I gave a version of the following talk at a conference in aspen…feel free to share and comment…
CW: death
I
was asked to speak about where I am now and how I got here. I’m physically
writing this at home in San Antonio but now I’m physically here with you. I’m
career wise unemployed and actually, today, got rejected for the third time
from the design firm that influenced my decision to attend Wellesley, move to
Boston, and where I always saw myself working after graduation. I know all will be okay and eventually I will
get over it but, in this moment, that I’m writing this, it stings for a number
of reasons. It stings because I worked hard on my applications, it stings
because if you knew anything about this firm and me, you would think we’re a
match made in heaven; it stings because I really wanted it. However, I know it
will be okay.
I
know this because I’ve felt this exact way before and I’ve been through this
experience before. Specifically, when I applied for the Albright Fellowship
twice and was rejected both times. It hurt. I was morose, I never even got an
interview. I took that reject a marker that I would never accomplish anything,
least not my goals. I had built of this idea that Albright was this sort of
panacea that would set me up for this life I envisioned for myself. I thought
it would make accomplishing all of my stepping stone goals easier. So, you can
see why I was distraught when I wasn’t selected. Instead I ended up in Colombia
with a coffee farming co-operative. The story on how I ended up Colombia is
still surreal 8 months later and it wouldn’t have happened had I not been
rejected from 3 other student jobs over my sophomore and junior years. This story
however began, when I was young.
There
are few things from my precollege days that are vital to understanding my
approach to living. One, I’ve always loved helping people, making things/experimenting,
crafting, and designing spaces (although I didn’t know I wanted to study
architecture until my senior year of high school). Second, there are few
phrases I heard from my family like:
“1)
I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to (which backfired on parents very
soon after them instilling this in me).
2)
A closed mouth doesn’t get fed.
3)
Everything happens for a reason.
4)
The worst they/anyone can say is no.”
There are three
more phrases that I carried with me:
“You
have to be in the game to win.”
“Teamwork
makes the dream work.”
“You
have to know the rules of the game to play.”
Then there
was one lesson I began to learn really quickly in life “The rules don’t apply
and when they do, they are extremely flexible.” Each of these phrases and
lessons influenced my life and decisions.
One
final key piece of information that explains my journey is comes from the first
scholarship I ever applied for, which I applied for my junior year of high
school—before I knew where I would be or what I would major in (I had a vague
idea of what I wanted to study but what that would be labeled was to be
determined). One of the questions in the application asked something along the
lines “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”. I’m about halfway through the
timeline in that prompt and while I didn’t accomplish some of things, I
envisioned I would like graduating from Yale or having a bonfire on beaches
with friends. I did accomplish all of the academic things like conducting
research on water and agricultural remediation efforts and gaining
architectural and design skills and confidence in these skills. I also made
some wonderful friends along the way. I also accomplished things I never even
imagined like traveling to Cabo Verde, Colombia, Austria, the UK, and Germany
or presenting at conferences and getting actual spaces built on campus to
support student activities. However, when
I wrote my response I couldn’t have predicted the number of failures (or
learning lessons) or the amount of support I would receive from friends,
mentors, and professors.
When I first arrived at Wellesley I
was definitely overwhelmed and tried to adjust my expectations for myself to
reflect my new environment. I struggled immensely academically for the first
2-3 years. Anything that could have went wrong did from overloading my schedule
by taking an MIT class my first semester to my laptop failing me for an entire
semester to getting way to familiar with death, to say the least I wasn’t
having the best time. Even though each seemed to somehow get worse than the
last, I was determined to stay positive and swore each semester would be better
than the last. In some ways that was true. At the end of my first year, I
mentioned to a friend/mentor from my hometown that I was interested in doing
research and she asked me if I was applying for the SERP program and offered to
help me with my application. I had never heard of it but I looked into it and
took her up on her offer. The position I applied was exactly what I was
interested in: lead in agriculture with a possibility to do some remediation
research. I literally wrote about this in that scholarship application. I was
ecstatic when I was selected and I seriously consider majoring in geosciences
because I was so in love and realized this major was more in line with my
interests. I was pumped for sophomore
year solely because I was doing research and taking chemistry. Things felt like
they were improving, but then the semester became rocky because I was still
trying to figure out this whole second major thing and my schedule changed like
5 times during the first two weeks because one of my classes wasn’t going to
challenge me in the way I hoped. I ended
up in German but I was really behind and super confused and struggled again. On
top of that I was in a class that I had no background knowledge for but was a
requirement for my major so I was super nervous and felt unsure if I belonged
there but my advisor believed in me.
