I Was A Science Professor Who Worked At NASA. I Feared My Secret Second Life Would Unravel It All. |
Every Saturday night, I slipped into a sequined bra and booty shorts to hang suspended from a trapeze above the dance floor of a packed-out, 20,000 square ft., iconic nightclub on Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles.
Then, every Monday, I went to work and hid my thrilling side hustle from the college students I taught. I wanted them to get excited about science without transferring their passions onto me.
I hated breaking myself in two. I craved sensuality and intellect, playfulness and thoughtfulness, fun and legitimacy — I didn’t want to choose. But like many women, I felt forced to decide.
Brains or beauty. Never both.
I’d felt this same anxiety about my conflicting sides in graduate school and throughout my professional career in the sciences, where prudishness was the norm and sexiness taboo. At university, I wanted to sing about whale migration and party on every fieldwork expedition, but the academic community equated sensuality with a lack of legitimacy, and my parents, teachers, and other authority figures labeled sexy girls as “bimbos.”
Looking back, I wonder if my spirited demeanor was the reason I didn’t thrive as well as students who quietly turned in their assignments. Was the system set up to reject people like me?
Years later, I still struggled to be whole.
The author interacting with oceanography students.
I wanted to connect with students while preserving a healthy distance, to stay accessible and maintain control over the class at the same time. But a lack of respect for teachers and a disregard for teaching as a profession had increased in the United States, so I expounded on plate tectonics and ocean currents in buttoned-up shirts over slacks. I hoped that my matronly professor uniform would buy me some weight, but clothes couldn’t hide my true self. I was the fun teacher, the sassy teacher, the teacher who cussed, and my students ended up liking me for all the wrong reasons anyway.
After decades in the classroom, I’d discovered that students became engaged with the course material if I gave them the chance to express themselves first. Listening to them helped create a bond, and students were more inclined to learn. I asked personal questions: “What are you into? What do you do after class? What do you tell your friends?” These get-real sessions increased attendance, especially with freshmen, who were one step removed from needing a permission slip just to pee.
The students said that they couldn’t see themselves in the rigid stereotype of what scientists were supposed to be: evil bad guys or nerds who never got laid. They believed scientists were “boring people who isolated themselves in their labs, only wore white lab coats, and had no social life.” They said that to them, the experts in science videos “look fake, unrealistic and out of reach.” They hated being talked down to, wanted interaction and to be treated as adults.
The author in costume ready to........