SciChronicles

Asking for Help with Diego Olivo

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SciChronicles is back – this time, with a new format! You'll still hear stories from scientists about their experiences in science and life, but now we'll feature only one storyteller per episode. We'll also incorporate interviews with the storytellers so you can hear more about their stories, the writing process, and how their views on storytelling in science have changed. 

For this episode, please welcome back Diego Olivo, who was previously featured on our episode "Salamanders and Scientific Legacies." Diego is a Biology Ph.D. Candidate at Arizona State University who studies viruses in animals, such as ducks. In his story, Diego opens up about feeling a little in over his head with his science, and how he overcame this feeling by learning to ask for help when needed. He joins SciChronicles co-hosts Kayla Burgher and Risa Aria Schnebly to talk about imposter syndrome, the challenges of story writing, and how storytelling skills can be useful in many areas of life.

Please consider subscribing, if you haven't already, so you do not miss future episodes. This podcast is produced and edited by Kayla Burgher and Risa Aria Schnebly, with support from the Center for Biology and Society at Arizona State University.

If you are interested in crafting a story to share on SciChronicles, please fill out this interest form to learn more and connect with the hosts, Risa and Kayla.

Risa: Hey there. My name is Risa Aria Schnebly.

Kayla: And I'm Kayla Burgher. 

Risa: And we are the hosts of this podcast, SciChronicles. We started this podcast about a year ago now because we wanted to have a place where the stories of Arizona State University faculty and graduate students could live. Kayla and I started a live story slam event that we do every year, and through that process, started getting scientists to engage with storytelling for many of them, for the first time, the stories that have been on this podcast have mostly been the stories that scientists have created to tell in front of a live audience.

Kayla: But now we're really excited to introduce a new podcast format, so instead of just hearing people's stories. You now get to hear from the storytellers themselves all about what they think of storytelling, the process that they went through, a little bit of behind the scenes, information on their stories and more.

Risa: So from here on out, our podcast episodes are going to start sounding a little bit different. We'll still have our podcast guests tell the stories that they created, but we'll be a lot more conversational, talking with our guests before and after hearing the story. So to launch this new format, today, we invited back one of our favorite storytellers, Diego Olivo, a PhD candidate in the biology program here at ASU.

Risa: All right, what's up, Diego, how you doing? 

Diego: I'm doing fantastic. 

Risa: Can you tell us a little bit more about what you do, what's your research?

Diego: Yeah. So right now, I study viral communities in ducks, or quack quacks, waterfowl professionally, as they are, professionally known as a quack quack and looking at kind of the factors that drive diversity in viruses within these duck populations, and kind of exploring the overall general diversity within these communities. 

Risa: Nice. Does that mostly look like working at a lab in a bench? Are you outside chasing ducks all three?
Diego: I've done a lot of fecal sampling. I've collected tissue samples from hunters locally, here in Arizona, Missouri, and I've done a lot of cloaca swabs. 

Kayla: What is that? 

Diego: God, how do I put this? It is a multi purpose area in a duck where-- where a lot of stuff comes out of. 

Risa: Alright! [laughs]

Kayla: So Diego, before this, had you ever told a story before? Or is this your first time telling a story?

Diego: This is definitely my first time with the psychronical kind of format of telling a story, specifically in the context of science too. So this was an adventure. 

Kayla: Absolutely. Well, thank you for doing it. Can you tell us a little bit more about your thoughts on storytelling before you did this?

Diego: You know, I never gave much thought to it, honestly, like I never, you know, as a wet lab scientists, dry lab scientists, you never, like, really think about, like, putting your context of the work you do, you know, whether it's within the actual context of science or just the personal skills you learn from it. I don't think a lot of people really talk about those kinds of things. And so, like, when you come into the field of science, in any kind of field or any kind of area of it, you don't really know what to expect, and you don't really know what lessons you should be taking away and what you should be learning in both both sides of things, you know, professionally, academically and just for your own personal growth. And so before that, never gave it much thought. But then, like, you know, hearing people's stories and learning how to write a story, I kind of understood the value of it, because sometimes one person can hear your story and understand, oh, that's something I should look at and use that for my own future journey. So, you know, as kind of a way to connect with people who are close to you and also people who you maybe never thought you would connect with.

Kayla: Yeah, that's amazing.

Risa: Yeah, that's awesome. And we loved your story. So if you're okay with it, would you be willing to share it with us again today?

Diego: Of course.

Diego: All right, imagine being an undergrad in the middle of summer, stuck in a room with a grad student and 300 tiger salamanders.

Risa:My dream come true. 

