Yeah. Hi, I'm Christa she they is good or really anything that makes the joke land if you want to refer to me otherwise. I'm a, I'm going to be a fifth year PhD student in the human genetics program. I came in through Pibbs, which is this umbrella program in biomedical sciences that with anybody here's part of Pibbs. Hello, everyone. My name is wami Ogumbi and I am a. Okay, so this fourth year in the robotics PhD program and hopefully my last year. The hesitancy was because like I joined in the mechanical engineering program in 2017. So technically this is my, what, 76. I don't know how to do math. Yeah, you're in grad school. Yeah. Hi, my name is shell Jones and I am going to be a 10th year in sociology. I'm from the city of Chicago so if anybody's got Chicago connections I always like to know that and I'm looking forward to learning more from Christa and wami. Okay, thanks y'all. So, I'd like you to share with us what you wish you knew your first year here. Yeah, I mean the main thing I wish I had a better sense of when I was starting is that grad school can be so incredibly isolating, especially out of big school like Michigan so you're across all these different campuses, and you're in all these different departments and that means it can be kind of hard to find other queer students and it doesn't mean that there's anything like wrong with your program or anything like that it's just kind of what happens if you're in a small program. And you're one of maybe like two students that are queer in your department, and it sort of means that you're going to end up having different friends in different areas of your life and you might have to work harder to find other queer students and those queer communities but it doesn't mean that they don't exist you just might have to look in different places. So yeah, that's the main thing I wish I knew. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, well, I guess my piece of advice here is like probably not even like I guess even LGBT specific but in general, what I wish I knew my first year was to find mentors and sponsors beyond just my advisor. And I mean that for many reasons, but one of the most like I guess key reasons is that, for example, if you're like in a situation where your advisors unable to help you or does not want to help you, it's very important to have other professors, especially who know you and who are willing to go to bad for you and help you through that situation. And I mean I guess I'm being vague here but like it helped me specifically because like I joined in one program the mechanical engineering program and things didn't work out and part of the reason that I'm able to continue on in my grad school experience to be in the robotics department right now is because I was able to cultivate those relationships with other professors. So I would say, yeah definitely finding mentors and sponsors beyond just your advisor can really be very helpful. Yeah, and I would say that I wish that I'd known that there were more faculty that were LGBT and first gen. They weren't very visible to me in my department but they're definitely there. And as time went on and I came to be more aware of which faculty and which peers were LGBT, it was, you know, really nice to have that point of connection that we're family, you know, and that point of connection I think helped me cultivate that sense of belonging because it's really important, you know, like Christa said it's very isolated can be very isolating in grad school. And as what I mean was saying, you know, having mentors or, you know, other points of contact besides your advisor is really helpful. So I've noticed some faculty put like safe zone stickers on their doors or you know do things like that to kind of signal, but the spectrum center has a list of faculty that are willing to be contacted for identity related issues so the spectrum center is a good resource also for finding out, you know, who are queer faculty are. Yeah, so now that we know a little bit about what you wish you'd known in your first year. Can you share what you wish you had done in your first year. Yeah, so I guess sort of similarly to what we were saying earlier, it's a big campus and there's a lot of things outside your department like advisors and other faculty and things like that. And a lot of like the resources and events just aren't advertised very well it can be sort of hard to find them. So, I, what I wish I had done was maybe be a little bit more proactive about reaching out if I need a specific resource and also don't give up if you don't find it immediately because something you might not find with one center you might be able to get from and things like that. So, yeah, my best advice would be how to all of the different mailing lists and get in touch with all of the different people and you could always like take yourself off of them later. And if you truly can't find some resource that you're interested in, it's really early in your grad school career that you have a little bit more flexibility and a little bit more time and energy to devote towards creating those spaces. Like for example there's a lot of school specific LGBT groups, but the program that I'm in Pibs it doesn't have one for some reason, and I didn't start really thinking about hey maybe we should create one until I just sort of didn't have the bandwidth for that sort of thing anymore. So definitely be thinking about what you want and what you want to see and try to develop those connections early on. Yeah, I agree agree 100% with all that definitely building that helps to really build community. And I guess like along the same lines of like you know like kind of like the self care narrative like so one is your support network and like joining