Dispatch from a Baylor Summer Fellow | Lucy Lu

The first group meeting I ever participated in, my principal investor, Dr. Tucker, had everyone go around and introduce themselves. One after another, upperclassmen, grad students, and postdocs gave a brief statement about their research topic, saying things like ‘quaternary high entropy alloys’ and ‘modified embedded atom method.’ I had never felt more like a child. At half the average age of that room and not even two semesters of introductory physics under my belt, I felt like they were indulging me as they nodded along with my stumbling introduction. 

I understood maybe half of what was said at that meeting (being generous with my definition of ‘understanding’). I took desperate notes of every term I didn’t know to google later. They were clearly experts at an unattainable level, scientific jargon flowing back and forth as naturally as everyday vernacular. I clearly didn’t belong. 

It went on like this for a couple weeks as I was just feeling out the tools of the work—running the simplest of atomistic simulations, writing baby python scripts to plot my data, making sure I didn’t render the university cluster non-functional trying to ssh in, that kind of thing. I felt embarrassed at my inexperience, so embarrassed that I didn’t even entertain the prospect of asking for help. 

However, I was practically forced to; I had hit a wall with my test program, and I knew another undergrad in the lab had experience with the issue I was having. I very nervously and overly politely asked for his help, and we ended up talking about it for hours because he didn’t know how to fix it either. 

That was the catalyst. I began interacting more with the other members of my lab, asking questions and making small talk. The more I got to know them, the more they shared about their lives, the more I realized we were in the same boat. We all didn’t know half of what was going on during group meetings. We hated when the senior post doc asked us probing questions about our work. We all shared some of the same struggles. 

They never saw me as some childish interloper because they had all started where I was: a beginner eager to learn. 

Research has taught me about myself, and in turn how to work with others. I learned that my self doubt and self imposed place on the hierarchy was stopping me from collaborating to the extent required to flourish. I learned to assume the best in people and to let them assume the best in me. 

I think the world would be a better place if we allowed ourselves that assumption more often.