What It’s Like…being Black in STEM in 2023: Chapter 1, The MCAT Saga

TW: Descriptions of Depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation

“And at some point, it was 7pm. I dropped off the flow antibodies in the cold room and walked into lab to dump the slushy ice down the sink. I placed the bucket down and like gravity had taken over in the horizontal plane, I found myself walking around the lab till I ended back at my desk. I was finally alone. So I stopped holding my breath and I let it all out. I let myself feel the pain and it was the hardest thing I have ever done. And sometimes I regret it you know. I regret letting myself be in pain, torturing myself for people that within a year or so, may not matter anymore, and burning away at the branches of the people who loved me (and for people I foolishly believed ever loved me). What haunts me now, is when I look back at that time, it was just…it was just so easy slipping into that place. The coldness, the brokenness. I’m a girl who is compassionate frankly to a homicidal level, the victim of this crime being myself. Suicide was never going to be an option, not even that would’ve freed me—that was the worst part of it all.”

Two years ago, I did a follow up blog post about how I felt about being Black in STEM. I went back to read that post, and as I found myself reflecting on what my life has been like over the past two years, I closed my laptop so I would not cover my keyboard with my tears. Because parts of my perspectives and experiences over the past two years have brought me back to the disillusionment and confusion I felt when I first began this blog four years ago. Because I came very close from giving up on my dreams of becoming a doctor this year.  Because I have made sure that no one sees the titles of my Spotify playlists, the few places where I was able to type out the feelings of anger, rage and heartbreak I have felt over the past two years without any censors.

So let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about what it’s like being Black in STEM in 2023. And from the short excerpt you read at the beginning of this, it has surely been… a lot. 

And if this blog post in particularly feels a little more jumbled and less anecdotal, as I am likely leaning into my more “creative” writing style for this, frankly, it is because I am not in a position in my career where I will able to express everything that has happened to me. Like many others who have shared their experiences about being #BlackintheIvory since 2020, the experiences we share online, the experiences and feelings I am sharing, are the ones I feel safe enough to share. The ones that I don’t feel safe enough to share, despite being the most defining of the feelings that have plagued me over the past year, the full stories will be shared in due time. But the lessons and feelings behind those experiences are the most defining parts of them and those are the things that I hold onto the most; and what I hope to use to educate people so that no one ever has to feel the way I have felt over the past year.

Finally, compared to other years where it has been one large singular post, I am going to publish multiple parts to this series. As I started writing this blog almost a month ago, I’ve had to take a lot of pauses to edit, be very cautious with my words for obvious sakes, but honestly to ensure that I was in the right mental space to express these feelings and what I was going through. Because when all of these stories were happening, my world was crumbling. I felt like I had no control of reality and my life, continuously felt gaslighted, and experienced a profound grief and fear of what my life had become.

The wounds are still fresh, but they at least have scarred over. So, let’s talk about the scars. One by one.  

PART 1: The MCAT Saga

 The last time I posted a blog post on here was when I was studying for the MCAT. The MCAT is one of the hardest things I have studied for and even though at the end of the process, it certainly did not turn out how I wanted it or imagined, I am proud of myself for sticking through it. Studying and trying to rememorize essentially 4+ years of science and math material is already a difficult task. Trying to apply that vast amount of knowledge and answer questions that are written in a way that makes you rethink everything you know adds another level of difficulty. The greatest level of difficulty in studying for the MCAT: the comments from peanut gallery of people who can most likely understand the difficult of the task you are trying to accomplish, while also making you wish you never told anyone and kept your mouth shut about how hard things were.

Let’s contextualize this:  

            The 3am phone calls with my mom, her kind but unhelpful attempts to comfort me through the constantly failures and roadblocks I was hitting while studying. Her hopefulness and belief in me, despite not truly understanding how much I was failing and that I was not being overly harsh on myself. But in fact, I was not doing well and in a very difficult spot. I wanted to come home, I wanted ocra stew and peanut butter soup. I wanted to collapse onto the grey carpet of our Chicago apartment and cry into the blanket she used to wrap and carry me around in until I was five years old. But to be a doctor, was to make scarifies: including not going back home for over a year, and spending thanksgiving, Christmas and new year’s alone in my bedroom trying to study for an exam, like all standardized tests, that is more defined by your income than your actual intelligence. And when that test started giving you severe panic attacks that my apple watch indicated I was in a “loud environment” from my crying and screaming, and questioned if I was working out because my heart would start beating so fast, I would collapse to the ground trying to find my breath, you really begin to question is this all worth it.

            So you turn to the people who would understand, alongside the new three anti-anxiety medications my doctor now had to put me on so I could functional normally and sleep again.  The academics. Academics who were former pre-meds or never pre-meds but have a better understanding of what you were going through. You look to your peers for support, expressing your feelings. But oh, was that a mistake.

            Academia makes us all nihilistic. I’m not ignorant of that fact. I’m a Black, First-Generation, Low-Income student trying to work in a field that has and continues to exclude people like me. So trust me, I understand and experience nihilism to a degree that, sorry not sorry, many of my peers frankly do not. But I push forward, I fight against it. Because I will only turn away from academia when I realize that it is not the path for me or it is something I don’t enjoy, not because Jennifer, or Andrew, or Jackie tells me I’m not good enough. So, with the people that are my “peers”, I share my feelings, I share what I’ve been going through. I don’t know what I expected the response to be or what I wanted the response to be. Maybe a little—okay maybe more than a little—sympathy and kindness, maybe some advice that I can hold onto in a metaphorical locket that will push me to get through this.

            But academia makes us all nihilistic, and it was frankly stupid of me to even assume I’d get any of that. Instead, the comments of “I don’t hate myself enough to do what your doing”, “yeah I would’ve given up a long time ago”, “good luck I guess”, “yeah it sucks”, etc etc you get the point.            

            Thanks guys, really fucking helpful. 

            To be fair, I did have some people in my life who weren’t always like this, and those people know who they are, and I truly thank you for pushing me, helping me see the light, giving me a safe space to vent and cry, sometimes a couch to sleep on, and getting me to this current stage of my life. I love you dearly and cannot emphasize how grateful I am to you.

            But you can’t help but think about those other comments, especially when they’re coming from people you work with, sit at lunch with, ask for advice and help on experiments, and feel frustrated. But more so, feel isolated, especially when you came to those people because you already were feeling that way.

            So a lesson to academics, when you have someone expressing their frustration about a difficult thing like the MCAT, especially when it’s your most junior member of your working group and they happen to be a URM, maybe shove the nihilism down for a bit. In fact, try to do that to anyone, URM or non URM, Junior or senior. Because we are all going through hell in this cultural landscape, so a little bit of kindness goes a long way. Much more than you may realize.