Capitalism, COVID and Academia: Decolonizing STEM with Mohera!

NOTE: The audio is pretty shit on this one, I did the best I could with it but it's still pretty crap. If it's too much, it may be easier to watch the YouTube version because it might sound a little better, and also the visuals help.

I'm joined today by my honorary daughter and STEM badass (double-majoring in chemical engineering and math, thankyouverymuch) Mohera, who is here to talk about her experiences as a woman of color specializing in a white male-dominated field, as an anti-capitalist navigating the corporate atmosphere of college life, how COVID impacted her thoughts about "grind culture," and what actions she has taken to decolonize the spaces around her.

NOTE: We have a list of potential content warnings in the beginning but we didn't really touch on any of those topics besides the general experience of systemic oppression and very high-level descriptions of mental and physical health issues due to stress, FYI.

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Nichole [00:00:11] Welcome to Pynk Spots, a queer anarchist space where we smash the patriarchy by celebrating what is strong about being soft. Here we'll explore what is vulnerable, raw, hurt, healed, sensual, queer and controversial. So join me and my friends from around the internet as we talk about deep shit and prove, as Janelle Monáe said, that pink is the truth you can't hide.

Nichole [00:00:46] Hey, everyone, look who's here! It's Mohera! So hi, everybody, welcome to the first Pynk Spots episode of 2021. Here we are. The year's already started off with a bang. Looking like we're not going to get any relief from 2020. Today, as you can see, I have Mohera in the virtual studio. Mohera is my honorary daughter, all around STEM badass, beautiful dancer, all kinds of amazing things that we'll talk about today, longtime friend of the show. And today she's here to talk with me about her journey to decolonize STEM after realizing that, STEM specifically but also academia more broadly, promotes harmful capitalist values. She's going to talk about her experiences as a woman of color in a white male dominated field, and also how colleges seem to be structured to groom students for corporate life rather than being geared more towards self-exploration and learning, which you would hope that an academic setting would provide but it's not its top priority.

Nichole [00:02:05] So before we get started, Mohera and I wanted to put out some content warnings for topics that might come up today. Obviously we don't have this super scripted so these may or may not come up, but they're what we thought of that could. So mental health disorders, especially anxiety, depression, imposter syndrome, possible suicidal ideation and self-harm, emotional and mental abuse and disordered eating are topics that we may talk about today. And then also, of course, we're talking about systemic, structural, oppressive behaviors so you have been warned. So with all that out of the way, without further ado, I'm so proud. What a proud mother today. Mo, why don't you give us a quick overview of your background and let us know - you know, you and I have been talking about this a lot off camera, which is why we're both here today. But just let the audience know how you came to be so passionate about this topic, like what is your journey towards wanting to have this conversation today?

Mohera [00:03:13] Yeah, so hi everybody! I'm so excited to be here! Thank you for all the comments, everyone is being very nice. So yes, as Nichole mentioned, I am in STEM. So I am a senior undergrad. I'm double majoring in chemical engineering and math. I am actually graduating this May, so I am super excited because I'm ready to get those degrees and peace out of here, like ooh it has been a long, long journey. So yes, I am very, very deeply involved in STEM, as you can imagine. And of course most of you already know, but if you can't tell from the video, I am also very Indian. Both my parents are Indian immigrants. They came here from India. I was born here in the US. I was also born and raised in the south and that is where I attend university. So I am a true Southerner.

Mohera [00:04:14] But just for some background, the university that I do attend here in the South is relatively small. So we have a population of about ten thousand students. So in the general scheme of colleges, that is fairly small, especially in the US. And also, even though I do attend a technically secular school, my university is very conservative and quite Christian. So you can imagine being a woman of color in STEM at a small Southern Christian conservative university, how that will heavily influence my lived experience.

Mohera [00:04:54] So obviously I'm in a very unique situation in comparison to maybe other people who had attended some like, dope bad ass like liberal arts school in New York City, because that's definitely not my situation. And of course, obviously, just because I'm a college student, that doesn't make me necessarily qualified to talk about academia. But both of my parents are professors, they teach math, and I have grown up around that environment my entire life. And as somebody with a fairly diverse educational background, which I'll go into a little bit more later, basically after four and a half years of being in school, I've realized that throughout this time period I essentially fell into this really unhealthy trap of basing my value off of being rewarded by this system of like, academic corporatism in order to attain something I essentially call resumé points. And I'll kind of get into that a little bit more as we go on. But that's essentially the kind of main idea of what I'm hoping to touch on today and kind of what's inspired my journey through academia.