Then
there was research, the sweetest reprieve from all the problems I faced outside
of the lab. That’s not to say there weren’t problems with research, because
research is all trial and error. It’s mostly seen as failure (in the
traditional sense) but it’s really learning how the world does and doesn’t work
or connect; and to me that was exciting. The only downside was that I’ve always
been obsessed with water and I mostly focused on lead in soil. I yearned to
work on water remediation or anything related to water. I learned so much that
first year of research and I was sort of ready to branch out and lead my own
research project but I was nervous. I wasn’t sure if the project I wanted to
propose was dumb or a bad idea. I wasn’t sure how my advisor would take my
proposal or how I would actually fund it. Turns out my advisor was excited
about my project because it would provide insight on the mechanism behind on
the project I previously worked on. It also turned out that the environmental
studies department was actually starting a small grants program for students to
pursue passion projects. I wrote my first grant application and received it
after I provided some clarifications to the committee. I looked forward to
starting research in the fall and going to Cabo Verde over the summer as an
Anchor Point Technical/Engineering Fellow, especially given that my sophomore
spring ended with the loss of one my classmates, the fact that I had been
rejected from four on campus jobs I applied for at the end of the semester (I
promise this whole job thing is important), and I had been rejected from
Albright.
Traveling
to Cabo Verde and working on a water related engineering project with amazing
people at the University of Cabo Verde in PR was a truly bittersweet experience.
Working in CV pushed me in new ways, bolstered my confidence in my own work,
and shaped what I wanted to do with my life and how I wanted to do it. There were challenges in Cabo Verde from
language barriers to addressing the loss of someone I had known my entire life
to adjusting to living in a new country to general research problems (i.e. things
not working as expected). The longest I had been out of the country before this
was a week and I had only done that twice. I loved the in the field problem
solving and challenges that arose, even when that meant digging through
American and European trash to find the part needed to continue our research
project. Through this experience, I began to gain a deeper understanding and
vision of the career I wanted to create. I want it to be design and research
based, hyper collaborative between traditional academics, activists, and
everyday people (but especially young people), and I want it to focused on
systems, space making, and empowerment.
I returned to the Wellesley with a
broken hand, trauma, and relief that I hadn’t been chosen for any of the jobs I
applied the previous semester because I wouldn’t have been able to do them. I
really struggled at the beginning of my junior year from PTSD and the residual
effects from a vehicle accident which is how I ended up with a broken hand. I
needed to take a studio for my major and ended up having to drop another studio
really wanted to take too. My schedule and second major were still a mess and
but I tried to preserver through. I ended up taking a class at MIT which was
not great for my anxiety or PTSD because of the bus ride between the two but I
felt it wouldn’t get better if I didn’t push myself. This semester was
definitely not my finest hour. Academically and socially it was better, because
I was starting to get my footing but also because I moved into an amazing
community, SCOOP, at Wellesley that was there for me when my life started
falling apart. I had to put a pin in my research and any non-school work,
because I just could not do it. I could barely do my school work. Mentally and
physically I just didn’t have the energy to do anything extra. To this day I
don’t know what I would have done without the support of my co-op.
Due
to the accident, I had physical therapy for my hand every week. One of the
questions they ask you when you start physical therapy is what do you want to
be able to do at the end. I had a project that I needed to take glassblowing in
order to complete, so I said glassblowing. She swiftly informed me that she
didn’t think I would be able to do that any point this semester because it was
going to be a while before I would have that much control in my hand again. I
blindly still tried to get into glassblowing at MIT that semester. The
registration for glassblowing is intense, it’s by lottery only and you have to
be physically present to enter the lottery. There are over a hundred people who
enter each semester. I wasn’t selected. I went on with my semester and figured
I would try again next semester.
Over
January, I felt a strong sense of relief I wasn’t selected for Albright
partially because I knew I could apply again next year and, in the end, because
I spent January in Berlin where met some really amazing people in the German
department and in Germany in general.
