182: A Story is Like a Thesis. You Gotta Make Your Point.

Allison Langer  0:15  
I'm Alison Langer.

Andrea Askowitz  0:16  
I'm Andrea Askowitz. And this is writing class radio. You'll hear true personal stories and learn how to write your own stories. Together, we produce this podcast, which is equal parts heart and art. By heart, we mean the truth in a story. By art, we mean the craft of writing, no matter what's going on in our lives. Writing class is where we tell the truth. It's where we work out our shit. There's no place in the world like writing class. And we want to bring you in. Yeah,

Allison Langer  0:47  
we do want to bring you in. Come on, bring it out. Today on our show, we bring you a story by Emma Lathrop. And in this story was originally performed on stage at the Flagstaff festival of science in October 2023. So we've had a bunch of episodes from that festival. So it definitely check them out. Episode 174 175 177 179, and 180. So you've got a lot of science coming your way. And they're not all overly sciency. They're real stories that really make you understand why these people why the scientists fell in love with science and the earth and the planet and what we can do to help so check them out. They're good. This whole science situation was a collaboration with ecos, the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University and story collider, a podcast that airs true science stories. And this whole thing came about from the brilliance of Dr. Jane Marks, who is a conservation ecologist and professor at NAU, and her husband, Bruce Hungate, who is also a doctor and scientist, and in charge of a shit ton of stuff. at NAU, Jane and Bruce have been taking classes with us for like three years or more now. And originally, they were like, Hey, can you help us write our stories, but then a year ago, they said, we really want you to help our PhD students write their stories, because we have some major stuff we would like this world to understand, and no one is paying attention. So I really feel like their stories are now getting out into the world. And people are understanding the story behind the science, so and the heart behind the science. Totally. If you've loved science and stories and everything, and you love Flagstaff or have never been you need to go because there's another Festival in September, and 2024. So if you want to come just get in touch with us, Allison at writing class radio.com. And I can give you some dates. I don't think there's firm dates yet. But we're going to be out there. And we're going to do another live show. superfine. Emma's story is about building a case. So using details as evidence to prove your point, isn't that what a science thesis is? Yeah. And I think that a personal story is similar to a science thesis, and that you have to make a case and then you have to show your evidence that builds your case until your case is made. And that's what Emma lathe rep does.

Andrea Askowitz  3:26  
You'll hear her story after the break. We're back. This is Andrea Askowitz, and you're listening to writing class radio. Up next is Emma Lathrop, telling her story.