organization is a very vital part of that. And I'll say like, making sure you're also taking care of yourself. So, as other panelists have mentioned you know grad school can be is very stressful and you get pulled in a million different directions from your advisor saying like you want your advisor wanting to join things from you to your coursework professors saying that they want to be doing things from you to even your friends and family wanting to be doing things from you. And there's only one of you right. And so it's very important that you, you know, like make sure you take time for yourself. Like, I really wish I had done this more in my first year, I kind of like let myself get thrown into like all these obligations and I forgot to like you know, sleep, eat and all that other stuff you know exercise. But now that's very nice, but I didn't do that my first year and it really did shake my foundations. So I really wish I, you know, like, went in with this mentality of like it's good to be present. It's good to I guess like you know like I guess be responsible and all that stuff but at the end of the day, if I don't take care of myself then I'm not going to be able to do anything great. So really self care is very important. Find a therapist to because I love my therapist. I have to echo the therapy advice. One of the first spaces that I wish I one space that I wish I would have known about my first year and I would have gotten involved with is caps has these like lunchtime programming for LGBT folks. I think it's called the concerted connections or something like that. And it's like a program where you can meet other students that identify, they don't do this only for LGBT students I've got it for like black men in academia I think is one. And anyway, caps, the, what does cap stand for counseling and psychological services I think I'll drop the link in the chat. There we go. Yeah, so I wish I would have, you know, known about that earlier. And another thing that I wish I would have done my first year is just be more assertive with sharing my ideas. I think that I was hesitant to talk to a lot of faculty in the department, but the truth is that your first year is the best year to do outreach to a lot of faculty in the department because even if you sound dumb you can always fall back on the fact that you're a first year, and also you're not going to sound dumb. So I guess my advice is that it would be great beyond your advisor beyond the professors of the classes you're taking like try to set up a 20 minute office hour session with other faculty in the department just to get to know them and to voice your ideas and what you want to do with your research, your ideas for the department, your ideas for how to cultivate LGBTQ community in the department, you know, whatever these ideas might be, you can share them out with faculty more widely than I did as a first year. Okay, thanks y'all. I appreciate that. So now that we've discussed what you wish you had done in your first year. Would you share with us the best things that helped you when you first got here. So what mean one thing we keep coming back to is just being proactive about reaching out and finding different people in different communities and when I came to Michigan I really specifically wanted to find a group for asexual individuals because I'm asexual and I sort of figure that out a little bit before grad school and I really wanted to find a community like that. And I ended up landing on this program through the spectrum center called center spaces and these are a bunch of different identity groups that's run by the spectrum center, which is the queer center I hope we said that at some point. And this was a big help for me also because they were sort of restarting the group the first year I was here after a bit of a hiatus so I've been able to help with getting that up and running. I've got a bunch of different ones. I'm, yeah, so there's spaces rock I'm going to drop a link in the chat so you could kind of get a look at them. They've got ace arrow trans non binary agenda by pan fluid by pock postdocs I think that's most of them. If you're interested in anything like that you can contact the people who run them directly. I do want to add though the spectrum center is kind of going through an overhaul they made a lot of new hires in the past year. And part of the thing I think they're going to be looking at to changing is how the center spaces run. So if you're interested in any of that I would get in contact with them sooner rather than later just so that you're in the loop with all the changes that'll be happening and things like that. So yeah, that's, that's the best thing I did my first year. Yeah, I think. Yeah, we definitely like I hit on this issue a lot I think friends community, that is like the best thing that helped me get get through first year. As far as I guess like as coming into my own my identities, though. I guess I guess this is how like I guess the pandemic in a way kind of helped me because like I wasn't really out when I first came into Michigan, definitely not in 2017 and kind of like was like a little bit tiptoeing slowly in 2020. In fact, that's when I used to join my first community, queer community here at Michigan, the ghost them graduate students out in stem. I think every like the kind of like school has like their own things so like I think law has like the outlaws or something like that, some very cool name and then like there's like business and like all the others, but and College of Engineering, it's I guess, engineering science, it's ghost them. And yeah, so like finding that community really helped me. Chris sorry mentioned that the center spaces to was a very important part of my own journey. And all