Nichole [00:06:14] Beautiful. Thank you Dimitry, in the comments. So I suppose we should, before we go on, define what STEM is. It's so funny because as a trainer and like an educator, you're not ever supposed to use acronyms and yeah, I use them all the time. Anyway, so STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. So you can see that the field of STEM, you can see why it would tend to be a white male dominated space. And even when it is not a white person, like white or male person doing the work, there's still a lot of those ideals and values heavily reinforced in those spaces. So thank you, Dimitry, for that.

Nichole [00:07:13] All right, so before we really dig into this, I wanted to read, I went out on the Gram and Facebook and asked people about their experiences regarding a question that Mohera, you know, I asked her, is there anything you might want to know from the audience? I'm getting a lot of background noise. I don't know, did a fan just kick on or something?

Mohera [00:07:34] Not on my end. I don't think, everything that I've been going on has been consistent, so.

Nichole [00:07:40] OK, well let us know in the comments if it's too much. It seems like it went down. OK, so Mohera wanted to know, you know, what was normalized for you in college that you later realized was harmful or toxic? And, you know, overwhelmingly, workload, productivity and stress were responses sent in by followers. So these are all paraphrased. But I wanted to read some of these out just to highlight how sort of universal a lot of these experiences are and how much, like Mo said, you know, I may not necessarily be someone who can speak on academia, but I think, like this really highlights the trueness of everything she's going to talk about today, because it comes from people literally all over the world.

Nichole [00:08:31] So Davimon said complaining about workload to colleagues, friends and professors was highly normalized. It took several faculty and the gender studies department to get us to recognize this was replicating toxic masculine behavior and to just stop and breathe instead. So I know that's something that I've talked about in the past on past episodes, is there's a lot of normalization in professional world as well of like constantly complaining about how stressed and overwhelmed you are. So this can start in college and be normalized there.

Nichole [00:09:11] Emmy Nicole said all-nighters all the time. My ADHD brain thrived in a sort of masochistic way in the competitive studio culture. But later I realized how fucked up it is to expect students to sacrifice physical and mental well-being for a degree. I see similarities in the design world where now companies make promises about being the fastest and cheapest option at the expense of their designers. It's about production, not art.

Nichole [00:09:38] I'm Not Jane said, stress culture is huge at my college. We have a workload that's impossible for 95 percent of the students to handle without sacrificing their physical and mental health. Countless people, including myself, have to take time off, transfer or drop out, and the college doesn't see that as a problem. They see you as the problem if you can't handle four years of that.

Nichole [00:10:05] CarrieJoy4 says, the expectation of unpaid labor - which I'm sure we'll touch on today, right? Yep, big snaps to that. - I have a biology degree, but was a working parent while attending school so couldn't do research, a.k.a. free work with professors, and also didn't have time for clubs, professional groups, etc.. So even though I have the degree, I don't have the required experience to get a job in that field.

Nichole [00:10:33] And then lastly, Sophia said, I'm a biology major in Denmark where education is funded by the government. There's a required course called Innovation where you must come up with a marketable idea that doesn't even need to relate to biology. We have to argue for the customer basis for the product and how we would market it. In order to graduate with honors, which is an elitist concept in and of itself, we have to partake in programs with companies in the city doing free labor to come up with new solutions for them. Largely centered around sustainability, yes, but it's still free labor. Additionally, we're also continuously encouraged to make cooperative projects with companies, which means even more free labor, all to give us a better chance in the job market, fostering a competitive nature between students and adding to our workload.

Nichole [00:11:25] So again I just wanted to go through those to show how universal these issues are. I think this touches on a lot of what Mohera is going to talk about today, and that how much it shows that this kind of behavior and grooming is really built into the institutions and how they function, and how they have relationships with businesses in the area to groom people to be workers for those companies. So Mohera, I know you have a lot to say about this, so why don't you just dig into, wherever you want to go with it, fine. But let's start with your experience around capitalist, productive oriented rhetoric and how it impacted you personally, and what revelations you've had as you become more and more anticapitalist.

