Unexpected Skills from an Unplanned Detour with Nolina Doud

On this episode of SciChronicles, we welcome Nolina Doud, a History and Philosophy of Science Ph.D. Candidate at Arizona State University who studies the outcomes of conservation and sustainability education. Noli shares the story of  her time working at a winery before starting her PhD and the unexpected lessons she learned which helped prepare her for being a scientist. She joins SciChronicles co-hosts Kayla Burgher and Risa Aria Schnebly to discuss the story brainstorming process, non-linear career trajectories, and the importance of social skills in science. 

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. 

Transcript

Kayla: Hi, welcome to SciChronicles. I'm Kayla Burgher.
Risa: and I'm Risa Aria Schnebly. 
Kayla: And this is a podcast where we get scientists to engage with storytelling and share a little bit more about their experiences throughout their careers. On this episode, we welcome our friend Nolina Doud, who is a PhD candidate in History and Philosophy of Science here at ASU. 
Risa: What's up Noli? 
Noli: Hi, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. 
Risa: Happy to have you here.
Kayla: So Noli, can you tell us a little bit about what you do?
Noli: Yeah, so history and philosophy of science is like it sounds super interdisciplinary. So my little space that I've carved out of it is that I do education research, specifically focusing on the outcomes of conservation and sustainability education, and what are we accomplishing, and how are we trying to do it, and where are we falling short? So that's kind of what I focus on. 
Risa: Can you tell us a fun fact that you've either learned through doing your research or adjacent to your research?
Noli: Yeah, okay, fun, animal attitudes. Fact, because when I first started here, the thing that like drew me in was this question of, how do people feel about wildlife, and how do they get acquire those feelings? So I looked at a lot of the research about how do people feel about animals, and one of them was just sort of like a list of different species, and it was ranked by preference, basically by like, how much people like them. And this was a huge national study across the US. And horses were actually higher than cats and dogs, which I thought was weird and interesting, because they're, like, less polarizing. And so, like, yeah, cats and dogs, you know, you get the division, whereas everyone was sort of down with horses. And then the only insect that made it into the top six was butterflies. And I'm like, Who is the PR guy for butterflies? How do we get them on board with all the other cool insects out there? 
Kayla: Yeah, wow, that's so funny.
Noli: I mean, horse girl is a legitimate sub genre of all childhoods. And you've got to grow up into people who just become horse adults and take attitude surveys.
Risa: Shout out horse people.
Kayla: So before we dive into the storytelling today, we wanted to ask you a little bit about your experience. So before this, had you ever told a story in front of an audience before?
Noli: Yeah, I think I have done some story telling, and I feel like, honestly, I'm just a storyteller, like I just love to weave a yarn. I come from a family of people who love to weave yarns, and love to be around people who weave yarns like, just love the art of storytelling, and kind of can't help but tell a lengthy and embellished story myself. So I feel like, on the one hand, yeah, kind of just a born storyteller. And then also, because I did my undergraduate in humanities, we got a lot of room to explore different types of storytelling and do different types of creative writing and reading and performance and just a lot of breads with that. So yeah, I feel like I do love and appreciate the art of listening to a good story and hopefully telling stories. 
Kayla: So did coming into this and like doing this process feel like pretty natural to you?
Noli: I think having to tell just a story with a takeaway was different. Maybe because a lot of my sort of weaving of yarns is maybe the better phrase for it, is just sort of relaying something, and so trying to sort of curate and go through like this Rolodex of experiences and be like, what actually has like an interesting narrative arc and sort of ends somewhere and has a middle and has a beginning. 
Kayla: So did you end up approaching it with like a takeaway in mind, and then seeing what experiences could like build up to that takeaway? Or was it more of like you have these experiences, and then trying to sort through those and figure out, like, how can I get a takeaway out of these?
Noli: I think I thought about, sort of, what are the stories that I tell when, basically, when I'm, like, giving advice, and I realized that when people sort of ask me and or I give unsolicited advice, which I have a bad habit of doing, that I was telling stories in the process of sort of trying to show something or show that I value something. So, yeah, I was, I think I didn't have a specific takeaway in mind, but I wanted it to be. A story that emerges in the context of trying to, like, get something across that I think is useful to people, yeah, definitely.
Risa: And for context for the many listeners, hopefully, who haven't gone through this process of writing a story with us, one of our like, beginning prompts for storytellers is thinking about a moment of change in their lives and to come up with the narrative arc of who they were before and after that moment. So that's what, like, pushes everyone to have these takeaways and arcs that hopefully are apparent.
Noli: Yeah, also didn't give enough credit to the excellent prompts in the workshop, which which were really inspiring and just a cool way to think of how to take an experience that you have and like, make a narrative arc out of it
Risa: totally, and you did a great job of it. So Noli, would you be willing to read us a story today?
Noli: Certainly, that's why I'm here.