Given
some of the challenges I had the previous semester, I was (still) optimistic
that this new semester would better than the previous one, because I was
finally, actually going to be able to conduct my own research project; but man
was I wrong. My grandmother died less than a week of me returning from Germany.
She was partially the reason I went. She always encouraged me and my sister to
travel, because she did so when she was younger. My whole world finally
crashed. Nothing seemed real. I didn’t really tell anyone what happened except
for a few people. I missed the first two weeks of class again. Every day was a
challenge, but my co-op was there for me and supported me so much again. People
welcomed me back with warm wishes and love. Professors gave me leniency, but
some people were actually still not super understanding.
I
don’t remember how, but I ended up in what was affectionally called the cruise
class at MIT. It was a field oceanography class, that took a research cruise
over spring break. I heard about the class from my TA from my fall MIT class. I
wanted to be a marine biologist or oceanographer so I took this class and, in
the end, I realized I didn’t want to be a field oceanographer because I was too
removed from people. Plus being on a boat for a week straight is a strange and
isolating experience. When I came back it was Albright application season. I
had spent the entire week trying to craft what I thought were good responses to
their questions. However, my responses (or me?) were not what they were looking
for and I was rejected again. This was the time that it really hurt, because I
knew I would never be able to apply again. I felt like a failure, even though
so many aspects of my life were turning around towards the end of this semester
and even considering that I dropped my second major entirely because I didn’t
have the energy to fight the school for my independent major.
Earlier
in the semester I mentioned to my architecture advisor that I wanted research
desert living and climate change but I didn’t know of any opportunities. She
suggested I apply for a Watson but under Watson I couldn’t research places in
the US and I really wanted to focus on indigenous communities globally. Turned out there was actually a fellowship for
architecture majors to pursue an internship or project related to architecture
and this fit the requirements. I wrote a new proposal for this project to study
how people, plants, and animals have lived in deserts and what are the
takeaways from a climate change perspective. I knew I couldn’t do anything that
summer. I needed to be home and rest physically, mentally, and emotionally. I
did reset but I also did research towards the end of the summer based off of my
project. I planned everything for the trip, which made me realize I really could
pursue this seemingly lofty career goal/plan I had.
I
never saw what was coming towards the end of that research trip. Earlier in the
previous spring semester I had sent out a survey to find likeminded people
interested in making things at Wellesley (and potentially get a makerspace at
Wellesley). At this point on campus I had also developed this reputation as the
glass blower/maker/person you reached out to when you wanted to do something creative
on campus, because I took glassblowing at MIT (so yeah, I got into the lottery
on my second try with a nearly healed hand). My advisor plugged this job
opportunity at the Weissman Foundry and I think asked me to promote it in our
makers at Wellesley Facebook group. I figured I might as well apply too,
especially considering the previous on campus jobs I applied for didn’t hire me
and honestly, this one paid more and had everything I could ever want so it
turned out to be a blessing. I was actually hired and it was the best first job
I could have asked for. Additionally, at the end of this research trip I saw
all of the connections between my summer in Cabo Verde, growing up in San
Antonio, and my love of gastronomy and plants. It all came together in a seed
library. I also knew exactly what I
wanted to explore in my Watson.
I
was actually optimistic about the semester but also a bit hesitant, since the
past 3 years started really poorly. All of my classes and research areas worked
together so well and overlapped in such a meaningful way. I was finally able to
take this MIT class that I was really excited about because it was everything
that I wanted to learned and do from an architectural standpoint. That semester
was actually perfect. I met some really pivotal people who would connect me
with people at the firm I wanted to work at. My seed library was challenging me
emotionally in unexpected ways because it caused me to embrace some painful
truths about the natural and built environment and explain them to people who
didn’t fully understand. On top of everything, I was Architecture and Design
Club president and I wanted to invite 3 key architects (Liam Young, Liz Ogbu,
and Michael Murphey) to campus to speak, 2 of which were people I had never met
but all three were influential in my approach to design. In the end I was only
able to get 2 out of the 3 to campus but I was still able to meet everyone and
have dinner with each of them. What was actually more surreal about this
semester was Liam Young happened to be teaching a class at MIT. I somehow got
off of the waitlist for this all graduate student class and was able to take
this class with this person that I so admired. The Funambulist podcast with
him, changed my perspective on everything but most importantly my work. I
listened to it while I was in Cabo Verde and it made that summer slightly
better and made excited for my lead remediation research. I had new ideas about
showcasing my work and accessibility. His class, however, was actually not
great and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped, but I enjoyed hearing him
speak and explain his thoughts which is always inspiring. The fact that this
class was my lowest point of that semester was really a high point for me.