Mohera [00:12:10] Yeah, so basically I'll kind of start with sort of like my educational background. So, you know, as I said, both my parents, they are math instructors at university. My dad actually has his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, but he teaches math because he's a very passionate educator. And so, you know, my entire life I grew up with this really unique and fascinating way of tackling critical thinking, especially when it came to things like math and applied math subjects. And the way like my dad taught me, it helped me realize kind of, I guess, like the beauty of science and math, which I know for a lot of people, they're like, I fucking hate math, gross. Like, I really saw it in like this unique way. And it was because of the way my dad taught me.

Mohera [00:13:05] And so then going through the K through 12 education system where you had fucking standardized tests, you had like curriculum that was like mandatory, which had no relevance to like subject material whatsoever. It honestly was just like a major shit show. And it would frustrate me so much going through school because I'd be like, you know, the way that the system is working, it's actually discouraging students from pursuing any kind of interest in STEM based courses like whatsoever. And, you know, like when I would see my math teachers teaching, I'd be like, no wonder nobody fucking understands what you're talking about. You're not making any sense. You're like asking them to give you answers and not telling you how they came to it. And you're not showing them the beauty and the importance of any of this stuff.

Mohera [00:13:50] And so it was something that really enraged me for a long time. And, you know, that was kind of like my academic education. And then, so I am actually a classical Indian dancer. I've been studying since I was five. I'm twenty two, so I'll let the audience do the math there. But, you know, especially the great thing about, like my studies is my dance teacher who's also Indian American. She's my guru, my teacher. She has this really unique way of helping us understand the context around our art form. So if you think about maybe like a ballet dancer, right. A lot of them don't really need to understand, like the history of their dance or the meaning behind the music and things like that. Whereas for us, it's a very, very important part of our study.

Mohera [00:14:39] And especially once I got into high school, I started learning a lot more about the theory of dance, the history. Because, you know, India is a nation that has been colonized multiple times throughout history and also just learning and understanding how that has impacted our art form, which is very unique from a perspective you see perhaps in like American history, right? And so understanding that, having a theoretical knowledge while also learning the art form itself, it created like all these new mappings in my brain and I just saw things in education as a whole so differently, right?

Mohera [00:15:16] So for a long time, I thought of those as like two separate things. Right, I never really thought one influenced the other. And for me it's just like, well, I just love dance so I do dance and I love STEM so I study STEM. But then once I got to college was when I kind of realized I was in a unique position to where I could essentially take both of these backgrounds that I have, and combine them together, especially through like activism. Right, that was when I really realized, like, oh, I can actually make a connection between these two things. You know, and as like most people, like I got radicalized in college, you know, started off getting involved in like veganism, animal rights, things like that. Then, of course, like understanding, like intersectionality, all those things came into more of a social justice space. And then now I had this, like, bridge between my kind of two educations.

Mohera [00:16:15] But what ended up happening was, I kind of ended up coopting that in a way like unintentionally because of basically the pressure that academia puts on students. And I use that as a way to fuel myself in pursuit of building up my resume. Right, like getting all these talents, these skills, acquiring knowledge, all in order to have this really impressive, diverse resume. Which literally from the very beginning first semester of freshman year, that is where like all of the importance is put. On like building up your resume so that you are career ready to go out into the workforce and make money and be a worker bee for the capitalist corporatist culture. And unfortunately, as a byproduct of all that, what happened was I ended up hurting myself really bad. Mentally, physically and emotionally, I not only burned out, but actually worsened my chronic health issues and things like that. And it took covid happening for me to realize.

Mohera [00:17:32] Because like right before, I was quite literally doing the most. Like all the things that we say, like, oh, like grind culture, boss bitch, kind of things. Like those were all the things I was doing. I was president of our animal rights organization on campus. I was doing like protests, different activities on campus, all those things. I was doing research, I had just won a research competition for minority students in STEM. I was taking all kinds of science, engineering, math classes and doing really well in those. But like, again, as like the whole all-nighter concept, getting like just a few hours of sleep every night. I was still dancing, teaching, taking classes on the weekends. I mean, I was literally doing the most and that is what I was deriving my happiness from. And then when covid came, all that was gone. I frankly just kind of lost everything. I had summer plans, I had an environmental research internship that I was going to do. All of that was-

Nichole [00:18:39] You were going to meet me in person. Oh no!

Mohera [00:18:43] And it freaked me out. I mean, I quite literally just - oh, am I still on?

Nichole [00:18:48] You froze for a second, but you're back. I was like no!

Mohera [00:18:55] Ok, sorry about that.

Nichole [00:18:55] That's ok, it happens.