Diego: A dream come true, yeah, all green with yellow stripes. And of course, those dopey looking faces, each salamander is stuck in their little water filled jar lined up in rows across multiple shelves in a very tiny room. It's human in the room, and both the undergrad and grad student are so tired and exhausted from working so many hours--
Kayla: Relatable. 

Diego: --and all these salamanders. are watching you and they're waiting to be fed their little worm. It's not much, but it's not to get through the day. [laughs] I make myself laugh. 

Diego: I don't have to imagine this, since this was my experience as an undergraduate research assistant at Northern Arizona University, the big question you might ask yourself is, why so many salamanders, and what were they doing there? I began working at the research lab in the spring of 2019 where we were infecting tiger salamanders to investigate how different conditions affect disease outcomes and the shedding of a specific virus you were looking at the time. Part of this work included Animal Care and sample collecting. My previous experience was mainly working as an accountant assistant, and they don't train you how to take care of infected salamanders. I remember how excited I was to finally work in a place where I can finally do science. After all, I conquered bio 182 and 181 which was our general biology classes at the time, so I obviously expected to know everything about salamanders and viruses. I mean, like, why else would they ask me to join if I didn't know what I was doing? 

Diego: So every time I was trained on a new protocol, I took diligent notes and paid close attention, because I cannot bear the thought of messing up or asking for help. My first few responsibilities were simple, feed cells here, wash dishes there, or run that experiment. And not to brag, I was definitely killing it. The wet lab work I was doing was the preparation for the summer when we started working with live salamanders. Our goal was to investigate how the virus affects the population of tiger salamanders in northern Arizona. The virus we were expecting with caused various disease signs, and one of these was behavioral changes like lethargy or hyperactivity. 

Diego: And during the middle of this experiment, there was one salamander with an extreme case of zoomies. It was swimming in circles rapidly, and I could see these red, swollen lesions on its legs and throat. This was exactly what we were expecting, but I've only seen this in articles, in papers. I never saw it in person up until this moment, which was really exciting, but at the same time absolutely terrifying. Kelsey, the grad student who I was working with at the time, and I was severely sleep deprived and overworked. We were also going a little insane. At one point, we listened to what's going on by four non blondes on repeat for eight hours, and specifically the He-Man version, yeah, on YouTube. 

Risa: Important, 

Diego: very important. So mentally, as you can imagine, we were so exhausted that tiredness only amplified that anxious feeling I had when I saw this hyperactive six Salamander. I had, like, high expectations of myself at the time, and you know, I really respected Kelsey, and I definitely didn't want to disappoint her. I disappoint her. I looked at the salamander, and I said, Okay, I can do this. You know, I can handle this. So with that mentality, I went into this jar and I wanted to feed the salamander. 

Diego: As I opened the jar, the salamander was still swimming rapidly in circles, and once I took off the lid, that salamander took one more beautiful lap around the jar and used that momentum to just jump out of the jar. Yeah, I still remember--this was very traumatic at the time. I remember just like the salamander hitting the ground, and my first reaction being like, Oh, my God, I messed up! And like, you know, I quickly grabbed the salamander, but by the time hit the floor, it was already too late. Was a pretty high area from where you dropped. And then, like, on the floors, we had decontaminated using, like, bleach, and so these very heavy chemicals, yeah, not good, not good for the salamander, right? 

Diego: And a lot of things people don't realize is salamanders are amphibians, not reptiles. And so the thing with amphibians is that they breathe through their skin. So this wasn't a great combination for this guy. And of course, Kelsey was upset. She could have been very mad at me, but instead of yelling at me, she took that opportunity to teach me an important lesson. It's not a shame to ask for help. And you know, sometimes you need to, can't just take it all by yourself. And again, like, this was when I was, like, 20, and I remember, like, oh my god, this is the best advice ever. I was like, Man, I'm just gonna ask for help all the time now. And so I started asking a lot more help. Like, hey, I think this is right, but I have no idea if this is, Does it look good or with my writing? Like, is this a sentence? I don't know if this is a sentence or not. And then when I was trying to learn how to code, I was like, I installed R is that right? And of course, that one was right, but you know, but then, you know, I was like, I'm never gonna make that mistake again. I'm always going to ask for help, and of course, I'm only human, and I made some of the same mistakes again as a graduate student. 

