Therefore

This is a familiar feeling. Sai sat at her desk, her gaze focused on the concrete wall in front of her. She wanted to do anything but her research. She had been here before: tempted to leave as soon as things got too difficult or boring.

She shifted her gaze to the window, waiting for another thought to pull her away. Sai didn’t want to reach a conclusion. She hadn’t intended to ask a question. 

“What have you been doing? Just hanging out?” asked her advisor the other day. He was a patient man with a motley crew of high-risk Master’s and PhD students, some of whom he didn’t expect to graduate. He held out hope for her, but time was ticking and the lack of progress was becoming apparent.

“I’m planning my next field season. Also working on a GIS study right now to determine the accumulation of forest canopy cover in each of the experimental plots.” Sai hoped that was enough to get her advisor off her back for the time being.

“Great! I found more papers about ants for you to read. Work from a colleague at the Turnell campus. Never was one of my students, but he’s done a lot of stuff that might be useful to you. You should think about having him on your committee. I forget his name, but he’s the first author on most of the papers on this.” He handed her a flash drive. When he left, she dropped it into a drawer with a handful of others. Some of them held over 200 papers. Sai skimmed the contents of each drive but read nothing.

Including the collection of flash drives in the drawer, hardly anything in Sai’s office belonged to her. The desk made the cramped room smell of old lacquered wood. Both the desk and the floating bookshelves were a shiny yellow-brown; they made the gunmetal grey cabinetry look out of place, and vice versa. The upholstered couch was striped with faded white, green and blue. A shapeless red beanbag sat in the corner, underneath a long and narrow window that illuminated Sai’s desktop. Everything else was left in shadow during the day.

The concrete walls would have cast a somber atmosphere if they weren’t plastered with mementos from every person who used the office prior. A corkboard was pinned with an old calendar, flyers and fieldwork photos. Neon Post-It Notes were arranged in neat patterns on the walls, framing the corkboard and cabinets. One of the most remarkable items in the office was the rainbow of tissue paper cut-outs of sugar skulls strung below the bookshelves, taped to a corner and pulled around a stack of cabinets. The end of the rainbow was just behind the door.

It was clear that this office had seen some lively, passionate and highly focused individuals pass through. Sai heard a rumour that one PhD student lived on the couch for a few months while they were in between apartments. The couch was so small and firm she barely believed it, although she knew from experience that it would do.

Sai treated the office more like a hotel than a home. Besides a growing pile of graded assignments, everything she brought to the office left with her when it was time to head home.

Pulling herself out of memories of graduate students past, Sai decided it was time to call it a day. It was early evening and she hadn’t yet given a thought to her research. She packed her things into her laptop bag and dragged the door closed behind her, feeling grateful that she didn’t stay long enough to sit in the fluorescent lights. Imagine fluorescent lights on concrete walls.

Her Uber pulled up as she turned the corner from the building entrance and made her way down the paved walkway to the street. She didn’t feel like chatting, but Uber drivers in the U.S. always had something to say or were looking to be entertained. A thirty-something Mexican man in a baseball cap glanced back at her as she got in, then at the white and blue sign hammered into the grass outside the building.

“You go to school here?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“Yeah, I’m a graduate student.”

“Isn’t that a lab or something you came out of?”

“I think there are some labs in there, but a lot of graduate students and professors also have offices in that building.”

“You have an office? That’s cool.”

“Yup.”

“So, what are you studying?”

“I study ants…in tropical forest.”

“What? You study ants? I’ve never heard of that before!”

“Yeah, I’m trying to figure out how they interact with plants in these small forests we planted.” Sai was spurred on by the driver’s excitement. “The area used to be an abandoned pasture. The ants can tell us if the forests we planted are as good as other, older forests nearby through their behaviour.”

“That’s amazing! How do they act if they don’t like the forest you planted?” He turned left at an intersection.

“They just won’t behave normally. We know how they’re supposed to behave in a healthy forest based on other people’s research. If they don’t eat like they normally would, that means they’re stressed out and the forests we planted aren’t similar enough to a natural, undisturbed forest. That’s bad news for us because then that means artificially restoring forests on abandoned land may not actually be helpful for the animals that live in the area.” It was a short drive to Sai’s place. She noticed they were only a block away, but she was just getting started.