Mohera [00:18:56] But yeah, I mean, I kind of lost my mind for a little bit because I was like, I can't do anything. What's the point like, who am I? What am I doing? I'm not being productive. I'm not making a difference. I'm not building my resume. I'm not like, what am I doing then? And it, I lost sight of who I actually was as a person because I fell into that trap of feeling like I was just a cog in the machine. And so after that, you know, this past semester was really, really rough for me. I really struggled a lot, as I'm sure a lot of other people who were in school and even had to go back to work. Again mentally, physically and emotionally, I hurt myself really bad. And actually, right around Thanksgiving break, I contracted a virus that literally kept me basically bedridden for about a month. And it was because I just burned myself out so badly. I was that hurt.

Mohera [00:19:58] And I remember literally the day before I got sick, I was with my dad. I was crying, I was in tears and I told him that I was at a point where I had wished something really seriously bad would happen to me, like I would get hurt really bad, I would, something, so that everything would just stop. I would just stop for just one minute, for one moment, I wouldn't have to keep grinding away. And then I got sick and I was miserable. And thankfully though, all of this time kind of caused me to reflect and think, how can I enjoy the things that I enjoy? How can I enjoy being a well-rounded person while also kind of being like, fuck you to the system? And I realized I have to change my own perspective. I have to stop valuing the things that the system is telling me to value and just go after what I want and what makes me happy, regardless of the byproducts of that.

Nichole [00:21:09] Yes. Ooh, I relate to a lot of that, interestingly, being a person who's not in college and, you know, white and whatever. But there is so much, and that's kind of, I guess, at the heart of our conversation today. Right, is there is so much of what you get in college that translates over into corporate life. And I have felt that same way, and I think just being a person under capitalism in general as well, like I have had so many times in my life where I literally wished I would get some kind of very serious condition or get hit by a car. I literally have wished these violent things to happen to me just so that I could stop for a little while, just so that I could have a break. Even though I knew, like, realistically, that that would actually make my life worse, because then I would have medical bills to deal with. And like, obviously, being in pain and dealing with something like that is not fun. It's not a vacation. But it's wild how universal I feel that that feeling is for so many people, that you do kind of sit around and fantasize about something terrible happening to you just so you can breathe. Just so you can just not have to be on and going, going, going all the time.

Nichole [00:22:37] Something that you brought up in here that I've found really interesting, and maybe you can expand on it a little bit, is this idea that everything that you were doing kind of became co-opted by capitalism as like resumé points, as you put it. So these interests that you have, even your activism, which it would seem counterintuitive that your activism could be something that capitalism would encourage. But as you put it, if it's just becoming a thing to put on your resume, then it kind of, you know, it's like a way that the system sort of takes the teeth out of it by owning it. So if you have any more thoughts about that, I just think it's a really interesting thing that I've never really heard someone explicitly talk about before.

Mohera [00:23:25] Yeah, so... OK, at least at our university I'll say, we have sort of like, I mean, a lot of schools I know have this, but particularly we have kind of like a career readiness program. Right, where, so obviously one of the big things being in college, audience if you don't know, a big thing is to get, like for your resume, you want to get like a co-op or an internship. So co-ops typically, at least I know from an engineering perspective, are like you basically would go work in an industrial setting for a year. So you would take like a year off during school and that, it becomes a part of your education and you actually get paid for it and all that kind of stuff. Internship kind of similar. Typically those you can maybe do like during the summer. They are paid, sometimes not paid, which I will definitely get into that later on because that is a huge thing for me. Like, oof. But that's a huge goal of a lot of college students, is to get some kind of work experience before they graduate. That's what a lot of employers like to see.

Mohera [00:24:34] So I was a part of a program for essentially like minority students in STEM and I was required to do this career readiness program. And in there, I think there's like maybe eight, seven or eight different points of experiences you need to have essentially before you graduate. These are things that you can talk about in an interview, but again, like put on your resume. So basically, they're things like, you have multicultural or diverse experience. Like have you ever worked on a team of diverse people who think differently than you and are very different than you? You need to have a concrete example of that. A time when you used critical thinking to solve a problem in a new way that no one else had before. You need to have experience with that. Being a team leader, when is a time when you displayed leadership that was beyond what was asked of you? And there's literally like eight of these fucking things, right. So it's like I've been here for four years and you expect me to do basically the kind of shit that, like, somebody in a directorship position is doing. Like, but that's what they want you to do. They want you to literally be able to list off experiences of that caliber in a span of just four, in my case, five years, right?