things that I did not definitely didn't do my first year because like I was too scared. But really, I think it was definitely like one of the best things that happened to me so like I think joining those spaces can really help improve your experience here at Michigan. Yeah, I think this advice is all really good. I also want to drop drop a link to where you can check out if your school or department has a queer affinity group, because surprisingly, you know, more than I would expect do have affinity groups. Our question was what was the best thing you did first year. Okay, I'm going to cheat and tell something that I did second year which was, I established an LGBTQ group kind of in my department. We called it community. We called it TEA, because we would get together and have tea, and you know spill tea right. This isn't me being personable on on zoom. But it was one of the best things that I did, I think, you know, if you, if you see the space where resource could be that doesn't exist. Thank you to your director of grad studies about how to get involved in the department. So I did that through a program that my department had called grad school and beyond which was just sort of professional development programming for our department. And it was a lot of fun and through organizing this. And as a community space, we kind of came to realize that at the time about a third of our under a third of our graduate population was identifying in some way on the queer spectrum. So it was also really cool for just realizing how many more of us there were than we realized because as grad school goes on, you start to become less and less engaged, I think, unless you really make the effort to stay involved. So students that are after their students that are all but dissertation who are dissertating tend not to be around very much and they tend to be the people that have the best career advice, the best advice about faculty and so getting to know them, and particularly getting to know them through affinity groups can be really really helpful. Yeah, so I think that's one of the best thing I did during my second year. Okay, thanks y'all I appreciate that. Okay, y'all so we're now going to transition into the Q&A. But before we do, my colleague is going to place our evaluation survey in the chat and would y'all just do me a favor and open the link now so that you'll have the tab ready and waiting for you when you're done with the session. So remember that we'll move through this Q&A by keeping stack, which for those who missed it is just going down the line of those who have flagged that they have a question in order of appearance and get on stack by Can you still hear me, I know I'm frozen. Okay, great. So you can get on the stack by using the raise your hand function and then I'll call on you when it's your turn or writing stack in the chat and I'll call on you when it's your turn, or writing your question in the chat and I will ask it for you. Please remember to speak slowly so that the closed caption can capture all that you have to say, and also for those who haven't yet please change your name to the name you registered with so that we know that you're here. And again I want to remind us that we may not get to every question but we'll provide the panelists email addresses at the end of the Q&A, so that you can reach out to them personally with any unanswered questions. Let's get started. Does anybody have any questions? And as we wait actually for questions to come in, I have a question for y'all. A more general question about just like work life balance that is this struggle journey for every graduate student. As they enter this new chapter in their lives, how have y'all navigated it? What tips and tricks do you have for us? Yeah, work life balance is still something I struggle a lot with just because I like not doing grad school all the time just for my own mental health I need to take a break eventually. That's sort of something I'm continually navigating, but definitely the best advice I have is to be really proactive about your work life balance. If you want a solid separation then you need to make that clear and not compromise on that. I mean of course it's going to fluctuate where you've got some days you're going to be doing work for like 10 hours and some days you're only doing work for maybe three hours and things like that. I see a lot of people come into grad school and just start doing grad school all the time and they get super burnt out. So make sure you don't do that. Don't let your advisor push you around a lot and along those lines. And really a lot of it is very much up to you, which is also something I don't think a lot of people realize coming in. Absolutely. Yeah. And this is like something like I feel like I heard a lot, especially when I was like, even like a first year saying that like, you know, like, you know, prioritize yourself. Like I just literally, I also gave that advice earlier on in the panel, but it's hard to internalize those things. And it's, but it's really important that you do that because like your advisor is probably going to ask you to do like unreasonable things sometimes because like, you know, deadlines are coming up or I don't know what whatever, whatever is going on at the time. But at the end of a this is like where I guess like the friends in your community the support network that you build up build really comes into play, because they're going to remind you what is important in life and hit it is not research. Because, you know, yeah, the world's not going to end if you don't stay up until 5am or whatever, working on that one deadline. So yeah, I really agree with all that Christian just said just now, something that I've been employing lately is just like having