Emma Lathrop  3:47  
I have the coolest job in the world. It's 2018. I recently graduated from college. I'm bright eyed and maybe even a little innocent. I've got a job as an intern at a national laboratory, and I'm studying climate change in the Arctic. I feel important. Each summer I traveled 3000 miles from my home in New Mexico to the remote Alaskan tundra. Here for weeks at a time, I spent 12 hour days in the field 80 miles from the nearest town of Nome, which is only accessible by plane or dog sled. I feel like a badass and a real scientist. It's three year it's my third year working on the project and I'm eight hours into another long rainy day in the field. I'm exhausted from the culmination of walking 10 miles a day over the lumpy, soggy ground and my diet of trail mix and gummy bears. My morale is low and I need a vegetable. Normally the tough conditions add to the charm of a trip like this, but this one feels different. I've been sent a loan with a male coworker who was a near stranger to me at the time. He's not my boss, but he is my senior. And he sent in charge of the science on this trip. But he's a lab scientist. And I have more experience in the field. We're alone and we're sharing a small rental unit for the week. I am 3000 miles from everybody else that I know. On the first day, we're packing our bags, and he goes, where's the DI water. I didn't bring it. He rolls his eyes and he starts walking towards our plots. I feel like a little kid in trouble. And so I chase after him. I want to explain to him that I didn't know I was in charge of bringing the DI water, but he just ignores me. As he's walking, he's far ahead of me now. And he walks past this patch of Willow shrubs, and he scares a moose and her baby out of these shrubs, and they charge at me. I panic and I yell for him, but he's too far away to hear me. Luckily, in my yelling, I've alerted the moose that I'm nearby. And they're scared of me too. And they change directions. But I am angry and I'm scared. We're supposed to stick together. And I'm supposed to feel safe here. The solace that I normally feel on the tundra quickly turns to fear. The next day, we're at a plot and he's criticizing my choice to use a map even though the project requires us to do so for safety. I'm tired of trying to make conversation with him. So I'm playing some music from a speaker in my backpack. And Mambo number five by lubega comes on. This playlist is one that I made with a previous field crew when I was having fun and when I liked my job, but it sounds so stupid now. I text my mom that things aren't going well. And she tells me to make sure that I'm locking my bedroom door at night. As the days go by, my hands start to shake with nervousness and I spill some sample and I mislabel a bottle. And he gets so angry that he turns around like he's having to restrain himself. I don't know this guy and I do not know the limits of his anger. As I follow him from plot to plot, I think to myself, if I have to scream for help, can anybody hear me? On the way home, he chooses to remind me of all of the mistakes that I've made in the field, including the DI water. He tears me down. I've never been happier to get home. This trip causes me to question my identity and my belonging in science. And I start to resent fieldwork, which is a place I used to experience so much joy. I overhear through the grapevine that he tells my boss and was just too hard to work with in the field. And so I summon bravery, and I overcome nerves and embarrassment of having to recollect this week to my management and I report the harassment. And I hear just stand up for your self next time. He's such a really him He's such a nice guy. I don't think we need to take this issue any further. For the next trip that he leads, I'm not asked to go. But my male colleague is he and I share an identical job. We have the same background, the same experience, but there is one big difference between us. He's a man. I don't want to go on the trip with somebody who harasses me. But I want to be asked and I want to have the choice to say no. I want people to believe me when I tell them what happened. And most of all, I don't want this man and his behavior to stop me from doing the science that I love. The trip happens and I'm not on it. The paper comes out in my name is not on it. As a field scientist, I am trained to observe my surroundings with hyper detail. So I start to pick up on other things that are happening around me. At another field site in the desert. My boss and I are two women in a room full of 20 or 30 men for a pre fieldwork briefing. outside this building, there are six porta potties five are blank, and one is labeled woman singular. One day in the office, a senior scientist, a guy borates my my boss in front of me, her employee, something I don't think would have happened if she were a man. One guest lecturer tells us how she learned to cuss on the job so that her male employees who she's in charge of will respect her expertise. I noticed how my male counterpart is always approached first for new work. They'll pass my desk in our shared office on their way to his Can you make me a map with my sampling coordinates, they'll say only one of us has GIS experience on her resume. But I guess the other just looks more capable. I have to fight for the opportunity to join a field campaign to be invited to a meeting or a conference, to be see seed on an email to be included in the science because I'm not automatically seen as a scientist. Do I still think that I have the coolest job in the world? Yes, I don't want anyone to take that away from me. The science that I do is critical to understanding the future of our planet and its habitability. I know each scientist is so important. And so that's why when I'm in charge, there will be a porta potty for every woman, plural. Thank you.

Allison Langer  11:14  
Do you want to go first? Oh,

Andrea Askowitz  11:16  
okay. So I am really struck by how well this narrator laid out the scenario so that I see how male dominated it is the best example, she's in the desert, there are two women and 20 to 30 men, and there are six porta potties, and only one of them is labeled woman. And that's so funny, because it just labeled woman as if there might be one woman who might need that one porta Potti. That was like a very visual way. I see it, I see that it's all men. So I thought that was really well done. The other moment where I saw that was when she says only one of us has that it was mapping skills on her resume. But the people in her office look to her male counterpart. And then she says he looks more capable. Is that a point of view violation? Or has she earned the right to kind of make that statement? Based on everything that she laid down for us?

Allison Langer  12:26  
I honestly think it's not a point of view violation because she's laid out the story so well, and that's what she's feeling. So she wasn't saying like, definitely, this is what they say. She's saying, this is probably what's going on here. In her opinion. So yeah,

Andrea Askowitz  12:41  
exactly. I'm not automatically seen as a scientist. I'm starting at the end, but that line, right, that was her exactly what you just said like she she she earned the right to say that. And then I love the ending because it's triumphant. She's looking forward to when she's going to be in charge. And then she brings back the Porta Potty thing, which, obviously lega people remember, and she's going to have porta potties for every woman. Polar all

Allison Langer  13:13  
Yeah. Now, I think it's amazing, because we know she's not going to leave. Because she's showing us when she gets there not if but when this is what she's going to do. And like Yeah, amazing. And I'm sure she'll treat everybody the same based on ability and not gender.

