Fitting In: Stories about belonging
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week’s episode both our storytellers struggle to find their place.
Part 1: Heather Galindo studies her lab mates in hopes of understanding what it means to be a scientist.
Part 2: When Rob Ulrich leaves their small town to study science, they keep waiting to feel like they belong somewhere.
Heather Galindo has long combined her loves for marine science and storytelling by earning college degrees in both Oceanography and English Literature, plus working at a science communication non-profit organization for five years. While earning her PhD at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, she also spent a lot of time alone in the field talking to barnacles. As an Associate Teaching Professor in STEM at the University of Washington Bothell, she currently teaches courses in marine biology, evolution, environmental science, and scientific writing. Other than marine science, her passions include social justice, environmental sustainability, and baked goods.
Rob is a scientist at UCLA who studies how living things make their hard parts: cystoliths, coral, shells, etc. Rob is also the Associate Director of the Reclaiming STEM Institute, Co-Founder of Queer & Trans in STEM (fka Queers in STEM), a writing consultant, and a writer. For their research and advocacy, Rob currently holds fellowships with the National Science Foundation and the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science, and they have been invited to speak on the popular podcasts, including Ologies, Talk Nerdy, ExoLore, and at meetings for the American Geophysical Union, the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society, the Geologic Society of America, the California Academy of Sciences, and the New York Academy of Sciences. To avoid answering the question “What do you want to do after your Ph.D.?”, they hide in their apartment and cook and bake, or outside by hiking and going to the beach.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:06.0 | I felt it was 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. |
| 0:15.0 | Hi, everyone. Hi everyone, welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:29.5 | I'm your host, Erin Barker, and this week's episode is about fitting in. |
| 0:34.0 | What does it mean to feel like you belong in science? |
| 0:37.3 | Both of our storytellers today are contemplating that question. |
| 0:41.5 | Our first story is from Heather Galindo. |
| 0:44.5 | It was recorded at one of our live stream shows in Seattle in February 2022. |
| 0:49.8 | The theme that night was Revelations. |
| 1:02.6 | Thank you, people and barnacles who are present. |
| 1:07.0 | For me, the study of marine science has really been as much about the community I was a part of |
| 1:13.7 | as it has been about the study of the ocean itself. So when it came time for me to go to college, |
| 1:20.6 | I was actually feeling pretty confident about being able to do the academic part of college. |
| 1:25.9 | I was a lot less confident about fitting in socially. |
| 1:30.2 | Most of my family hadn't gone to college and I didn't totally know what to expect and the few |
| 1:35.8 | members that had had not gone after a science degree. So I showed up in college and I went to a huge |
| 1:42.3 | university, but luckily our oceanography program was really |
| 1:46.1 | small. There was about 100 undergrads, and we all got to know each other. Our professors knew us |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Story Collider, Inc., and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Story Collider, Inc. and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.