like a routine. It used to be one that didn't really particularly enjoy routines like things like to be like kind of up in the air, but it helped really in my case, because like, when I was like trying to combat like unreasonable expectations. It gave me like a better avenue to kind of like, I guess, I don't know, like justify like, when I say, I'm not going to meet at this time or this time because like, I'm going to be at the gym or I'm climbing or I'm going to therapy or whatever. And so like it kind of like invites people to like I like I dare people to like try to push it back on myself self care thing, because then it makes them look like jerks. So they don't do it. So like, I've done that like a couple of times where like my, like my advisor for example would would like ask for like a meeting I said oh I'm sorry I can't do it and he's like why I'm like, I have therapy and he's like, Oh, okay. And so I can't say anything. So having like those structures like helped me, especially when I felt like I if I didn't feel like I could like stand up for myself, which by the way you should feel empowered to like be able to like, you know, like take care of yourself. So if you're like me and you're kind of you can sometimes let people like push your buttons a little can help to have like these pre structured things to say that no I can't do it because or you don't you have to justify but your calendar won't let you so yeah. Yeah, so I'm a 10th year. And so I'm an advocate for going slow in the PhD I suppose. One of the ways that I manage my work life balance is I really strictly keep myself within a work week, which is maybe why it's taking more coven and that is probably why it's taking me forever that in the job market. One of the things that I think is really helpful is to have an idea of like where your time is going. So I like to use an app called time and I to track my time. So I have so like for instance for today, I have that I taught for two hours this morning. I have that I spent 30 minutes on my email. I spent 30 minutes prepping for class and then I spent one hour doing peer support service which is what I categorize this activity as. So, once I started tracking my time I could see where my time is being taken up. So, you know, am I doing like you might have noticed there was no writing or research activity in my day today. You know, maybe that's something that I want to work on and make sure that tomorrow is a better research day, but I kind of firmly believe that tracking your time is a really valuable investment, you know, on an app like time and I you can customize it for all of the categories that make sense to you. And then it's just a matter of recording things. So, that's one of the ways that I maintain work life balance, I have to just plus one everything that Krista and mommy we're saying because those are really good ways to, to, to take care of yourself. Work life balance. I have a partner so that helps a lot with work life balance so you know, I recommend having relationships outside of academia to kind of keep you balanced. And, you know, find the things that give you a lot of joy, like if that's going to live on Thursday nights for Pride night and going to the drag show, or if that's going to North Star bar for LGBTQ bingo, you know, whatever it is, find the things that make you happy and give you joy and make sure that you center those in your life. Thanks y'all. I definitely agree with everything that's been said. I have another question for you. What is the biggest thing that surprised you about being queer at Michigan queer and grad school or queer grad student. What, what did you not expect in your journey here. Oh man that's a good question. Hmm, I guess. All right. I expected Ann Arbor to have a better queer scene. I came from I came from Washington DC so like maybe I should have tempered my expectations a little bit but while I was in DC, I play saxophone I was in a queer band that was part of the pride parade every year and we do all the local ones and stuff like that. And then I came to Ann Arbor, and we don't have a pride parade we've got pride on Saturday, actually, if you're into that. It's a lot, it's a lot smaller than the DC one for sure. And even in pride month itself, it's Lanti has ipsy pride, which is the next town over and their pride celebration is a lot better than Ann Arbor's. And when I was moving here everybody kept telling me oh yeah Ann Arbor such a cool queer friendly place. It doesn't have a ton going on even though there's a lot of queer people in town which was very surprising to me but yeah my best advice is to look outside of Ann Arbor look at ipsy look at Detroit I've never been to motor city pride I've heard it's really cool. But you might have to go a little bit out of the you know convenient campus area if you want to find a lot of really cool queer events. Yeah that's a hard question what is the biggest thing that surprised me. So like I grew up in Alabama. So, I guess like most of my I guess like whole period journey has been like mostly just like, you know, no no like, like just like hiding that part of myself. I feel like it wasn't necessarily even something that was like even like looking out for when I first came here in Ann Arbor. I was more I guess concerned about like the whole like I guess, I guess, racial situation so like that was like my main focus. I guess I mean if anything maybe the biggest thing that surprised me was like how much of a how, I guess like I kind of like thought like my identity be such like a big deal, but it wasn't here. I feel like if I like you know came out of my hometown that would have been like more of a big deal, for example, so like, I mean I guess from that perspective, maybe it probably has to do