20,000 MOOCs Under The Sea. Humanities Girl in GeekLand
My background, a PhD, is in literature. To make things even worse: German literature. And now, I’m getting ready for my fifth MITx MOOC in microbiology, EdX platform. When Bostonian startup Veritas Genetics asked if I wanted to write some piece of fiction with them, I just ran away. It seems kind of silly to you, but it took me quite some time (mainly spent on various Chinese and US social networks) to find the key to my own behaviour. Please let me tell you how it feels to be Humanities Girl in GeekLand. California, Google and the American dream… Right after I completed first edition of MITx MOOC Quantitative Biology Workshop or QBWx with a brilliant score, some guys working with Google wanted to see me. QBWx is an ambitious hands-on lab training where you get to merge human cells with computer coding libraries in Python, algorithms in Population Genomics written with R stats — the most powerful tools I ever saw in biology, with that cool genome editing tool CRISPR — and not to forget that other powerful tool for academic research: MATLAB. From some dusty post-graduate teacher training at La Sorbonne, Paris, to the Mountain View Googleplex! And yet when they saw me, the Googlers almost ran away. In their eyes a MOOC student must be 25 years old, they just wanted to make sure (the icing on the cake), the female student was not ugly at all. But when they saw me, they found out there was no icing on the cake. Worse: there was no cake at all. The unbearable truth is I’m almost two times 25 years of age. From that moment onwards, I understood the American dream was not for me. At marketing with Intuitive Surgical Inc. for quite a few years, in my previous job, a decade earlier, I was made to understand on a couple of opportunities that the expiry date was nearing. You can understand — once bitten, twice shy. By the way, my interviews with a couple of biotech labs in Boston didn’t pan out as expected either. I was seen as an arrogant outsider. « — You earned yourself a couple of MOOC certificates. So what? Are you going to earn yourself another … thousands of certificates? Because, you know, there is going to be thousands of those MOOCs ». Coming from someone working with Google, that’s rich. I think this was at the end of summer 2014. Turns out one of my best friends is an engineer employed by Facebook. We’ve been knowing each other for over ten years. He’s been witnessing similar reactions at work, over and over again. And so have other people. GeekLand and NerdTown are places where diversity is not welcome. Alice, go home. Same thing, if you happen to read Chinese and spend some time like I do on Weibo, in BATX Wonderland: a man in his 30’s will readily be called grandpa. The land of GAFAM and BATX is just a remake of that West-Side-Story musical, were digital natives, digital migrants and even post-digital natives are competing against each other. Wanna learn something new? You’d better not expect a sense of belonging as a reward for your efforts. Chinese authorities must have thought that this youthanization of society was going too far, as they took steps to ban that kind of counterproductive competitiveness among geeks and nerds. A democratic dictatorship when least expected, I guess.
Take home message: even if you happen to successfully complete zillions of scientific MOOCs, you are doomed if you are over 25. And that’s not even Trump saying this. That’s Google & co.
In a former life, I was a ballet student at the Parisian National Conservatoire (a school that is prepping you for the selections at the Opera Ballet), where I’ve learned first hand about this “competitivity madness” that is wreaking havoc on your physical and mental health. First, I saw it around me. I had two teachers, Rudolph Nureyev and Maurice Béjart, who couldn’t stand each other and used us, the ballet students, as the ultimate bullets. We were weapons in their never-ending crusade against each other.
Imagine for a moment the pressure that a twelve-year-old girl undergoes following “master classes” taught by Rudolph Nureyev, who could have benefited from the pedagogy of that MITx dream team. This pressure had helped me into a serious anorexia at 16 years of age due to stress and moral harassment. Once, behind the scenes at the Opera, I saw my best friend slapped by her mother and in tears, her mascara running like a heart break night. I overheard something I wasn’t supposed to. « In Nureyev’s classes, extremely spectacular jumps are everything. She’s much better at it than you are. You know what it means. You can kiss your dreams goodbye. She’ll be in, you’ll be out. You’ll end up with nothing. » That « she » must have been me, because overnight my best friend never spoke to me again. Yet the way she did her arabesque was certainly unique.
Maurice Béjart must have had an innate talent for MIT pedagogy. I’m not quite sure if I was able to dig myself out of this anorexia hole thing, or if Béjart was able to lend a helping hand. You decide.
Fortunately, Bostonian startup Veritas Genetics is not the strong arm of some youthanizing ayatollahs … And yet I’m afraid of experiencing some kind of unwanted revival. Miss me with the competitiveness and the pressure. Twitter is full of scientists from US best academia congratulating each other for their (indeed) stratospherically prestigious articles. Behind the scenes: the harsh realities in today’s health care system in America. Talking about this diversity issue… and as a result: patriotic speeches from Xi Jinping, willing to see China take over the worldwide leadership in technology, in each and every field. Now who is going to scoff at those words? Meanwhile, US scientists keep congratulating each other on social networks. As they cannot read Chinese, they cannot access the Made-in-China trove of knowledge (or only in part), whereas the other way round is not true.
I decided I might as well stay under the radar, carrying on writing my own fiction. Today I’m working in real estate and logistics, and writing fiction in my free time. I’m living half of the year in Asia — where I’m in touch with other science-fiction writers, especially in China. I told the guys at Veritas Genetics I was able (and this came as a surprise) to bypass censorship in continental China to get published there. Their answer: « The US government is made of 5% engineers; in China they have over 80% ». Friends of mine in Shanghai are working in consulting. They got hired there after they retired. In an alternate world, I was told I was too old to, errr, just do stuff. Chinese students in Beijing are asking me, their teacher, for advice; for their private and professional life. « — You are older than I am. It’s only normal that I should ask you for guidance. » Two different cultures. One wanting to youthanize people; the other one relying on older or elderly people to help orient them. One of my fellow writers in continental China got a prestigious prize a few years ago. He is 87 and started his career as a science-fiction writer when he was 82. I’ve been knowing that friend of mine in consulting for over two decades. How am I supposed to sustain long-lasting relationships if I’m designed for dump at the age of 25? Did anybody write a bugged algorithm here? In China I met with sci-fi rock star Liu Cixin. He’s been writing over 15 fictions, number 12 brought him worldwide fame — Three Body Problem. And yet he is carrying on working in his power plant as a water treatment engineer among other things. Small world, my brother does the same stuff, also in Asia, but for rubber gloves. So… sorry Google, I will carry on following MOOCs as I just love those. They provide me with great hype filter and materials for my writing. Maybe one day I’ll write about my experience. My Kinky MOOCs. Good name for a musical, right? And maybe I’ll start writing this musical when I’m 82, in Beijing. Who knows? This might happen if Google & co. end up youthanizing people for real.
We should remember phylloxera, a disease that has ruined vineyards and their owners in the past, due to a lack of biological diversity.
I have not given up on writing fiction for Veritas Genetics or with them, but I will wait to finish what I have already started: two of my fictions will soon be ready. Finally, a question I would like to ask the managers of that superb Museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris (Musée des Arts et Métiers) : any chance we get to see some genetic sequencing machines there any time soon?
Catherine Coste, MITx 7.00x, 7.QBWx, 7.28x (part 1 and 2) certified. Biology and Python