Andrea Askowitz  13:31  
I did get the sense though, for a bit that she might leave, click when she texts her mom. She's in the field, and she texted her mom, this was another moment that I thought she did so well. And her mom says, make sure you lock your door at night. Oh my god, like, that was so cool. Because she wasn't saying this guy's creepy and I'm scared. He she was just suggesting that it's possible that this guy could be dangerous in the night. And I thought that was very, very good. It wasn't an accusation. It was like secondhand. Yeah, but

Allison Langer  14:06  
if it's apparent that he has such little respect for the woman for her job for her whole thing she's like, then maybe he has no respect for her body,

Andrea Askowitz  14:15  
either. Yeah, but it was the mother who suggested it. Yeah, it was. That's what I mean. It was like off site. Yeah. So can we

Allison Langer  14:23  
just talk about her skills of like telling the story on the stage, like she lands every sentence like every paragraph just sounds so good. She paced it so well. I feel like a badass like, I just loved her. I don't know I need to double. Yeah, I love that. I felt her humility, but also Yeah, she just seemed like very capable. And it didn't seem like a rant or whiny in my opinion. I mean, we're two women, so maybe a male point of view would be different. I love her and I loved her Tori. It's really interesting to hear what it feels like. And I'm sure it's not just in science. It's probably many, many fields. Exactly.

Andrea Askowitz  15:07  
Yep. But in this case, it's especially like she shows us how it's so physically grueling. And then here she is out there. 10 hours or 12 hour days in the field, like want walking 10 miles. I wanted to note the way her language was so casual, because it was spoken out loud. She used he goes, Yeah, I

Allison Langer  15:33  
saw that. Yeah, I heard it. Oh, you did? I did.

Andrea Askowitz  15:35  
I love to

Allison Langer  15:37  
know. Yeah.

Andrea Askowitz  15:39  
I'm so obsessed with like he said, she said, you're only allowed to say he said, she said, there's an example right here where I'm like, no, no, I am wrong.

Allison Langer  15:47  
Like, allowed.

Andrea Askowitz  15:49  
Yeah, but even on the page, like if, if you're all and then he goes or she's all shut up. Like you know, there are other speaking tags. And this one just came out so naturally imperfect with he goes, God, that was good. She also gave great evidence when she reported the harassment and then basically no one it takes her seriously. The three things she hears, like, stick up for yourself next time really hit me so nice, like, Oh, my God. Fucking house. I was great. Yeah, well, that wasn't actually him being an asshole. It was her supervisors, just brushing her off because, again, it's such a male dominated world that maybe no one has even mentioned the possibility of there being harassment out in the field ever before. Yeah. Excellent, excellent story.

Allison Langer  16:39  
So let me give you guys a little background into Emma. She's a PhD student and NAU in the center for Ecosystem Science and Society. Her research focuses on understanding how susceptible carbon in deep soil is to decomposition and emission to the atmosphere as greenhouse gas. Woof. So thank you guys for listening. Oh, and thank you, Emma for sharing your story as well. But this collaboration we did was with ecos at NAU story collider, and Bruce Hungate. And Jane marks from NAU to bring stories to the mainstream science stories. So if you guys want to hear more science stories, check out story collider podcast, and I think this is the last one from the festival.

Andrea Askowitz  17:24  
I think it is to I think it's a last in our series and it was the last of the night. This was our closer, y'all. Boom, Emma, boom, she landed it.

Allison Langer  17:36  
But we will have more coming up soon. Maybe in six months or so because we are working with a new batch of scientists at NAU we will have some stories for you for sure.

So writing class radio is hosted by me house and Langer and me Andrea ASCO. Its audio production is by Matt Cundill Evan Surminski, Aidan Glassey at the Sound Off Media Company. The music is by Justina Shandler. There's more writing class on our website, including stories we study editing resources, video classes, writing retreats, and live online classes. There is absolutely no reason why you can't be an amazing writer with all these free resources. And if you want to write with us every week, or if you're a business owner, community activist group that needs healing entrepreneur, scientist or if you want to help your team write better check out all the classes we offer on our website, writing class radio.com join our community, we come together for instruction and excuse to write and the support from other writers. To learn more, go to our website or patreon.com/writing class radio, a new episode will drop every other Wednesday. There's

Andrea Askowitz  18:55  
no better way to understand ourselves and each other than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story. What's yours

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  19:09  
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