What does a scientist look like? That was, in part, the topic of the previous post on the life of James Crow -- that scientists rarely fit the standard depictions in TV or movies. Today's writing prompt in class was "When I hear 'scientist' I think..."
And then serendipity struck, because I returned from class to an e-mail from a colleague about "I Am Science," The original post, which emphasizes that there is no one path to science, has spawned Twitter responses, a Vimeo mash-up, and a Tumblr page. Go here for the story of a high school biology teacher who had had a very different plan...or here for the story of someone who failed their qualifying exams but still earned a Ph.D. ...or here for a woman who made a detour from vet school. One of my professors in graduate school mentioned that his path to becoming a professor at MIT involved dropping out of Amherst College. So many different stories, so many different models. Importantly, they belie both the "Hollywood" stereotypes of scientists and the view sometimes found in academia of just a single path to follow within science.
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