Diego: Somewhere between my undergraduate experience and starting my PhD, I lost this lesson. I graduated in 2020 and so there was a long period of time where I didn't do lab work, and when I finally got. A job working in a lab. The lab that I worked in was a very toxic environment, and any kind of mistakes I made at that area, I would just be reprimanded for, even if I asked for help. And then, you know, there's also the imposter syndrome that a lot of grad students feel when they first come into a program like this. A lot of people don't feel like they belong, and they just kind of shoulder a lot more than they should. And you know, I was definitely not an exception in that regard. So as I transitioned into my PhD program, I just kind of forgot that lesson of, Hey, it's okay to ask for help. So I kind of went back to my old habits of just making these expectations that nobody gave me, but that were so unrealistic and unattainable, which again, was just do it all yourself. You should know it all. 

Diego: When I started my PhD, I ended up making a lot of mistakes, as grad students do, and a lot of these mistakes could have been avoided. There were results in experiments that just didn't look right, not adding the right reagents, not doing the proper coding techniques. I didn't know how to analyze my data. I didn't know how to write. I mean, like, I had no idea how to write a scientific paper at all. It's not something that they teach you in undergrad. And so, like, I would spend like, you know, months on the same paragraph because I didn't know how to write in the right format for the field that I was trying to get into. And at the time, like my pi, and you know, other people in my lab were always wanting to help me. God bless my PI Arvin, who put up with a lot. I just didn't have the confidence in myself to ask for help, because I just thought that everyone would figure out that I wasn't good enough to be here in a PhD program. I think this is a very common feeling that we see in a lot of grad students, that we have this feeling of inadequacy. I didn't really fix this issue until my second year. I was at this point where I was getting new samples, I was learning new protocols, and these samples and protocols I was looking at were kind of different, and I don't know why. I was just anxious about this one. 

Diego: So I had this long, heated debate with myself, of like, do I ask for help? No, I don't. I don't need to ask for help. No, you need to ask for help, you know. And this was like, maybe, you know, 510 minutes of that, I finally was like, All right, here we go. So I remember how anxious I felt. I was, like, so sweaty. Whenever I'm super anxious. I get super sweaty. I I feel my heart racing. I'm just like, Oh my God. I need the odorant. Like, and I'm walking up to my research scientist, whose name is Simona, and I walk into the office space and, like, I can just feel myself just being like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Before I'm like, Okay, here we go. And, like, I froze, and I was like, maybe, never mind. Like, maybe I'll just go back and laugh. Maybe go figure it out. I'll just tell her that I'm here for my phone or something, something like that. But she looked at me and like, my face is very like, you know, I'm an open book. When you when you see my face, you know, whatever, whatever my face says, is probably what I'm feeling. I'm not a great liar. So, you know, she saw me. She's like, what's wrong? Like, is there something I need help with? I take a deep breath, let the sweat go away, and say, Hey, I honestly don't know what I'm doing with this. Can you help me figure it out and make sure that I don't do anything to mess up those samples. And she goes, Yeah, of course, this is what I'm here for. And I was shocked. Oh my god. I asked for help, and I got it---like, crazy! And so, like, when she came to help me and kind of got me through it, I felt so much better. I felt a little more confident in what I was doing with the protocol now. 

Diego: And like it was very small moment, like it was a turning point for me, because I remember kelsey's words, it's better to ask for help than to take on more than you can handle. It reminded me that, as a PhD student, like, I'm here to learn, it's okay for me to ask for help because I'm not going to know it all. And so having that reminder again, in my graduate experience, I kind of understood like, Okay, I have a great support system, and I should ask for help when I can. I think from that moment, I have seen the most progress for myself in terms of a scientist, a student, and as a person, and I barely recognize a former student I used to be, 

Kayla: Wow, amazing. Thank you so much, Diego, for sharing your story again, those things that you're talking about, the difficulty asking for help, the imposter syndrome, those are all so relatable. I know I've definitely gone through those many, many times, right?

Diego: Yeah, and I don't think those feelings ever really go away. You know? Like I still feel like, towards the end of my PhD, I'm like, looking at some of these people who are postdoc or people who are, like, early faculty, and you see them, and you're like, Oh, my God, they haven't figured out like, and, you know, there's a very hard thing to kind of recognize, especially when you're early grad student too, maybe even for postdocs. You know, I think that we should really be open about. These conversations of like, hey, like, I really don't know what I'm doing, and I I lack a little bit of confidence because I don't know how to ask for help. 

Risa: Yeah, I love the story, and I loved, like, the process of working with you to write it and see it come to life as it is. And I think I also just, yeah, I mean, it's such a relatable topic to everyone's like, the first time I finally, like, admitted it to a faculty member, and they were like, Oh, that doesn't go away. Like, no one feels like they belong here. No one feels like they know what they're doing. And I think one hearing that makes the experience of grad school a lot less, like, isolating and lonely, but also, like, on the other end, like they're also, you know, faculty and mentors need to be accountable to not shaming students when they ask for help, and not having this culture of pretending that we need to know exactly what we're doing all the time, or that we're going to do it right the first time, every time,
especially as a student, having that fear is just not not going to be helpful for progress. And so it's amazing that we can have this conversation and be able to open up and hopefully move past that barrier so that we can all make progress as scientists on that. 