Nichole [00:26:01] That's ridiculous, because I was just thinking while you were talking that in my work experience, it would have taken me... It would have taken me over a decade to get even close to those kinds of experiences. You know, because for so long I was in a position where I just didn't even have access to stuff like that. So for expecting a college student to have that level of experience already, that's bananas.

Mohera [00:26:30] It's really intense, but that is the kind of caliber they expect you to perform at by the time that you graduate. And so the interesting thing was, the last time that I was in one of these sessions and I was filling out, so they asked us to sit down and fill out this sheet and it had all of the eight things. And it was like, please write down the concrete examples of when you did this. I had accomplishments in every single area. All of them. I had concrete things that I could say to an employer in an interview and I wouldn't be bullshitting. I wouldn't be just like pulling something random out of my ass. Like these are legit straight up accomplishments that I had had. But it was in a way that I guess you could say is like palatable for companies, corporations, academia.

Mohera [00:27:20] And I'll say also in my case especially, my university is a little bit unique because there's a lot of what I would call really toxic stuff that happens being a small conservative white Christian university. However, they don't want to give off that appearance. And so having somebody like me, for example, to be - it's like, oh, Mohera like, why don't you come be in our promotional video? You're like an eloquent, nonwhite woman, like that would be great, wouldn't it? You know? And I'm like, and obviously like naive little me is like, wow, what a great opportunity! Like, sure, like I'd love to do that! And the thing is, like, I do enjoy, like, you know, making videos and like doing like kind of promotional stuff. I mean, I've always kind of liked stuff like that. But then you realize the kind of devious underlying nature within all of it.

Mohera [00:28:17] And so, you know, it's kind of like this. OK, so if you imagine like, if you think about like parental abuse, right? As long as you stay in line with what your parent expects of you, you're OK. Right, so when they're like, oh I let my child do whatever they want. Well, yeah, as long as what you want to do is and with line what they want you to do, then you're fine. But what happens when you step outside of that and you do things that they don't want you to do? Like what is the behavior then? That's kind of the case here is I was constantly falling in line with what academia wanted to see of me, that it was never a problem. But the minute that I started getting like, more radical and being like, no, I kind of think STEM education the way it's operating is like pretty toxic and like needs to stop, like, right the fuck now and we need to change how we're doing a lot of things, they're like, simmer down now. Calm down.

Nichole [00:29:10] Hey, hey, hey, don't get too spicy, it will be uncomfortable.

Mohera [00:29:17] Exactly, yeah. So that's basically what kind of happened is I was doing things in a way that was palatable and so that's why the stuff that I did was considered acceptable.

Nichole [00:29:30] And even, like I see your dance practice, if it's appropriate to call it that, I see it as like more than you take dance, right, like it's a big part of your life. Like that is very radical and it is very... It is something that should make them uncomfortable, but it also has an esthetic, right, that they can glom onto to make it palatable for them. It's all about, like, everything gets repackaged in a way. Like they don't know that you use it to keep strong ties to your culture and like keep your culture alive and celebrate it and learn about it. They just see that, like, you wear pretty dresses and who doesn't like dancing, and it's something that they could put on a flier or you can put on your resume and it doesn't make people uncomfortable.

Nichole [00:30:22] And I just, maybe it's kind of a silly example, but I felt that way with my veganism a lot at jobs because... Now, I did make people uncomfortable with my veganism, but that was me. When other people get a hold of it, it was kind of like... There was this woman who was very high up in the company, and she had made it very normalized that she would do things for endangered species. And so a lot of times my veganism would be equated to her very specific focus on endangered animals, which is much more palatable to people because they're pretty and they're far away and exotic and like that doesn't have to affect my day to day behavior. Whereas what I was really doing was talking about, like your day to day behavior, you know, how we eat and our food system. But it was like, oh yeah, it's like an animal thing, like what she does. And I just was always amazed by people's ability to immediately make themselves comfortable with something and then just kind of move past it and not give any space for it to be real. To have like, its real radical roots there in that system.

Nichole [00:31:39] And I even have put stuff on my resume like, oh I go to conferences and I speak on things or whatever, but it's like if those people sat in an audience and heard a speech I gave, they would never hire me. Right, but I can I can reword it for a resume and then it looks cool. Like wow, I do all this stuff on my own time unpaid. What a great candidate.

