Reflections from a Year of Marching: Science Advocacy as a Graduate Student

By Emma Grygotis, PhD Student, Co-Organizer MFS Rochester

I’ll never forget the moment I told my graduate advisor that I was joining the organizing team for my local satellite of the March for Science.

We were sitting in front of a computer in the lab, going over the results of a recent experiment. I asked if she had heard of the March for Science and I mentioned how I wanted to help out.

Somehow, I walked away having agreed to take the lead on organizing a science expo to follow the march.

“This is going to take a lot of my time,” I admitted.

She responded with a pause, then a sigh.

Then, “Okay.”

(To her credit, it was only a small sigh. She then proceeded to be an enormous supporter of the entire undertaking.)

In the past year, I’ve gotten used to people asking how I have time to do all this. How do you balance graduate school with advocacy, against so many other things that are competing for what little free time is left after the non-negotiables are subtracted out? It can be easy to think of volunteering as something we would love to do, “if only I had the time,” but it tends to fall by the wayside when you’re staring down the barrel of a full week of experiments and presentations. It’s a way to give back or pay it forward…later. Graduate students have a reputation for many things, but having spare time on their hands is definitely not one of them.

A Transformative Year

Do I have time? No. Of course not. I don’t have time for anything except the things I deliberately, consciously decide to incorporate into my life, and that’s pretty universally true across academia. But volunteering for the March for Science is a truly symbiotic relationship, and a major reason why 2017 has been a transformative year for me. It has fundamentally altered the course of my graduate school experience, from one in which I was an acquiescent passenger to the commander of my own metaphorical ship.

When I raised my hand to help back in February, all I knew was that I wanted to do something — anything — that would get me out of my own head and working toward something, instead of drowning in my own anxiety about the state of the world.

Now? I can’t imagine what I would be doing otherwise.

As the year winds down to a close, I wanted to take a moment to look back at some of the lessons and experiences that have fed right back into helping me become a happier graduate student and a more effective scientist. I’m just one of many who has dedicated much of the past year getting more involved in science advocacy, but I hope sharing them will encourage even more of my fellow students to take the leap and get involved.

Community

Laboratory science, especially in graduate school, can be incredibly isolating. But research is a fundamentally creative process, one that benefits from getting outside your own lab, department, or university and learning what other people in your community are doing. Helping out with the March for Science got me out of my bubble, and introduced me to the hundreds of students, educators, scientists, and community members in Rochester who volunteered and marched with us. The community that has sprung up around the March for Science is an invaluable resource, a massive network of enthusiastic, dedicated science enthusiasts and professionals who are a daily source of inspiration.

Experience

I am an introvert. There is no part of me that is comfortable with large groups of people, with talking to the media, or asking complete strangers to volunteer their time and energy to a cause — all skills that are becoming more and more essential to scientists who want to share their work with a broader audience. Somehow, I have managed to do all of this and more in the past year. I can’t say that I’ve always done a perfect job, but diving in and knowing that I had a team counting on me meant that I was able to take risks, make mistakes, and ultimately succeed at challenges that I never would have considered attempting otherwise.

Survival

Make no mistake — if you are a student pursuing a career in any aspect of the sciences, the continued survival of the scientific endeavor is a life-or-death battle. If nothing else convinces you, this should. Back in April, it was the federal budget proposal, which threatened to cut financial support to the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, and other critical sources of support for scientific research. Today, it’s tax reform, with proposed legislation that would make tuition waivers taxable income, threatening graduate education not only in the STEM fields, but all disciplines. I truly believe that young professionals in the United States will have no future if we fail as a nation to preserve a place for science in modern society, and if it’s not us, the graduate students who are on the front lines of research, then who?

I was afraid, when I started on this journey that it would somehow reflect badly upon me. That it would look like I wasn’t taking my research seriously enough, that I’d say something stupid, or simply wouldn’t be able to juggle so many things and screw up. I’ll admit that early on, I very nearly convinced myself that it was perhaps better to keep my head down, stay focused, and avoid taking the risk. And it’s not for everyone — I’m incredibly lucky, for example, to work in an incredibly supportive laboratory and have rock solid team of co-organizers.

Above all, the single most valuable thing that volunteering has given me is a sense of purpose, something to fight for and work towards, and that alone is worth everything. Far from detracting from my education, the March for Science has only enhanced it. No matter how busy you are, there are small ways to get involved. Talk about your research with friends or family outside of science, or call your representatives to share your concerns. If you’re up to it, reach out to your local satellite team to see if there’s anything they could use a hand with, or get some people together to organize an event. Whatever it is, the entire March for Science team is behind you.

And wherever you are on your journey, keep marching.

Emma Grygotis is a scientist and writer from Rochester, NY. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Pharmacology, working on the development of ultrasound as a method to control protein structure and function for tissue engineering applications. She was a co-organizer of the Rochester NY March for Science satellite event, and writes both fiction and essays on the intersection of science and society. Follow her journey on twitter @egrygotis.