Noli: It was spring, and the vineyard I worked at was bursting with life. I was hosting a double date in an outdoor tasting area called the canyon cut right into a California hillside surrounded by grapevines, oak trees, sages and lavenders that wafted perfume as the wind went by, bees were buzzing busily through the blooms, then one of the guests swatted at them anxiously before asking for a table further away. We resettled them in the center of the space, as far from the offending blooms as possible, but a cloud of gnats emerged from the grass, one of them drowning in a glass of Rosé. As I hurried to replace the rosé, a large bird, silhouetted against the bright sun, glided lazily overhead. One of the guests pointed and excitedly asked, Is that an eagle? I answered, that's a turkey vulture, and they looked disappointed. I was priming up to dive into my repertoire of fun vulture facts, but they already looked bored and had started talking amongst themselves about some remodeling plans. I found myself wondering, why did they book this specific tasting? Were there 50 indoor, air conditioned, perfectly manicured tasting rooms just down the road, and yes, this vineyard was so bougie that tastings were by reservation. So they signed up knowing that they would be outside, presumably, knowing that that's where bees, gnats and vultures also reside. Yet all of that seemed like an annoyance to them. So why were they here? But that raised a more important, more troubling question, why am I here?
Pouring wine for people who don't even want to hear Cool vulture facts was never part of my life plan. And trust me, I've always had a life plan. When I was 10, I decided on being a university professor. At 13, I decided where I'd go to undergrad and that I'd get there a year early. At 18, I decided I'd get my masters abroad. And I made all of those things happen, partly because, crazily enough, they were actually good choices for me, and partly because the universe enabled me in so many ways, from giving me a supportive family to a healthy body, but also delivering on my plans was the wellspring of my self respect, and I feared what might happen if I didn't follow through. How would I get up in the morning, look myself in the mirror, convince myself I'm not a failure. Even when I was crushing my goals, I still struggled with these so what would happen if I wasn't my plan was that I would get my PhD by 28 not be working at a vineyard, but then I was nearing the end of my master's that time when you start applying to PhDs, and I faced a serious problem. The two years I had spent in the Netherlands getting my masters had taken its toll. I found the flatness, the grayness, the orderliness of the landscapes in the Netherlands unexpectedly soul crushing the academic culture there felt flat, gray and orderly, too. I was coming from the vibrant setting of a small liberal arts college where it was all big ideas and self expression, which fit with my own personal culture that I had been raised in. So going to a technical research University in the Netherlands was a culture shock in so many ways it was all rote knowledge and reading comprehension. I hadn't taken multiple choice exams since high school, and an exam in philosophy just seems weird.
It felt like my wings had been clipped. Add to that endless bad weather, the loneliness of trying to start a life abroad, my own brooding temperament, and it was all just so gray. So I was majorly burnt out and desperately missing the sunshine, wild spaces and friendly faces of my hometown in Los Olivos, California, which is a little micro town near Santa Barbara, applying to a PhD seemed downright impossible. I had summoned every possible ounce of motivation and discipline within me to complete my master's program, and there was simply nothing else left to put towards PhD applications. I also realized there was another huge obstacle standing in my way. I had completely failed to network a nightmare. Still, I thought my job as a student started and ended with the formal curriculum, and if I did well with that, like a leaf in a river, I would just flow into a PhD. But it turns out that getting into a PhD is a lot more about connecting with a specific professor who not only sees an alignment of research interests, but also an alignment of personal culture, or in other words, good vibes. And I couldn't so much as speak to a professor without my face just getting hotter and hotter and hotter until I could feel the beads of sweat forming my hands sweat so badly that they wrinkled like I'd just soaked in a hot tub for six hours. I dreaded the very thought of shaking hands when mine felt like hot, sweaty mackerel fish. I remember my high school Mock Trial coach telling me that a handshake tells you a lot about a person. As a master student, my handshake said I was a sweaty mackerel. Networking was not my thing. 