Mohera [00:32:02] So that would essentially happen to me a lot. Like particularly with dance, I had professors and even like my own adviser at one point, basically be like, you know, is that something you were supposed to quit like after you graduated high school? Like, you know, OK, good job, like you got into college, you did your thing, now like you should just quit and focus on your career. And it's like, I don't think you understand, this is my life, this is a part of my existence. I don't owe you every single part of my being, like I am a person outside of the time that I spend here at university. So like, and you know, they kind of look at me like I'm speaking like Greek or something.

Mohera [00:32:45] But the minute that my lived experience can be turned into something profitable, marketable, something that they can utilize to bring notoriety to their department, to their program, anything like that? Oh Mohera, such a diverse talent. We're so lucky to have somebody who's so well equipped in so many different areas. I'm like bitch, shut the fuck up. Like, I know, I know exactly what you really mean. And yeah, so that's why I always say, you have to remember, universities are businesses first and centers of education second. They will never do anything long term that will impact their bottom line in a negative way.

Nichole [00:33:33] Absolutely. And they're always looking for ways to commodify their workforce, which is their students, in the same way that a company would be. The same way a company would want it to slip, you know, for some PR, that maybe they had helped a certain type of employee. My company used to do that where, it was real slick, the president would be like, we would have, you know, our annual big deal company meeting. And he'd be like, you know, I don't talk about it publicly, but I have helped several employees behind the scenes this year with, you know, certain issues they were having. And it's like, aren't you talking about it publicly now, though? So it's just that kind of thing where it's like, yeah, no matter what it is, it's never actually for you, it's somehow always for them. It's always like, how do we find the value in this for ourselves?

Nichole [00:34:35] I wanted too, we had a couple of really good comments here kind of relating to unpaid labor and I think - so my experience too, being in corporate America is we would often have interns, and the thing was that whether they were paid or not, it seemed like they were always doing grunt work. And I know in my industry, a lot of it was a way to curry favor with our top clients because we would have this internship program and then, oh, somehow, coincidentally, every fucking intern is either a child of one of our executives or a child and one of our top clients, like how that works. But these kids would come in and I remember we had this one kid this one time who was really obnoxious, like super spoiled brat, white dude, you know, just he was the worst. But he was always walking around just being like, I should be doing higher level work than this. I thought I was going to be doing this and that. And I was like, you know what? I hate you, but also, like, you do have a point, because we had him, like, stuffing envelopes and stuff.

Nichole [00:35:44] And it's like, to the point that a lot of people here are making is if you were experiencing that level of requirement as a student or as like a recently graduated person, whether your internship is paid or not, even a paid internship is usually not going to pay you very much. You're either getting no experience, like no actual experience, which highlights how bullshit the whole practice is, because they just want to see that you... What it is, is they want to see that you are willing to do something for free. Right, to show that you are willing to do anything it takes.

Nichole [00:36:23] And I do think there's a layer of classism filtering in that as well, like can you afford to do free work? And then I think also, it highlights that, like, if you're doing an internship where you're actually getting that level of experience, that should be a paid job. Like that should be like a straight up, like I have fucking benefits and a retirement plan level job and not an internship. So I think it just shows how bullshit the whole thing is and how it really is a way for companies, like colleges to do the work for companies of filtering out people who can't afford to work for free or might be like, no, I'm not doing that with my time.

Mohera [00:37:07] Yeah. The whole idea of we need to prepare students for the workforce. This is, OK, this is a really big idea that colleges and universities have fairly recently adopted. Right, because like I remember talking to my dad and being like, do they do this kind of shit when you were in college? Like, was this normal and stuff? And he was like, no, like God no, none of this. So, in particular, they say we want to prepare you for the workforce, but that's basically code for we'll do whatever bullshit it takes to make employers happy, essentially for the sake of compensation. We gain compensation in some form. That's basically all it's code for.

Mohera [00:37:52] So if you look at paid versus unpaid internships. OK, in engineering, all of our, at least in my school, all internships, co-ops are paid. Like period. It's obviously very lucrative because you get paid very well. For example, I had a friend who ended up getting a co-op with a chemical company, and as a college student, she was getting paid $27.50 An hour. Which is for us, like, fuck I mean, I was happy getting $8 an hour doing like a summer job on campus, you know, and this bitch is getting $27.50. I was like, fuck, OK, so that's obviously like incredibly lucrative.

