Lastly: the women in STEM organizations Anh mentions in the book are fictionalized, but most universities host chapters of similar organizations. For real-life resources on supporting women academics in STEM, visit awis.org. For resources that specifically support BIPOC women academics in STEM, visit sswoc.org.
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Acknowledgments
First, just allow me to say: asgfgsfasdgfadg. I cannot believe this book exists. Truly, afgjsdfafksjfadg.
Second, allow me to further say: this book would not exist if approximately two hundred people hadn’t held my hand for the past two years. *Cue end credits song.* In a very disorganized order, I must acknowledge:
Thao Le, my marvelous agent (your DM changed my life, for the very best); Sarah Blumenstock, my fantastic editor (who is not that kind of editor); Rebecca and Alannah, my very first betas (and shout-out to Alannah for the title!); my gremlins, for being gremalicious and for always defending the c.p.; Daddy Lucy and Jen (thank you for all the reads and the SM and the infinite hand-holding), Claire, Court, Julie, Katie, Kat, Kelly, Margaret, and my wife, Sabine (ALIMONE!) (as well as Jess, Shep, and Trix, my honorary grems). My Words Are Hard buds, for the whining support: Celia, Kate, Sarah, and Victoria. My TMers, who believed in me from the start: Court, Dani, Christy, Kate, Mar, Marie, and Rachelle; Caitie, for being the first IRL person who made me feel like I could talk about all of this; Margo Lipschultz and Jennie Conway, for the precious feedback on early drafts; Frankie, for the timeliest of prompts; Psi, for inspiring me with her beautiful writing; the Berkletes, for the pooping and the knotting; Sharon Ibbotson, for the invaluable editorial input and encouragement; Stephanie, Jordan, Lindsey Merril, and Kat, for beta reading my manuscript and helping me fix it; Lilith, for the stunning art and the amazing cover, as well as the peeps at Penguin Creative; Bridget O’Toole and Jessica Brock for helping me make people think that they might want to read this book; everyone at Berkley who has helped getting this manuscript in shape behind the scenes; Rian Johnson, for doing The Thing that inspired me to do All The Things.
The truth is, I never saw myself as someone who’d ever write anything but science articles. And I probably never would have if it hadn’t been for all the fanfiction authors who posted amazing pieces online and encouraged me to start writing myself. And I certainly wouldn’t have had the guts to start writing original fiction if it hadn’t been for the support, the cheering, the encouragement, the con-crit I got from the Star Trek and Star Wars/Reylo fandoms. To everyone who has left a comment or kudos on my fics, who has given me shout-outs on social media, who has reached out in DMs, who has drawn art for me or made a mood board, who has cheered me on, who has taken the time to read something I’ve written: thank you. Really, thank you so much. I owe you a lot.
Last, and let’s be real, also definitely least: some half-hearted thanks to Stefan, for all the love and the patience. You better not be reading this, you pretentious hipster.
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“By the way, you can get leprosy from armadillos.”
I peel my nose away from the airplane window and glance at Rocío, my research assistant. “Really?”
“Yep. They got it from humans millennia ago, and now they’re giving it back to us.” She shrugs. “Revenge and cold dishes and all that.”
I scrutinize her beautiful face for hints that she’s lying. Her large dark eyes, heavily rimmed with eyeliner, are inscrutable. Her hair is so Vantablack, it absorbs 99 percent of visible light. Her mouth is full, curved downward in its typical pout.
Nope. I got nothing. “Is this for real?”
“Would I ever lie to you?”
“Last week you swore to me that Stephen King was writing a Winnie-the-Pooh spin-off.” And I believed her. Like I believed that Lady Gaga is a known satanist, or that badminton racquets are made from human bones and intestines. Chaotic goth misanthropy and creepy deadpan sarcasm are her brand, and I should know better than to take her seriously. Problem is, every once in a while she’ll throw in a crazy-sounding story that upon further inspection (i.e., a Google search) is revealed to be true. For instance, did you know that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was inspired by a true story? Before Rocío, I didn’t. And I slept significantly better.
“Don’t believe me, then.” She shrugs, going back to her grad school admission prep book. “Go pet the leper armadillos and die.”
She’s such a weirdo. I adore her.
“Hey, you sure you’re going to be fine, away from Alex for the next few months?” I feel a little guilty for taking her away from her boyfriend. When I was twenty-two, if someone had asked me to be apart from Tim for months, I’d have walked into the sea. Then again, hindsight has proven beyond doubt that I was a complete idiot, and Rocío seems pretty enthused for the opportunity. She plans to apply to Johns Hopkins’s neuro program in the fall, and the NASA line on her CV won’t hurt. She even hugged me when I invited her to come along—a moment of weakness I’m sure she deeply regrets.
“Fine? Are you kidding?” She looks at me like I’m insane. “Three months in Texas, do you know how many times I’ll get to see La Llorona?”
“La . . . what?”
She rolls her eyes and pops in her AirPods. “You really know nothing about famed feminist ghosts.”
I bite back a smile and turn back to the window. In 1905, Dr. Curie decided to invest her Nobel Prize money into hiring her first research assistant. I wonder if she, too, ended up working with a mildly terrifying, Cthulhu-worshipping emo girl. I stare at the clouds until I’m bored, and then I take my phone out of my pocket and connect to the complimentary in-flight Wi-Fi. I glance at Rocío, making sure that she’s not paying attention to me, and angle my screen away.
I’m not a very secretive person, mostly out of laziness: I refuse to take on the cognitive labor of tracking lies and omissions. I do, however, have one secret. One single piece of information that I’ve never shared with anyone—not even my sister. Don’t get me wrong, I trust Reike with my life, but I also know her well enough to picture the scene: she is wearing a flowy sundress and flirting with a Scottish shepherd she met in a trattoria on the Amalfi Coast. They decide to do the shrooms they just purchased from a Belarusian farmer, and mid-trip she accidentally blurts out the one thing she’s been expressly forbidden to repeat: her twin sister, Bee, runs one of the most popular and controversial accounts on Academic Twitter. The Scottish shepherd’s cousin is a closeted men’s rights activist who sends me a dead possum in the mail and rats me out to his insane friends, and I get fired.
No, thank you. I love my job (and possums) too much for this.
I created @WhatWouldMarieDo during my first semester of grad school. I was teaching a neuroanatomy class and decided to give my students an anonymous mid-semester survey to ask for honest feedback on how to improve the course. What I got was . . . not that. I was told that my lectures would be more interesting if I delivered them naked. That I should gain some weight, get a boob job, stop dying my hair “unnatural colors,” get rid of my piercings. I was even given a phone number to call if I was “ever in the mood for a ten-inch dick.” (Yeah, right.)