“What you’re doing is important, you know. Someone needs to find out how to save nature. It could be you!” The Uber driver pulled up slowly to her apartment building.

“It might actually be the ants who save nature!” she replied. His eyes widened. “Anyway, thanks for the ride!”

“Bye, ant girl!” the Uber driver shouted through the passenger window before speeding away.

Sai laughed. There was so much more she wanted to explain to him about her research. She loved hearing people say she was doing important work. In theory, she was. As a restoration ecologist, she felt that she couldn’t have found a field of science that was better suited to solve the all-encompassing problem of the loss of nature and everything tied to it.

Sai, her advisor, her lab mates and former members of her advisor’s lab group had collectively spent more than a decade working on the restoration project at the study site in Chiapas. As far as Sai could tell, however, their breakthroughs didn’t change how people were going about caring for nature in real life. Everything she and her colleagues did stayed in their little academic bubble.

Sai climbed up the stairs to the third floor, listening to the clattering of her neighbors either preparing their dinner or in the middle of having it. The couple on the first floor was playing music. She imagined them drinking wine and dancing around the kitchen while chopping vegetables. The three young bachelors on the second floor were shouting over a stand-up special. They set up a projector in their living room to have the movie theatre experience while eating their meals. As she stepped onto her own landing, she heard her roommate Helen chirruping on the phone to her mother.

Still feeling the high of her conversation with the Uber driver, Sai pushed open the door with a wide grin on her face. Helen was nowhere to be seen. Her voice was now echoing off the tiled walls of the washroom. Helen filled her mother in on her plans for the night while she carefully drew on her eyeliner.

Sai continued down the hall to her bedroom. Her room was much like her office: everything in there was borrowed. She rented the room fully furnished. All of the personal items sitting on or in her desk, night table, and armoire could have fit into one large suitcase. The pale green walls were bare. A few knickknacks from her travels across the country were lined up on her desk. Her mattress lay on top of a box spring. The room was occupied by a poor graduate student and looked it.

Sai dropped her bag on her chair and flopped face first onto her mattress. Turning over, she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the ceiling.

What you’re doing is important.

It really ought to be. Sai didn’t become an ecologist to sit in a library and read papers about ants for the fun of it. She came to graduate school to help solve big problems. She was over a year and a half into her graduate career, but didn’t have much to show for it.

Her first field season was fun and educational in a cultural way, but went to waste in terms of data collection due to a gap in her planning. She didn’t secure the permits she needed to bring her ant samples back to the U.S. Her research took a turn to focus on studying ant behaviour instead of species diversity. Behaviours could be observed at the study site during the field season; no need for collecting samples. Problem solved.

Sai’s mind raced as her eyes closed. She had a lot of planning to do for the upcoming field season. She couldn’t afford to waste another one. She’d work out all possible outcomes and how to prepare for them in her dreams.

~

It was nearly dusk the next day. Sai was extremely disappointed with herself. She had taught a lab earlier in the afternoon and graded assignments, but many hours were spent on the couch in her office contemplating her next field season without doing any concrete planning. It was a Friday evening. Most of the professors, post-docs and graduate students in the building had left to start their weekend. Some remained quietly in their office like Sai, not ready to have their thoughts disturbed by the fresh spring air and undergraduate students energized by the warming weather.

Sai stood up and paced the length of her office, notebook and pen clutched in her hand. She started walking herself through the steps of her next field season at the restored forest plots in Chiapas. She planned to work through every tiny detail, from the field equipment she needed to how she would start crunching the data and writing up her results while she was still at the field station. Once in a while she would stop to sit down again and write out a list, outline or question in her notebook. She came across a snag in her plan while filling in an outline. She got up and paced again. She came up with a solution. She sat to write it down. She realized there was another snag. She got up and paced again, feeling her heartbeat quicken. The fluorescent lights made her head spin. Her hands trembled as she took a swig of water from her stainless steel bottle. The more she noticed herself losing control of her body the stronger the waves of panic grew. She fought each one back desperately to not be taken out to sea. Who knows how long it would take her to get back to shore? She didn’t have time for this.

