I’ve been thinking about many types of minorities and how that is interpreted and seen by the wider group of people. What exactly does it mean to be a minority? White, upperclass, privileged female and yet I still feel like the odd one. The one that doesn’t make sense. Being a woman may have to do with that but in my mind that is little of what it is about. Over my many years in the STEM fields I have become very accustomed to being the only female in a room and I don’t think I even fully identified myself as a “woman” until I went to college. I knew I was a female person but being a woman I find is a very different thing. It was only once I started being treated as a woman that I began to think about what that might mean and how that could impact me. it was like this thing that others just started to see in a moment and then I was one. A lot of this probably has to do with the sexual aspect of being a woman - being hit on, catcalled, treated as this odd entity that needs to be flattered. That I wasn’t used to and I wasn’t used to having another role to men. Going out for drinks would always have another connotation of what else he or I wanted and could never just be drinks. Or if it was that certainly had to be clarified at some point. And at first it was quite an offensive awakening. I wanted to hide my body. It was definitely unwanted attention but it also felt unwarranted - there was nothing I did to cause it so there was nothing I could do to stop it. But even before I was a woman, I felt out of place. It was only the moments of hanging around a campfire on the beach with my friends in high school on a Friday with people jumping over the fire, dancing, wandering into the water, that I felt equalized. Maybe it was partially the fact that it was at night, the stars were out, the fire was warm, but I didn’t feel like I was being judged. I didn’t feel stupid. You could just sit there and listen to everyone talk and just let it wash over you. I often try to get back to those moments in any place I can. It’s this feeling of feeling I am being watched, not in a creepy way, but people notice me and I am not able to hide myself. We all are a minority in one way or another or at least I find myself aligning with other people that share my background. Minorities come together and I found myself aligning myself with other that had been abused. It was something that I hadn’t even realized for the first 17 years of my life. I remember having a conversation with my friend at lunch - “I think I was abused” I didn’t even know if it was a fact or not. But I just had a feeling, I came to a moment when I realized that how I feel at home - scared - was not normal. Others weren’t feeling this way and there would have been no way for me to know before that. No one could have told me and even once I realized it I had constant moments of questioning myself - wondering if I was crazy or being dramatic. Even still I have moments of not being sure of my right to feel certain ways. While I’d had no idea, all my friends were telling me - not because they ever said anything - but the very groups I had aligned myself with was such a telling sign of what I was. And that’s one of those things that you just can’t isolate on a form. There is no box to check. So what is minority and how to we define it? How do we find it? How do we bring these people up in the world, give them a chance and convince them over and over again: you deserve this. You deserve to be here and you can do it. You may be a minority in this way but that just can’t be the thing that stops you. It just can’t. It’s all wrong. Imposters syndrome was something that interested me - there was a group of people that would know what it was and when they tell you it just shoots straight into your soul: you know my thoughts, my feelings, my fears that everyone can see me. I’ve had a couple of those encounters where I just felt my heart stop. There’s no way to fully explain that feeling - you feel like you are being pulled open. The idea that other people are wandering around me feeling this same way was incredibly validating and comforting. So what can we do at this point? Just ask people “are you a minority?” and see what they say, see how they identify themselves. I’m at a moment in my life where I have somehow squeezed myself into a space where I have a future, I have a careers, I have a wonderful group of friends and a great community but I am not entirely sure how I got here. I think of this as my second life. There were many times in my childhood where I thought that there just wouldn’t be anything after 25 - I couldn’t imagine living that long and I didn’t know would possibly get me there. I had zero confidence but yet with every project I worked on, everything I created I got shining endorsements. My teachers and bosses were shocked by something about how I worked, what I did. It was something that they nor I ever really understood but now I think it was a fight inside of me. A desperation that knew that I had to do it and I had to do it well. There were just no other options and I cared more than anyone else would. My dad tells me now that I have so much strength, passion and drive and how my childhood must have prepared me for that. And it’s probably true - I took those moments and experience and I hardened myself and I knew I had to always be fighting. At the same time I never thought it would be possible but I just knew I had to do it. I am the same way with my relationships. I’ve had so many friends that have told me that they’ve told me more things than anyone else in their lives, that I know them better than anyone else. When I went to camp over the summers in middle school I would be the person that would confront someone - “what are you doing? Are you okay? What is going on for you now?” I think it was because I wanted to take their pain, I wanted to feel something with them instead of feeling it alone. I wanted to have someone to share it with. And then at the end of high school my life took a turn and I just literally thought it was all over. I convinced myself that I would go home and ____ and that would be it. My mom took me home and made my sister watch me - I hadn’t said anything to her and there was no way she could have known but somehow she did. And so I got through the next day and then the next. And life went on. For a while it got a lot worse - I threw my body away, I drank every night and I was wishing it would all just end on it’s own. But it didn’t and at some point I was ready to try again. I can’t really isolate what that moment was but I was ready to not have my life any more - I wanted a different one and I couldn’t convince myself that I deserved it but I was going to abuse the system and get what I wanted. And that’s what I did. I said “I don’t care - I will take what I need” and I was able to get it. We have to remember that after all this, as a minority you need to grab things whether or not they are being given to you. At least that’s the only way I could figure it out. And now I am here, seemingly with everything figured out. And I don’t feel like that other girl any more. She’s just not me and I don’t live in her mind any more. At times I can remember what it felt like and it’s as if my brain is being squeezed into this dark and constricting space - I can’t see or breathe and everything is blurry. But at the end of the day, does any of that even matter? No one else knows my past here and they don’t know who I was so while I can focus on my past, it doesn’t define me. I know that it made me who I am and enabled me to be the person I am now but I don’t see that as the point. We’ll all have hardships - that’s guaranteed - but at the end of the day I need to know that I am here because of me.