with like how many how I guess big the community is here, even though like our pride events aren't like the best. I did go to Ipsy pride a couple of times so I can confirm where Chris said that they know what they're doing. And in fact, that was my first pride event last year and I went again this year. So would recommend it in on in June. But yeah, I guess I was pleasantly surprised by how many drag events there are. There's like at least three groups that are doing drag stuff in the community. So there's, I'm going to drop in the chat. If you're into drag, Boylesque, Michigan does a lot of drag in Ipsy. And then at live, I think I mentioned this before but at live there's Pride night which frequently features LGBT events. And so, you know, just for good measure one more group that I'll drop in. I also found that the like the local community groups are really nice. So I previously I put Ipsy rainbow neighbors, and the Facebook group that I just dropped in the chat is called Ann Arbor and Ipsy non binary and trans folks. What I like about Ipsilani rainbow, maybe I should put that back in the chat again. What I really like about these groups is people ask great questions. So people will pop in and be like, I need a queer hairstylist or like somebody recently was like, you know, is there is there such a thing as a queer towing company I need to be a queer. And so like it's a great space for people to post things I need. There's been people in the community that just step up and organize parties all the time or bonfires, things like that. And so you'll find those if you're following those Facebook groups. And I'm sorry to be so Facebook centric but it seems like a lot of the organizing is on Facebook. So, so that might be worth checking out. I was pleasantly surprised by the drag scene. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Can you speak to the very natural and very inevitable circumstance of imposter syndrome that that is a right of passage for every grad student. What tips and tricks do you have with it? How have you overcome it? What tips and tricks do you have for us? Yeah, I think the main I mean I still deal with imposter syndrome, let's be honest, but the main way I deal with it is like, like you said it's a right of passage for everybody literally everyone that you talk to has imposter syndrome. It made it so much easier for me to deal with it when I realized, oh, there's postdocs in my lab that have imposter syndrome and they have they have a PhD already and I think they're so smart and things like that. My PI so the head of my lab has some imposter syndrome sometimes and being able to have these different conversations with different people who are mentors to me or just people that I look up to and respect and realizing, oh, you all are going through the same. Does anybody know what we're actually doing? It just seems like nobody knows what we're doing we're all just sort of floundering around. And that has really helped to sort of give me perspective, I guess, and realize that we're all just kind of floundering around, trying to figure it out and eventually somebody hands you your grad school degree and you just keep on the floundering. So yes, just sort of trying to talk about these things with other people and normalize it a little bit has helped a lot for me. Yeah, yes, my ghetto friend imposter syndrome. We go way back. I absolutely agree with everything that Chris said I really helps to talk to others because you're definitely not alone in this. And so I guess like speaking more from my experience. So having had been removed from my first program here at Michigan, definitely forced the imposter syndrome, because to me that was like, tangible proof that like, Oh, I definitely am not smart enough to get a PhD here because I literally was removed from my department. But so there's a couple things I guess that helps to I guess that helped me to navigate this. So one, of course, being like community support mentors, advisors, sponsors, all these people who are who will be there for you in your in not even just your highest moments, but also in your lowest moment to remind you, Hey, no, you do deserve to be here. You worked your butt off. You're smart. You're capable. So that hearing that message when you definitely don't believe it at the time can help you I guess keep going forward to help me going forward. And then that's here also like, you know, like having like, you know, like the, I guess a bunch of arm having doing things that you enjoy that is not research. I mean, if you enjoyed your research awesome, but that cannot be the only thing that you enjoy. Please don't. So like for me, it was finding like rock climbing. So it's a really good rock climbing community here. I go to planet rock. That's in in our in Ann Arbor. They also have a Madison height location that they'll drop a link. There's also Dino Detroit in Detroit. Unfortunately, all these locations you will need to need like transportation to get there, but Michigan does have a climbing club so they I think they do like carpools to planet rock. But yes, rock climbing really helped me, even with like I guess like the whole like confidence thing so like I was an am still terrified of heights, and yet I still go climbing very regularly. So doing things that scare me, and then becoming good at it. Well, I'm not going to say that I'm a very good climber month. I'm not actually a good climber, but I am better than I thought I would ever ever be. I really helped translate back to like my work in lab. Because it just gives me gets me used to doing things that you know scare me that things that like I would feel like oh I'm not that good at I see my tangible progress in that and that helps translate to like I guess other parts