ACT I: Meet Your Idols
Ok, so I noticed a thing about these articles: I tend to take my good sweet time getting to the point. Sometimes I feel like Albert Finney in BIG FISH, and that makes me smile, but I wanted to shake things up this month. So IMO get right to the point:
You have heard it said, “Don’t meet your idols,” right?
Ok so, dudes…There was this one time where not only did I MEET my idol, I got to work for her.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime: exciting, thrilling, harrowing, painful.
Now imo tell you up-front: I’m not naming my idol in this article for two reasons. First, it would distract from the point I am trying to make. I’m not writing this so you can google the name of a person that made me feel sad that one time. The second reason is she’s a chemist. Her name would mean nothing to you. Side note: If you ARE a chemist, please email me! I want to be your friend!
You can’t know her name, but what you should know is I was STARSTRUCK. I have not had many celebrity encounters. My top two would have to be brushing right shoulders WITH BOTH Dean Norris AND Elijah Wood - not at the same time because how would that even happen? I played it cool both times. I have been close enough to Hank Schraeder AND Frodo Baggins to high five ‘em. Not a big deal for me. But this chemist I am describing? My personal idol? Her star power was on another level. I literally relocated my life from SoCal to THE MIDWEST just to get a shot at working in her lab…
…and guess what? I got my shot.
It was a unique scenario. I played the role of employee/free labor in what can be described as a performance audition. It lasted 18 weeks. I got to know my idol up-close & personal. What’s more relevant to this article is she got to know me. We met one-on-one every week. This was in addition to weekly lab meetings, department-wide symposiums, etc etc. She monitored my progress and advised me on directions to take my project. I got to ask questions and discuss the roadblocks/successes I had encountered. It was…AH-MAIZE-ING. Her research was ill (straight-up ill) and because I worked for her, I got to do some of it!! See, she was in the business of taking an organic functional group, unreactive under most circumstances, and built her career not only on functionalizing this group, but doing so selectively. It still gives me chills.
So what happened? What went wrong? Well, in one of our weekly one-on-one meeting, my idol looked me dead in the eye and broke me with a word. She told me the truth about myself. It may be the most important thing anyone has ever said to me and I did not want to hear it. I discarded her advice out of hand. I flat-out rejected it and then I spent the next 5 years proving her right.
What did she say?
How did I prove her right?
What was my Doom Foretold?
To answer each of these inquiries in turn you are going to need a little bit of back story, so buckle up, we’re jumping to the mid-2000s for some dad lore.
I have always loved art. I have always loved science. I graduated high school in 2004 and enrolled at my local community college. I moved out into the world with a fairly normal outlook: art was cool, but science gets you a job. Entrenched in this bias, I turned to STEM for my promised future. Within the deep unfolding ocean of scientific inquiry, I found an improbable mircro-climate, a sub-biome where my love of STEM and ART intersected. I chose to major in NANOSCULPTURE and knew my life would never be the same. Nanosculpture? Yes, Nanosculpture. Don’t roll your eyes at me because I’m an Organic Chemist, biotch! I worked mostly in methods development, but I did contribute to one notable series of sculpts published in JACS 2012. Ok, and yes. We don’t typically call them sculpts. We usually call them molecules, but the real difference between the two is semantic.
Organic chemistry, as a field, operates on one simple principle: if you understand the structure (please read shape) of a molecule, then you can predict its reactivity. Taking this thought one step further, if you alter a molecule’s structure you can drastically change its behavior. This explains how pseudoephedrine, a nasal decongestant, can become methamphetamine. That’s right, without organic chemists, you wouldn’t have Breaking Bad. You're welcome.
I fell in love with organic chemistry during the fall semester of 2005. I dumped my pre-med major faster than a college freshman dumps their highschool girlfriend. My love of OChem blossomed throughout my undergrad experience and it landed me landed me in that room, with my rockstar science idol somewhere in middle America trying to earn a PhD. Now let’s get right to the heart of matters, because (and this is true) it is the heart that matters more…
Somewhere in between that sophomore organic chemistry class and graduate school, I stopped loving chemistry for chemistry’s sake. Somewhere along that road, I started believing my own hype. When you tell people that you are into chemistry, they are impressed. You tell them you like organic chemistry, they are more impressed. When they learn you are pursuing a PhD in the topic because you love it?? Anyone, shoot, EVERYONE in your life will treat you like a genius.
My abuelita used to tell me that a compliment is like perfume. It smells great, just don’t drink it. Though the praise of others can add a pleasant fragrance to your exterior, it’s best left uningested. I wish I had internalized this warning, because let me tell you, I spent my 20s guzzling other people’s perfume.