Risa: Now, can we talk a little bit about the process of, like, what writing this story was like for you? Y I mean, starting with like, how did you come to this idea, or, like, How did you land on this as a story that you wanted to tell?

Diego: Yeah. So what I think was kind of going through my head was what was one of the biggest lessons I wish I learned earlier in my PhD, or, you know, again, like, just generally speaking, as a scientist, I look at some of the undergrads I've mentored, or some of the grad students, and I see those common thread that they isolate themselves and, like, try to do it all and like that. Just brought me back to the story of, you know, I never asked for help, and then when I did, you know, things improved for me. 

Kayla: Yeah, totally get it. So what was the actual writing process like for you? Then, since you said this was your first time telling a story like this, how did that go? What did that feel like?

Diego: Oh, this was painful, honestly, because again, like, I think I wrote this, like, you know, this story in, what was it, May, April, March, a month, so earlier this year, and this story, I think, happened again, like in 2019, so, like, first off, remembering, like, the important details and kind of like, Okay, how did I feel again? You know, trying to try and dig up those emotions again, and trying to remember kind of the environment that I was in, trying to remember the people, remembering kind of what I learned, why I found it so memorable. I think that was the hardest part, was just remembering the details and then putting it onto paper. I am not the greatest writer, in my opinion. You know, I definitely struggle with just the writing process. I get very sidetracked so easily. I have really bad ADHD. So I'll write a sentence and I'll run away. So I think, like the writing process in general, is rough for me, but in terms of the story context, it was just remembering those details and kind of what I wanted people to get from it. 

Risa: I'm curious if your relationship with writing has changed at all, or, like, just relationship with stories. Because, you know, like, we emphasize, like, scenes and characters and narrative arcs when we're going through this writing process with you all, and it's not at all like writing a research paper, right? 

Diego: It's very different. 

Risa: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know, and the answer can be no but like, has that going through that process, like, change your relationship with writing or storytelling in any way? 

Dieog; It has. I think, I think what you know, in terms of, I appreciate stories a lot more kind of, what I would say from this is, you know, it's hard to write a story, you know, again, like, and, you know, maybe other people find it easier, but for me, was very difficult.

Kayla: Yeah, definitely. And do you foresee bringing your newfound storytelling skills into your science in any way?

Diego: Yeah, I think, you know, I think about this when I'm telling people, for example, my parents, my sisters, who are not at all with a STEM background, they asked me what I do, or how did my week go? I'm like, All right, what do I want them to take away from my week? I don't just pick up duck poop. I do more than that. So what do I want them to take away from what I did this week? They're like, my little guinea pigs, whether they know it or not. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I think that I've been a little bit more cognitive about, like, how I'm talking to people. So being a little bit more like, aware of like, what are people actually getting from the stories I tell? And so when you put your science into it, what do you want people to get from your science?

Kayla: Absolutely, yeah. So the storytelling allows you access to more people, I guess. And sharing your science, like your science, is not only for the scientists now, but now you have a way to share it even broader, right?

Diego: I don't want to be the scientist who only talks to scientists. I want to be the scientist who can talk to people. And I think that is one of the biggest things I've learned, and I'm still learning how to do after kind of this whole experience.

Risa: Yeah, all right, I think we just have one last question for you. What's one thing you would tell a scientist who doesn't think that storytelling is important?

Diego: I would say that that would be a misrepresentation of the value of storytelling, because, again, as scientists, we have a duty to our community, to share with them what we are doing and what we are, you know, and being able to communicate that is very important for not only for science, but for a community being built.

Risa: Yeah, I love that answer. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much for coming in and doing this process with us today. Anytime.

Kayla: Absolutely lovely to have you on the podcast again, and very grateful to hear your story again. 

Diego: Of course, I thank for you guys for asking me to join. Yes, it was so fun.

Risa: This podcast was developed by me, Risa Aria Schnebly and my co host, Kayla Burgher. We put a lot of effort into making this podcast. The two of us work with every storyteller to create and write each of the stories you hear. By the way, if you might be interested in telling a story for this podcast, please fill out the interest form linked in our show notes, Kayla and I also edit the audio ourselves, and I develop the original music that you hear between the stories. Thank you so much for listening, and if you have not already, please subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss future episodes.