of my life. But yeah so like looking back now like like having like you know found like create the structure of support, having incorporated all these other activities in my life so like rock climbing going to the regular gym, I do walks. I do like, at least 2000. This year is 2023 miles this year. Doing all these things has really helped me, and then looking back at real life recognizing how far you've come also helps so make sure you appreciate your progress. And like so for me like I currently have two master's degrees and I'm about to finish a PhD and robotics about to be the first black woman to do so at Michigan so I say that is pretty cool so take that imposter syndrome. I love that advice that want me just gave and I want to just echo it a little bit find and celebrate every small thing. And when you get the revise and resubmit on your article, celebrate it, because that's not a rejection. That's a revise and resubmit that is, that is on your way to published. But really find a way to celebrate every small thing that happens, you know I I applied for a grant. I get to celebrate with a beer, you know whatever it is for you. You can find me at Ashley's in the afternoons. This is my is my like watering hole you know we live in a town where after 3pm beer is cheaper than coffee. So that's, you know something interesting. I see Catherine laughing, I appreciate that thank you. But I also want to share a story so imposter syndrome has been a big part of my time in grad school. I'm first gen so I face a lot of first gen related imposter syndrome. I experienced a lot of queer related imposter syndrome, and I had my queer card pulled by a colleague during my second year, and it devastated me. So what happened was, when I first came to campus. I was comfortable being out about my pan sexuality, but I wasn't. I didn't know I didn't feel safe to be out about having a non binary gender identity. And it took me a couple of years to feel comfortable sharing my gender identity with my colleagues and folks. So what had happened was, there was somebody in my program who had a research interest in passing. And so she knew that I was in a relationship with those with a man. And so she asked me like, you know what do you ask me something like, how do you feel about being in a straight passing relationship, something like that. And just all of a sudden was like my queer card got pulled I was like, Oh no, like, I do all of these things to try to like be part of the community and I need the community. And I just feel like such an outsider right now it made me feel so stupid. But the good thing was that it propelled me into therapy. Because I was like, I, you know, I clearly have some unresolved stuff if this is bugging me so much and so under my skin. So I went to therapy and you know had one of the things that I learned from therapy that's really valuable is that no one is an authority on you. You know, that's an important thing to remember and it helps with imposter syndrome because you spend imposter syndrome is like spending all this time thinking oh my advisor is not going to think I'm smart this that the other. You have to remember that nobody's an authority on you. You're the authority on you and what you do and what work you do is what you put out there in the world and that's all you can control you can't control what other people think. And what they think doesn't matter that much. But to so that's two pieces of advice and then my third piece of advice is, you know, remember that you have skills. This is kind of similar to what wami was saying but I sometimes pull up my CV and take a look, and just remember, here are all of the conference presentations I've been here's the service I've done, you know, I've got two masters degrees, you know, I'm this that the other, and just really taking the time out to remember that you have skills is important. But my fourth piece of advice on this topic is that you need to remember that academia is a flawed structure. It's designed and built for people that are not us, for the most part. So, academia needs to expand to fit our whole selves. And that's actually a slogan that I have written on right above my monitor on my little, I have a board where I have like little I print out the cover sheet of my publication so that I have like just this board of stuff right above my computer so that when I'm like sitting there and want to cry because writing is so hard. I can look up and say like, I wrote two articles already I did that, you know, and my slogan academia needs to expand to fit our whole selves is right up there so when I'm feeling imposter syndrome, like, dig its, you know, ugly head up in my life. That's what I do to try to. Those are my four points on how to try to deal with it. So I love that I do along the lines of like celebrating small things I found that so every month I reflect in the month and what I accomplished and these would be these would not necessarily be things that I would remember. Like at the end of the year when we reflect on the year and what you've accomplished and so they, it feels so much better to say like you know I put on this thing or I attended this or I wrote like a chapter, do you know what I mean but then like, because six months it's just like oh I've only like written like two and a half chapters but I've revised and edited and do you know what I mean, and it makes things seem much more. I can keep track of how much I have done, which is a lot more than reflecting at the end of the year and it's like, wow I've made like no progress in my, in my degree at all. What have I been doing. And so but like I have like there's three or four things that I have done every month that have not just been like academic accomplishments like they've