So instead of applying for a PhD, I decided to go home a little background on Los Olivos. It consists of 1000 residents, a couple farms and ranches and Wine, wine and more wine. There were basically no jobs, no housing, and no opportunities for me there. But all that mattered was that it's ridiculously pretty and the weather is so good that we spend almost every day outside, whether out in the mountains, on the beach or just in my dad's overgrown jungle garden. So sunshine, time in nature and the company of good friends and family slowly began to remedy the burnout, but I still needed to work on my lack of social skills, the real barrier to my academic success, or really any success in life. So I decided to work in the main industry of my hometown, so ubiquitous that we simply call it the industry, and that's why it would force me to confront one of my greatest fears, small talk. I learned that I had a lot to learn about being social. My co workers seemed to just know what kind of tasting someone wanted. Were they here to learn to be flattered, to be left alone so they could make out. My co workers couldn't tell me how they knew. They just knew. Meanwhile, I was getting signals wrong all the time, and my default assumption was always that they were here to learn everything they possibly could about wine. I was often way off awkwardly lecturing guests on fermentation as I noticed them getting frisky under the table, I clearly missed the signal that said, we're here to make out.
But as my co workers and I swapped stories over washing glasses in the dish pit, the role of our life histories became more apparent. One of my co workers who was just so incredibly socially and emotionally intelligent, told me about how she would stay up until four in the morning on her dad's poker night so she wouldn't miss any of the action My dad didn't have poker nights. My dad's life is defined by his love of gardening and nature. My vivid childhood memories are my parents' little celebrations when my brother or I correctly identified a snake or a passing bird on hikes and drives visiting a road kill every day so my dad could teach us about decomposition and catching tadpoles in the river to stalk our pond, marveling over metamorphosis, what my co workers and I thought we just knew was really the product of learning curves that we had started on as children, shaped by our upbringings and life experience. The learning curve of human socializing is long and difficult, and I had a lot of catching up to do, and I still have a ways to go. I have to remind myself constantly that messing up is part of learning, and sure, it's more charming when that trial and error takes place when you're a squeaky voice toddler. But that's okay, and I did learn a lot. I learned about wine, which is in itself a fascinating mix of science and art, Old World traditions, meeting cutting edge technology, salt of the earth, agriculture and ultra elitism. And I learned a lot about people, especially the profound need to have companionship, fun and to feel heard and seen. I practiced active listening with my co workers and the guests, and watched how our relationships grew through that, and I learned about myself and the questions that were truly of interest to me. I realized that I had spent so much time thinking about how to style myself as an academic that I never considered that I could study what I was most curious and passionate about nature was the thing that I had missed the most in the Netherlands. What recharged my battery and endlessly helped my fascination and the thing that puzzled me and intrigued me the most about my guests at the vineyard were their bizarre, sometimes contradictory feelings and behaviors towards nature. Our vineyard was advertised as an authentic experience of the beautiful nature of coastal California. The guests signed up for the experience knowingly, but when they arrived for their authentic nature experience, they shrieked at spiders, swatted bees and didn't even want to hear my cool vulture facts.
Risa: Shame on them.
Noli: missing out! I couldn't stop questioning where they got their ideas and expectations of nature. So why not make my research about that? I came back to academia six years after finishing my master's to do my PhD here at ASU, studying the effects of environmental education on how students feel about nature and science, I'm able to connect with my mentors and cohort in ways I wasn't capable of before my time on the vineyard, I'm a better collaborator, researcher and teacher for cultivating those other parts of myself and for doing the uncomfortable work of changing plans and letting go my unexpected path made it clear to me that I'm not becoming an academic just to follow some plan I made when I was 10. I can't help but ask questions about people and nature no matter where I am, I'm becoming an academic because it's the most authentically me thing to do. They say, if you truly love it, let it go. And that's what I did with my academic identity, and we came back together stronger than before. And as a last note, when I started my PhD program, I had a terrible fear that someone might think of me as lesser than since, of course, they all worked in fancy labs and had perfect linear trajectories while I was a mere server, but all the peers and faculty that I've mentioned this experience to say the same thing. How cool. And it turns out that people are a lot more open minded to the twists and turns of life that I thought and that a lot of them like wine.
Kayla: Yay. Thanks so much. Noli, that was an amazing story.
Risa: Yeah, we love your story. As a customer service veteran and former extremely shy kid, I feel like I love your story because of how much it reflects my own path. I was so shy and like so unable to hold any conversation. And the thing that like taught me to socialize first was working in like coffee shops and Red Lobster and like a small, family owned Thai restaurant, and people don't give enough credit to like doing that work and like letting that help you become a normal functioning person of society. 

