The story of my life these days, LOL!!!
A few years ago, I created a playlist titled "Fake 'til you make it" and I've played it least once a week for the past 2 years. On one level I look back at my path thus far toward a career as a Physician/Scientist and I say, "D@mn, I don't know how or WHY I'm still here" pursing this impossible dream despite obstacles that at times appeared insurmountable. Then I'm reminded of who I'm made of.
I'm a descendant of many people, some of whom spent months here:
Actually in the dungeons of this building, where my ancestors were chained to each other and forced to live in a room with a floor made of feces, urine, menstrual fluids, and dead bodies:
Minus the light shown in this photo, of course. And the lucky few of my ancestors that survived the 3-6 months in this living hell, ended up here for a months long trip to America:
And the ones who survived this trip lying in feces, urine, menstrual fluids, and dead bodies became my African ancestors in America. Yeah.
On my worst troubleshooting computer days of which there have been MANY lately, I think about this man Henry O Flipper, who was "silenced" for the 4 years while he was a student at West Point Military Academy becoming the first Black cadet in the school's history:
For those who don't know the definition of "silenced", it's when your classmates refuse to talk to you. FOR FOUR YEARS in this case. Actually, this reminds me of being a Black woman in Bioinformatics/Computational Biology, but I recently made a very interesting observation. My relationship with my colleagues/classmates in their 20s and 30s is phenomenal, with a capital "P". It's the middle age folks who have given me and regularly give me the the most hell and not ironically, these are the people who grew up with a VERY different viewpoint of people, which I don't think is a coincidence.
My last inspiration to stay focused and stay the course, comes from these men:
These are the infamous Tuskegee Airmen an all Black fighter pilot squadron during world war II. After fighting for their country these college degreed men, were not only prevented from assuming jobs as Airline Pilots in the US, many had a difficult time securing work in the field of their degree due to racism. And it's a reality that I feel every day when I think about the difficulty I've had securing a position utilizing Bioinformatics skills as compared to similarly educated/trained people. But just like these men made the decision to gut it out until an opportunity presented itself, I must do the same if for no other reason than the fact that my genetic profile is made of people who not only survived under the most hellish circumstances known to man, but thrived as well!!! 'Cause I got BIG things poppin' in my future and imma "Ball on these suckas, shawty losins not an option"!!! :)
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