I became addicted to the accolades. In my head, acquiring a PhD was a foregone conclusion. A PhD was part of my identity, though I had yet to earn one.
I want you to imagine my shock.
Imagine my utter horror.
Imagine the blood-curdling primal scream of my egotistic inner child when MY IDOL looked across her desk and told me that, and I quote, “You realize that grad school is not for everybody,” and I should consider leaving the PhD program after a year with a masters degree.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. whatthefuck. What the actual fuck?! Didn’t she know who she was talking too???
Didn’t she know I grew up in the 90s?? Just like every other school-aged child, I was raised in a society that taught me I could be ANYTHING I wanted to be. I wanted to be a PhD Chemist. I wanted the praise to NEVER END. I would rather die than take a masters.
I revolted against her words with an internal vehemence that I have never felt before or since.
I left that program. I left that department. I transferred out of the midwest with a fire in my belly to prove her wrong. To prove I was on her level. To prove I belonged. I dreamt up fantasy after fantasy where I would return, established, praised, renown within my field & I’d show her that she was wrong about me.
I never got the opportunity because I wrapped up my graduate school career five years later…with a M.S. in Chemistry from NYU.
I failed.
I did not realize the dream. I didn’t prove my worth, or maybe I did…
As it turns out, grad school isn’t for everybody.
I defended my masters thesis to no opposition. My committee signed off without any push back - I was not PhD material after all. Everyone who praised me before still found my masters degree from New York University impressive, but their words now rang hollow.
They had all been wrong about me and she had been right.
I do not know how she saw through the cracks in my exterior. That’s a lie. I actually do because I have the same clairvoyance in my own classroom. Within the first few weeks of a semester, I know who will pass with an high grade & I know who is going to fail. It is not because I determine these outcomes. The human mind is hardwired for pattern recognition. I see which students are working, studying and progressing, I see which students are falling behind and my mind connects the dots.
She did not need to see my clinical depression, my undiagnosed ADHD, my nascent alcoholism, my need for approval or my volatile ego, to understand that my performance in the research lab was subpar. It was the kind of work that could earn a masters, but not a PhD.
And so she spoke with The Voice of an Oracle. Her words carried the weight of Doom Foretold.
My gut knew she was right from the moment she said the words and I hated it. I believed with every fiber of my being that I could only be happy if I got that PhD in Chemistry. If I had a PhD, I could look at myself in the mirror and know I was not a bum. Except I didn’t go 10 rounds in my story. Whenever I looked at my diploma, the “Joshua Tolopilo, Master of Science,” line just read, “Loser.” I couldn’t frame it, but after writing this article, I think I need to. Here’s why:
See, it would be really easy for me to wallow here. It would be sooooo easy - mostly because I spent the next 10 years of my life wallowing in a sty filled with my false hopes and failed expectations. I am not here to wallow. In fact, I am thankful for my failed doctorate. The miscarriage of this dream put me on the path to discover something richer, something deeper. Something diametrically opposed to the life I would have had.
So things turned out for the best, eh? My life is good. Things are good. Alls well that ends well, right?
Sure. Yes. True. BUT we have one loose end. I need to answer the question, “Should you, the reader, meet your idol?”
My answer is an unequivocal YES. You should.
But why?
Well, we’ve got a piece of cultural wisdom that says, “Never meet your idols.” We say this because idols often disappoint irl. They don’t live up to the pristine marbled representations we dream about. These fantasies are shattered when you encounter the real thing and so, why bother? Who needs that aggravation? On the surface, my story seems to agree with this collective wisdom, and yet here I am advocating that you should, indeed, meet your idols.
Why?
Here is why.
You will move forward into that interaction having read this article. When your idol disappoints you, you will be able to do what I did not. You will hold in juxtaposition the image you made in your mind with your idol’s real physical self. The true self will fall short. It always does, but in the distance, in the difference between real and imagined you will learn something crucial.
That is why I say to you, “Meet your idols. Meet your idols so that you can interrogate your subsequent disappointment.”
If you step back from the interaction to assess what you felt/why you felt it and if by some miracle of quantum entanglement, you can be honest with yourself, you might gain a critical insight into how you are built and where you are broken. Now, I realize that is a big, “if.” Like a gigantic if. I see it as a quantum leap, but yeah. I think you should meet your idols. Decades later, I am glad that I met mine. I think she might have been my only decent teacher.
I’ll catch ya next month on the 3rd,
-JT⚡