Kayla: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I was, I was telling them earlier, like I went into science, thinking that I wouldn't have to talk to people. I get to zone in onto my own things, on my own research focus on that, but no, science is so much about talking with people. And it's really inspiring to hear this story, because I, too, kind of came from the same place of like, not really knowing how to talk to people. And it's so inspiring to hear that other scientists also came from that area.
Noli: Yeah, and it's, I think we don't give enough credit to the fact that it's a skill that is practiced, and we often just have this, like, very fixed mindset mentality about like, I'm a social person and I'm not and I think thinking of it as something that takes practice, and also thinking of the value. Value of these, like, service and retail and hospitality jobs for doing that kind of practice. Like I yeah, I wish that there was more kind of explicit valuation of the skills that we get from that,
Risa: yeah, which goes into, like, what our whole shtick is with this podcast of like, how science, as a culture, doesn't value actually connecting with people face to face, and, like, developing the skills to have normal conversations with, like, people who are not obsessed with turkey vultures or proteins or whatever, you know, yeah, even though it's so important to our field, 

Noli: yeah. And I think in science, we just tend to prioritize, and my research looks at this too, this sort of cognitive knowledge, when many of us are coming here with such a hunger for knowledge that like, it's great to keep feeding that, but maybe the training that we need and the support that we Need is more in these kind of human skills like those were the skills that I was lacking.

