Shayle Matsuda

And I think that, you know, so like there's these imposter syndrome is never like it's a standalone feeling.

You know, it's it's built up over, you know, over so much that's going on in the world.

Like, do you are there people like you that you have as role models?

Do you see people are your are the interests of your communities being addressed in like societal science?

It's a good question.

So I only actually applied to one program.

You did?

For my PhD.

That's great.

And 100% I applied because I wanted to work with Dr. Ruth Gates, who's an excellent coral biologist and also someone who really valued science communication and connecting to communities and the public and inspiring people to care so deeply about reefs.

And those are two things that were very, very important to me.

It was very important to me to work in a large collaborative lab where there's a lot of collaborative work and a lot of sharing of ideas and support, and also in a place where I would feel safe.

And safe means, you know,

access to safe health care, finding community on the islands, a university, or a place that actually has anti-discrimination policies in place.

There's a lot of places that don't.

I have a lot of friends who are part of universities that are in places that

You can be thrown in jail for using the wrong restroom, wrong quotes.

And then we've seen a lot of actually some really great response around that from the scientific community canceling conferences in areas that are putting up these really discriminatory policies and things like that.

And that's wonderful.

The UC system has done a lot of actually great work in that sense by saying we're not funding travel to these places.