The
best moment however came when I was at work at the Weissman Foundry and I was
planning an event for next semester. I didn’t know how to divide people into
meaningful groups to increase conversations amongst students so I went to MIT’s
dlab website to inspire me. I saw an advert for a co-design class being offered
over IAP/wintersession. I noticed the deadline had passed but figured why not
try, the worst they can say is no. I asked if it was too late but, I didn’t
receive a response so I submitted an application anyways, since the application
was still up. I should also clarify that this application said this opportunity
was only open to MIT students, but I’m not going to lie I wasn’t really sure if
that meant no Wellesley students since it wasn’t explicit and glassblowing is
also only open to MIT students but I did that too. Plus, dlab let’s Wellesley
students participate in trips. I didn’t expect anything. I applied late, I
wasn’t even an MIT student, and the decisions for the trip were coming out in 3
days. I planned to stay home and work remotely on stuff for the Foundry over
break, but my boss (and my mom) swore I was going on this trip.
This
was when things got really unbelievable. The trip organizer emailed me back. He
said he was impressed with my application and would love to have me on the trip.
We chatted over the phone, and I wanted to ensure that me being a Wellesley
student wouldn’t be a problem. Turned out it was, but then it wasn’t. This guy
that barely knew me, made a way for me to participate because he was so
impressed with my application. I was touched. My parents were nervous for me to
go because Colombia was notoriously dangerous and their fears were
confirmed/justified when a bomb went off while we were there, on our back into
the city from the farms. Other that sole negative aside, the whole experience
was life changing (which I recognize sounds a little cliché) not because
working with a community was a truly transformative experience. Rather, if I not
gone; a few things would not have happened. One, I wouldn’t have further
solidified my career goals and gained greater clarity about my life. Two, my
team’s project would not have happened and the whole program would not have changed.
I literally changed their entire course, which is still amazing because it
shows one person can truly make a difference. Let me explain.
There
were about 20ish students from MIT, Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia on this trip.
We were divided into two teams to work with two different farms. Each teams’
projects were decided by the community given time constraints and each team’s
skillset. Given my prior interest and experience with agriculture (I grew up
gardening and holistic/sustainable farming practices) and working at a zoo, I
understand ecotourism and educational outreach; so, I had a unique skill set
amongst my peers. It also meant that when Carlitos, one of the coffee
farmers/beekeepers asked if anyone knew anything about bees and beekeeping, I
was the only one who knew. I didn’t understand how that one moment would
actually change so many outcomes. I remember it being very frenzied and hectic.
It was at the end of our research session. It was so personal, because I was
the only who know anything about beekeeping so it was Carlitos, Alejandra, and
me. After listening to him I was able to propose a project which the entire
community wanted and would benefit everyone. I designed some affordable and
physically accessible beehives for two different types of bees, the traditional
commercial African bees and the native Angelita bees. Both of which I knew
about from previous research, my general interests in beekeeping, and extreme
love of food. I led this team of graduate students, designed a structure,
worked with an amazing community, and ended up being able to taste this honey
I’ve dreamt about. Now the course is switching gears to focus more on
beekeeping to meet community demands and needs.
I
go on this long tangent/backstory to say the following as many events had to
happen as many rejections had to happen in order for me to realize that while I
may have been rejected from my dream design firm 3 times, Watson, and Knafel; I
know something better is going to come. I swore I needed Albright to be
successful or that it was going to be panacea for my post grad career; that it
would shape my life in such a meaningful way and in a way it did just not the
way I was expecting. I didn’t need to participate in Albright, in fact it was
better that I didn’t, because I was rejected twice but ended up exactly where I
needed to be and in a much more meaningful place. It’s also why I’ve learned
not to stress about rejections, I know something will come. I just try my best
and work towards my ultimate career goal of starting a collaborative design and
research studio focused on creating the deepest level of collaboration between
traditional academics and communities to address systematic issues in those
communities.