been for me like I got better. I like, I don't know responded to this trigger in a different way and I like write that shit down and then at the end of the month like I'm like, oh my gosh look at that and then at the end of the year you have so much. You have so much to look reflect on and be like wow I actually grew this year. And these are none of these things I would have remembered. If I hadn't written them down. So that's my piece of advice. I want to ask y'all. What's it like being clear in your department. It doesn't matter. Do you tell everyone that you come across like do you feel the need to come out to have you have you transitioned while being in your department did that matter how did that, how did that. How did that experience go. Are there certain people that you knew you do need to tell your queer identity to forces others. All right, I'll get to the question but also it's so funny to me we're talking about imposter syndrome. I'm apparently the only panelist without multiple master degrees so like okay y'all. All y'all over educated for this. All right. Um, all right, being here in my department. Um, yeah, it's I'm in genetics and you would think being queer doesn't matter if you're in genetics it started mattering more and more because for some reason a lot more people are trying to study the genetics of same sex behavior. And every time there's a paper that drops about this whether I find out about it or whether I want to find out about it or not there's always someone in the department that asks my opinion on it just because I'm queer. I find that so unbelievably annoying because if you're queer you're not necessarily an expert on every queer issue and if I'm a grad student I don't necessarily want to find out about all the latest problematic research that's come out about queer people I don't think queer people need to justify their existence by saying like oh there's a gene that makes you queer or like whatever because that's definitely going to get medicalized and use for gatekeeping and weird things like that so. Yeah, it does end up mattering because there's not a ton of us that are out and those of us that are out we get asked we get asked questions like this. And I find that so unbelievably annoying. I'm really having said that I'm, I'm out, but I think really the only people that know sort of specifics about that or maybe those in my lab group. Because just everybody else does not need to know I'm a big advocate for do not come out unless you are 100% comfortable with that like. I don't care like if you need to represent queer people in your field or whatever it doesn't matter don't do it. If you don't want to. And so a lot of people know I'm queer they probably know I'm some flavor of non binary. I think though I'm probably going to have to come out in a bigger fashion because I also just got top surgeries so in a month I'm going to be back in lab and everybody's going to be like why do you look. Yeah I'm literally I'm sitting here in my fancy little compression vest I don't know if people can see the weird tag I've got. Yeah, it's a it's a process where I didn't like tell anybody specifically I was getting top surgery told him I was going out on medical leave for a month, and we're going to see what the reactions are like when I come back. Everybody's been mostly chill about my pronouns I don't think it's going to be an issue, but you never know because it's a constantly evolving thing. All right so sorry that was a lot I'm going to stop talking down. Well, yeah. Honestly, like that is incredibly frustrating being like being asked all these random things, just because you're queer and just anyways, I can go on a tangent to you so like now I vibe with that. As far as with my department goes like I, I guess I'm not really like I feel like it's like an open secret at this point like I feel like there is like a like a tiny, tiny queer community within like kind of robotics. There's not like really like a, I wouldn't say like an organization will be recently developed the organization gender gender diversity in robotics. I guess I'm one of the founding members of that. And we're kind of like held events we've like had people come over and speak about like specifically like robotics issues, especially if they intersect a lot with like I guess like their queer identities. And like, you know, like, so we can like, like, you know, promote like ethically safe, like robotics stuff, all that stuff anyways. Yeah, so I guess I don't really yeah I mean like I'm not really out but like I'm not really not out I guess. So like, if people like see that I'm on this panel like I like it. Yeah, but like I don't think like most people know, not even like my lab mates necessarily. Yeah, I'm just kind of here. I'm vibing and I honestly I think like I think this kind of goes with like what Chris was saying before like you don't have to like come out unless you absolutely want to. And like I don't see it necessarily at this necessary at this point. I think it's fine for me to exist as I do right now. I'm out to like I guess the queer community it's the way like I like to see it. Like all the queer spaces that I'm in, absolutely happy to be like my full self there. But other spaces, you know, I have enough on my mind like my black woman will leave it at that for now. You don't need to know anything else. Yeah. I think I tend to be pretty out about both my sexual and gender identity as well as my first gen identity, and part of being very out is that it helps me find friends that I share this affinity with. You know, affinity groups are really really great, but you know they rely on somebody to run them and do the work like the work Sam is doing today is really really powerful and important and I think