Sai needed more room to pace. She left her office and walked the labyrinth of hallways that take you in a circle around the building. She walked the convoluted circle over and over again, coming up against one obstacle after another in her planning and problem-solving her way out of each one. Her solutions became more flimsy and unrealistic. Feeling nauseated and dizzy, she willed herself to sit down on a cold granite bench. She was having a panic attack. She needed to go home.

Sai grabbed her belongings from her office and walked shakily to the building entrance. Throughout her circling of the building, she hadn’t come across another soul. It might have helped if she did.

She decided to walk the 30-minute journey to her apartment to get some fresh air. Her mind drifted between anxiety and forced distractions all the way. When Sai finally reached her apartment building, she couldn’t remember how she got there. She nearly ran up the three flights of stairs to her floor, every step creaking under the pressure.

Helen was in the kitchen when Sai entered the apartment.

“Hey!” Helen shouted to Sai with her phone held between her ear and shoulder. Her hands were busy stirring a large bubbling pot of vegetable stew.

“Hey!” Sai called back. She went into her room, tossed her bag on the floor and closed the door. Dropping on her bed, Sai fought to calm herself. She breathed in. One…two…three…four. And out. One…two…three…four.

It wasn’t working. The word “failure” was bubbling up in her consciousness. She had to look at it.

Maybe she wasn’t cut out for research. Especially if she gave up this easily. Most field ecologists would spend weeks, maybe even months, working out the kinks in their plans. Sai gave it a few hours and spiraled. She wasn’t willing to take her time with it. Talk it out with her advisor or a lab mate.

Sai needed to talk to someone. She called the last person in the world who would understand.

“Hello?” Sai’s mother shouted. She was washing dishes while she had Sai on speakerphone.

“Hi.” Sai’s voice was small.

“How are you?” asked her mother.

“Fine. How are you?”

“Good. I’m just cleaning dishes.”

“OK.”

“Are you OK?”

“I’m OK.”

“Why did you call?”

“I don’t know.”

“You OK?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel good.” Sai started crying. Helen’s conversation in the kitchen with her own mother stopped abruptly.

“Why?” The faucet was turned off. Her mother had picked up the phone.

“I just don’t feel good.” The panic was choking Sai. She couldn’t articulate what she was feeling.

“Is it school? Is it too hard?”

“Yeah,” Sai gasped. “I don’t like it.”

“I knew you shouldn’t have moved there. Come home. Fly back home tomorrow, OK?”

“Just like that? I can’t do that!” Sai argued, but she found her breath. Someone was giving her a way out. She needed to think through why she wanted one.

“You don’t have to stay there! Just come home.” Now her mother was panicking.

“Let me think about it. I’ll come home, but not right now. I need to graduate with a degree.”

A plan was already starting to formulate in Sai’s mind. She had been wanting to leave academia for a while. She had been spending a lot more time on her hobbies, her classes and teaching than on her own research. The feeling of limitless potential from her first year was gone.

To an outsider who didn’t know any better it sounded like her research was innovative and crucial. Sai and her peers were even able to convince each other that they were all doing something important. But the government didn’t believe that was true. Her field was underfunded to begin with. Further cuts were threatening to stall everyone in her lab, including her advisor.

Her graduate career had an undertone of despair as public distrust of scientists, particularly those making claims about nature loss and climate change, grew. Even with all the papers published, lectures given and appearances in mainstream media, scientists were still an enigma. And they did nothing to help with this perception. Sai’s colleagues liked their bubbles. Avoided mingling with people who don’t know the jargon. Craved validation from their competitors.

Sai was torn. She didn’t feel at home amongst the regular folk with whom she could only scratch the surface of her interests in conversation, and she didn’t feel at home either with the peers who spoke of nothing but research. Both scientists and non-scientists wanted to be comfortable, living with only what and who they know.

Tears rolled off her cheeks and onto her pillow. Sai resolved to disrupt the peace everyone clung to.