Driving me to ballet, my mom would describe how she expected the world would have mirrored "The Jetsons" by then — a futuristic utopia with breakfast at the push of a button and families buzzing around in spaceships. Stuck in traffic, we laughed. No flying cars in sight.
Still, I had my own expectations for the future. When I lost my grandpa to liver cancer at age 7, I expected cancer was a problem we would solve by the time I grew up — maybe because I had then never encountered an illness some gross cherry-flavored liquid couldn't cure, and maybe because I couldn't stand the thought of another girl losing her grandpa before her first dance recital.
My expectations haven't yet been met, but I'm not ready to give up. This Saturday, I will be joining the March for Science to show my support for scientific exploration, as it is a necessary part of creating the future we want — flying cars and cancer cures alike.
Following my grandpa's funeral, we donated the few thousand dollars collected from condolence cards to the Mayo Clinic, where he had received treatment. Naïvely, I thought our money would be the tipping point, the final financial push needed to conquer cancer. It was the only way I could justify his leaving me so soon. I imagined the brilliant scientists at work with our funding — white lab coats, curious eyes behind protective goggles, potions swirling in beakers as colored gases billowed out.
I never expected that those lifesaving scientists could look like me, a sassy, curly-haired girl from Eagan, Minn.
Fortunately, Minnesota has a well-rounded public education system that exposed me to many fields of science. I knew I was interested in biology when I found myself preferring to study photosynthesis over memorizing my lines for the musical. Ditching my Broadway dreams, I decided to study biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I started working in a cancer research lab, which led to a summer research internship at the Mayo Clinic. Having spent previous summers waitressing at the Mall of America and serving turkey drumsticks at the State Fair, I could hardly believe I was now doing research at the very institution that fought to save my grandpa's life.
Today, I am a 24-year-old Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying therapeutic resistance in skin cancers. I am one of those scientists I imagined researching cancer, white lab coat and all (no potions, though).
This is an exciting time for science, but also a scary time for science. We are making huge advances in cancer research, yet I see scientific findings being ignored and disavowed by the public and our political leaders, despite the harm this will do. My 12-year-old cousin, Kate, tells her parents she wants to be an engineer like me. I think about the proposed science funding cuts, and wonder if she'll have the same opportunities to pursue a STEM education as I have now. I hope so.
