Chemistry is one of the only courses I dropped. I had a hard time with it, I didn’t know why I needed it at the time, and I knew I wouldn’t do well enough in my standards. I tried for hours a night and went to get help and nothing really helped me a lot. I would have passed, but passing never has been enough for me. I wanted to conquer it and I didn’t know if that was going to ever happen.
My parents were very encouraging both of my choice to try, and of my choice to stop.
But something stuck in my brain, just like another thing from my childhood, was that: I am not good at chemistry. I am not good at math.
I remember clearly when I was in high school, thinking, I am not good at math. I was in advanced math and what not, but I remember thinking, I am Asian girl, I need to be better, and since I wasn’t, I remember shutting that door. I remember thinking, as an Asian, I should be better, but as a girl, I’m supposed to not really be and it was hard for me to think of reasons to try harder. No one ever said these things to my face, well not the girl part, but I remember distinctly when my peers have said that girls can’t do this or whatnot. And this just seemed like people accepted it. It was like a weird unsaid rule and I let it stop me. And it halted my progress from that point, even if I tried to go back, I remember just thinking, no, I’m not good at math, I will never be. I can only be okay, but I basically shouldn’t attempt it, I won’t succeed.
And it was the same with chemistry. I couldn’t think of a reason to stay, or a reason I could do it. Even with the best parents in the world, society is very strong. I couldn’t imagine doing something with science. I had never met anyone who was a female who was in science. I never met a friend of mine who was going into science. My role models at the time weren’t scientists. I just didn’t see it going anywhere for me. No one said I couldn’t do it, but it was almost as if all the whispers, all the lacks of images, all the silence told me I couldn’t and there weren’t any ways for me to combat that. I gave up on chemistry. I regret that so much now, not only because I think it would give me cool insight into the way our world works, but because I let a lot of things in my life whisper into my dreams at night that I couldn’t do it and I believed them.
I never knew how much this was the case until I started watching Bones, a forensic anthropology crime show. I was fascinated and after taking a biological anthropology course I was even more so intrigued in a way I hadn’t felt in a while. I thought, this is so interesting, I want to see more. While I never said, I want to be her. It was the first time I really identified with a character who was a female scientist. And it opened this door into my past and I really thought harder about my choices in life.
I am going to cultivate more varied interests in science and what not now, but I can never go back. I can only learn from my mistakes and never listen to those whispers again. It’s hard when things influence you without even ever being said, but it happened. And I need to always take a moment and interrogate my thoughts.
I need to see my limits and then challenge them. They don’t hold me back, only I do.