that those spaces, let us connect to each other as a higher fam. And I guess, yeah, I'm pretty out I now I'm, I was closeted until I was 30 so I'm just not going back and I, I'm out a lot in my field I think by virtue of the research that I do and the affiliations that I have also. And really one time that I've had a regret, and it wasn't really about me even, and my regret was that on Facebook and on Twitter, I'm connected to a lot of academics, and you know people share their stories on social media. This wasn't my story, but there was a student in my department who is trans, and he shared a story about being trans while flying, basically, and it wasn't even his own story, but somehow a faculty member thought that that had been his experience of traveling while trans and like brought it up in a class and talked about it, and like outed this student and I thought that was really awful because you know that that person had gone through transition in grad school but like the newer cohorts didn't know anything about this and so, you know, the opportunity, or the right to just exist or just be stealth was kind of taken away from this student, and it really bothered me. So I guess that my one caveat on being out is that I'm a little more careful about what I post on social media, and I have some faculty blocked so that we're still connections but they can't see my stuff. So you know that might you know it's tricky it's tricky finding mentors that are that are that really get it and do good work so that's just something to be cautious about I think. Thanks y'all what it's someone asks what experience have you had medically transitioning with the health insurance that we get to. Yeah, I could take that. Um, basically, wasn't a bad experience at all. I'll drop you a link to the gender clinic here. Um, so we get pretty good health insurance in terms of gender affirming care. Um, and then I'm going to drop a second link, which is to the graduate student union, because they're currently working on expanding access to trans health care. And, you know, really, the main stuff I was annoyed with going through this process was there's a lot of hoops to jump through and it takes some time, which is going to be true of everywhere that you go. Um, but really start to finish with me getting surgery took less than a year, you've got to sign up for the gender services if they take forever to process your paperwork of course, but then you have to get in your letters of recommendation from mental health professionals and that takes a bit to process, but then you get a consultation with the surgeon, and they eventually call you when they're ready to schedule. And all of that was fairly smooth and I'm I got top surgery. I'm not a trans man I have no desire to go on testosterone nobody even asked me about stuff like that. So it's fairly smooth. And my partner went through the same thing and he is trans mask and was doing testosterone for a while also had a pretty easy time with it. I can't speak if you're transitioning male to female, but I've heard from other people that it's sort of similar experiences. But if you want to get involved in advocating for more trans health definitely get involved with the Union Geo because it's because Geo has fought for a lot of health care stuff that we have. It's the reason why it's a fairly smooth process today, and they want to expand it even more so they're doing a lot of advocacy work when it comes to trans health, if that interests you. Okay, y'all before we wrap up, I'd like to ask you to leave us with the biggest piece of advice that you'd like our audience members to hear as you as they start their new journey here. I'll go again. Okay, my biggest piece of advice might be sort of obvious I guess but like if you get the sense that your research group or your department is queer phobic, or transphobic, or just doesn't respect you don't waste your time with it. I've seen a lot of grad students sort of overlook that because they're like oh I really want to do this one piece of research and this guy's the only one who does it so I don't know I'll just do like no don't do it. Your comfort is number one it doesn't really matter what you're researching you're going to heat it in a couple years no matter what it is. So you might as well be doing it with people who actually care about you and respect you don't make yourself like grad schools hard enough don't make yourself miserable. So yeah that's my advice. Oh my gosh that's real I love that that's a great piece of advice I want to agree. My advice is towards the fellow baby gays out there I say go ahead and buy that first pride flag. If you're too scared to put it up in your home or like I guess out and about in your life that's fine do what I did put in your closet. It's fine and then it can slowly migrate out so like mine is kindly is finally outside in the living room area so it's great yeah but it's this yeah yeah I think that's my I'll leave it there. I say get involved my biggest piece of advice is find a way to be involved because it's rewarding and it makes it makes me feel whole anyway. So if your way of getting involved is taking on some undergrad research assistance, you know I've done that and it's fantastic. If your way of getting involved is attending the spectrum centers grad student mixer. That's awesome and fun. Oh, pro tip during the first week of camp of like life on campus the spectrum center has events, and they have awesome t shirts. I've gotten my t shirt my first year, but they have really cool t shirts. So, attend their event and snack one of those up. But yeah just be involved, and be good to yourself. Okay, y'all thank you this all the time we have for today. 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