About Me — Rikki Doppler

Eccentric?

It’s hard for me to introduce myself without feeling a touch pretentious. I’ve written at least a dozen opening paragraphs, constantly deleting them with a deep frown, and I’m not typically a person who frowns — unless I’m sleeping, in which case I’ve been told I make the most displeased faces.

What’s important in an introduction to Medium? My CV?

My whole life, I’ve had imposter syndrome to the extreme. It’s stupid to have, but I jumped careers in wildly different directions and get uncomfortable talking about it.

Here’s to being uncomfortable.

Baby photo of the author holding a fake knife.

I attended Arizona State University to get a dual major Bachelor’s degree in Evolutionary Biology and Art. During an internship with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, a string of unfortunate events led to me dropping my biology major, which was one of the best things that could have happened to me, though it didn’t feel like it at the time. One semester later, I finished with an art degree while still working in a research lab studying beetles. After graduation, I worked in the university’s natural history collections.

Working in a natural history collection was a dream job for me, though it didn’t last for more than a few months. The department lost funding, and I was reduced to working 15…