Risa: Another thing I love about your story is also just like, how much you emphasize the value of like, taking a step back from like, the social script of what your life is supposed to look like and the value of, like, assessing what you actually want for yourself, right? Like, I think, you know, being grad students, we see it all the time of people who just went straight through, or we see it in the undergraduates we mentor, or TA for who just, like, never question that there could be any other possible route to go down, right? And I think that leads to a whole lot of burnout, a whole lot of mental health issues, and just I don't know from my perspective, like, decreases the quality of your life overall, like, it's sad to live your life according to, like, what society or your parents tell you you should be doing, rather than like, what you want for yourself, right? And I just really appreciate the ways that you like talk about how you struggled to even feel like you were allowed to do that in the first place, but then how ultimately, doing that one you learned all these skills that you didn't have before, and became a better person for it, and were able to return to your original passion with like, a more authentic version of yourself.
Noli: Yeah, I will say I I can tell this story now, now that I'm in a PhD program and I'm like, making the thing that I always wanted to do happen, but it was very painful for those six years that I was out of school. Like, the hardest thing was, like, you see someone who you haven't seen in a long time, and they're like, Oh, what are you doing? And I would just like, die. Like, saying that I work at a tasting room is like, it's the thing that everyone does as, like, the default. And so there was nothing cool about it. And people did respond to it like, Oh, that's nice, you know, and you got that, and then I just, like, died because I had just, it was so important for me to get that, like, validation of people being like, Wow, that's so cool. That's great. That sounds really cool, and it's but, like I said, I think there's this broader critique now that, like, I will stand by the fact that being at that vineyard was just as valuable Those years were as formative and like learning and growing as my Bachelor's as things that people said were, you know, cool things to do. So I think, though that was it was really hard at the time, and not knowing if I would ever get into a PhD, and not knowing if, if I was going to be, like, looked down on and there's even, like, structural things, like, my GREs were expired, like, I had just been in a state of cognitive decline for the last six years, You know, like, so they're like, weird, systematic things against switching paths like that, and so yeah, like, I can all say now, in retrospect, it's totally paid off and it was totally worth it. Another kind of interesting bit about this was that the like perpetual anxiety of school and of deadlines is this like pressing, constant presence, but it was swapped with this, like, deep existential dread of not knowing what my purpose was and like, what structure to like, what am I even doing today? Like, what is the point of my existence? And like, I have to, like, carve it out each day anew, as opposed to just having, like, this imposed structure that we have in school that and and I have to now, like, be sort of cognitive of the fact that, like, I can't just live my life with this imposed structure all the. Time Like, I also need to, like, bring that skill of sort of carving meaning and creating a plan for myself that isn't just like, imposed on me.
Risa: And it continues to be hard work to, like, make sure that you you are making decisions not based on that social script. And like, trying to imagine possibilities otherwise, even if what you do ends up looking like the social script, right? And, I mean, yeah, there's other versions of that story where you don't come back to the PhD and are a better person for it. And also it sucks because that story just might not be heard or valued like this is a more clear happy ending.
Noli: Yeah, yeah. Totally. Like mad respect for my co workers and the skill that they brought to that job. And yeah, we're like, perpetually caught in this space of wanting these things to be of value and being conscious that they're not perceived as valuable. And like, how do you navigate that and sort of assert your own self within that, will also, like, functioning in society, and it's yeah, it's a delicate little balancing act, yeah. 
Kayla: I feel like throughout my training as a scientist, I've gotten told, Oh, soft skills are so important, like, you need to learn them. But there's never been someone saying, Here's where you learn them. Or maybe there'll be, like, an hour long workshop on how to learn something. But is that really what's going to teach us those soft skills? It's feels so important to start valuing those experiences like you had outside of science that can actually teach us real world skills. Because, I mean, science is kind of like a bubble, so getting out of that and having real world experiences can make us so much better as scientists.
Risa: And for the institutions of science to incentivize scientists to build those soft skills. You know, we're told that we need them all the time, but like, where are the science communication like classes or prerequisites or requirements for graduation? These systems are not in place, and it's our extra work, our extra time, our labor to make it happen. So science needs to change.
Kayla: Well, that was a great conversation about the story. Thank you so much for talking with us. For we let you go. We just have one more question we want to ask, and that is, what would you tell someone who thinks storytelling doesn't belong in science?
Noli: You can't see it, but I'm shaking, shaking my head. Not to be sort of too judgmental, but I think that the attempt to separate sort of the enterprise of science from being human beings with lived experiences is very problematic, and there's just so much good evidence and good reasoning at this point that it's just not possible to sort of divorce our science as practice from our lived experiences and our sort of positionality as humans. And I think, in the process of thinking and telling about a story we learn about ourselves in expressing a story, we open ourselves to other people and allow them to learn about us and see themselves in us. So I think in so far as sort of scientific positivism has been argued as just a flawed approach in general, one of those kind of takeaways from that is that storytelling is just totally vital to doing a human enterprise.
Risa: Nice, yes, go off. 

Kayla: Wise words. Wise words. All right. Thank you so much for joining us, Noli.
pleasure being here. Thank you for having me and letting. Yeah, giving me a space to feel like I'm being productive, while also just thinking about myself. 

Risa: That's what all podcasts are really... 

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.