Asking for Help: Stories about needing assistance
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week we present two stories from people who didn’t ask for help until it was too late.
Part 1: Determined to fit in as a PhD student, Aparna Agarwal decides she'll never ask for help -- even if it means fitting in to much smaller gloves.
Part 2: On a snorkeling trip of his dreams, Jesse Hildebrand doesn’t want to admit he has no idea what he’s doing.
Aparna Agarwal is a graduate student in Dr. Deepa Agashe’s lab at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India, by day, and a random thoughts compiler whenever inspiration strikes her. Currently, she is trying to understand adaptation and the role of microbes in that process using the red flour beetle. She is, on an average day, clueless but curious and trying to find answers. In that quest, she loves to travel in person, as well as through the magic of books, articles, blogs, conversations and in general, stories. She enjoys using these stories to help her share and build her science.
Jesse Hildebrand is the VP of Education for Exploring By The Seat of Your Pants, a digital education non-profit that connects scientists and explorers with kids (http://www.exploringbytheseat.com/). He's also the founder of Canada's Science Literacy Week (http://www.scienceliteracy.ca/) and a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (http://www.rcgs.org/). Jesse suffers from an excess of personality, watches too many Blue Jays games for his own good, and can enter into a spirited debate on the merits of the Marvel films.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:06.0 | I felt... |
| 0:07.0 | I felt right. |
| 0:08.0 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:12.0 | Because science was on my side. Hey everybody, welcome to the Story Collider, where we present true personal stories about science. I am your host, Liz Neely, and I'm running solo this week without the calming presence of our one and only Aaron Barker, |
| 0:39.9 | so please brace yourselves. |
| 0:43.1 | And of course, this would be the week that we're presenting stories about the very particular struggles we face |
| 0:49.6 | when we try to figure out or fix something all alone. |
| 0:54.1 | Welcome to our episode on asking for help. |
| 0:58.1 | Erin and I had been joking last week that we'd been eerily ahead of the curve in planning |
| 1:03.0 | our upcoming episodes and yep, here we are again. Hopefully, Aaron is on the mend and we'll |
| 1:08.8 | be back soon. She just needed a break from recording, |
| 1:11.9 | and that's what I'm here for. And fortunately, after being co-directors of the Story Collider for five |
| 1:18.5 | years, we have much better communication skills and are better at asking each other for help. |
| 1:25.2 | In fact, Erin is so good at figuring out when I need help that she will |
| 1:30.9 | occasionally override my stubborn insistence that I am absolutely fine. And this is how I once |
| 1:38.0 | ended up with an entire palette of Doritos from her during a particularly stressful period. No, this is not sponsored content. Yes, |
| 1:48.3 | Doritos are my comfort food. No, I'm not proud of that. But this is what I love about help, right? |
| 1:57.6 | You never know what form it might take and how much you need it and how much you needed it right then. |
| 2:04.7 | And thinking about it actually makes me feel better when I start worrying about how I'm going to take care of everyone, when it feels like everything is just falling apart. |
... |
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