Mohera [00:38:35] However, the company is not doing it and the university is not doing it because like, wow, you're going to gain very invaluable life skills and you're going to see how industry really works and you can take that and bring it in the classroom and that will help improve your education. That's all crap. This is truly what they're trying to say. For a company, they hire you, especially in something like engineering. It'll take you about a year to two years to figure out what the fuck is actually going on. That's pretty normal, right? You know, like you've been in school for a long time.

Nichole [00:39:09] Any industry, yeah.

Mohera [00:39:10] Exactly. So you really don't know what's happening. For them however, at that point, you graduate, they hire you, they're paying you as a full time process engineer or something like that, right, like that would be something in my case as a chemical engineering major. They're paying you at that full time kind of salary. So in their mind, they're basically losing out on money because you're doing like kiddy shit for the first year or two and you don't really have an idea of what's going on. It's only after that point that you really become an engineer and you actually know what you're doing and stuff like that.

Mohera [00:39:45] So for them, what they say is, hey, how about we do a co-op program where we bring in somebody who we basically would hire anyways after they graduated. We'll bring them in as a co-op, pay them less, but also enough so that it's lucrative for them and they want to do it. But we are significantly paying them less, so they're getting paid at the lower value, we're basically devaluing their labor. And then they're getting this experience, right, that they get to put on their resume and whatever, and it'll make the university happy. And then once they graduate, we'll hire them on full time, and so all of that like learning period that we would have been paying as a full time salary, they got that out of the way getting paid a smaller salary. And now they're there doing the, like, big time engineer work for that full salary value. That is what it boils down to.

Mohera [00:40:45] And the university benefits by saying, oh, look, X percent of our graduates get hired by this company. We have a great relationship with this company. And that company gives them money in so many different ways. It can be like, you know, in our case, the chemical company that I was talking about, they ended up paying for us to get like our study room remodeled, which was super gross because they basically paid to get wallpaper of their company all over our study room.

Nichole [00:41:17] Ew!

Mohera [00:41:17] It was so bad. But, you know, that's what -

Nichole [00:41:20] It just seems unethical.

Mohera [00:41:21] It's very unethical. We even had to put up a plaque being like, thank you to this company for paying for us to renovate our - yeah, like super capitalist, super corporatist, like really fucking gross. But it's like this really disgusting kind of mutual benefit thing. And in the end, like, we're actually suffering because you're not getting a true education. You're getting an education and then like you're throwing in work experience and you're calling it education. But instead of focusing on developing really good critical thinking skills, understanding fundamentals, improving like for engineers, it's very important to have very good math because math is literally the foundation of like engineering and things that we do. Instead of focusing all that, we waste our time trying to become as corporatist as possible and training us, again, to go into the workforce, be good, obedient worker bees, all for the sake of money. And as my professors call it, the big bad chemical engineering money.

Nichole [00:42:20] Gross. I mean, true, gross. Yeah, and you know, my experience, and I think it's just gotten so much worse, you know, in the last decade or two, is that everything's like, Latasha brought it up on the comments here, but like everything is a brand now. And everything, everything, you have to show value, like you have to already prove value before you get there. Whereas, I'm old enough that the job market was a bit different when I first entered it, when I was in my late teens just getting out of high school. I had to get, I had been working in the service industry for a while by then but like, I got my first corporate job. And there really was way more, like you could literally quit your job and often just go get another job. It wasn't like now where it's like if you're out of work, you're probably out of work for months, even if you do some kind of entry level position, like it's just really hard to get a job. And everyone wants you to be overqualified for the work that you're doing. Whereas when I was younger, being overqualified was a negative because they thought like, oh, you're just getting a job now and then you're going to leave. But now they're like, oh, great, you're overqualified. We're going to get you in super cheap. We're going to keep you underpaid, we're going to exploit you.

Nichole [00:43:50] And I just feel like there's so many, there's just such a high level of expectation of like I have to prove before I've even been given the real environment and opportunity to show somehow ahead of time that I'm already this thing. It's kind of like the dress for the job you want mentality, but like with literally everything. And that is a problematic mentality, right? Because it's like, well, I can't dress for the job that I want because I don't have the job that I want salary. I can't afford to dress for the job that I want. And that's kind of how it is here. And I just really struggled with that because I was someone who grew up in poverty and I had to drop out of school because I couldn't, I literally dropped out of my nutrition program at the time because I found out there was a nine month unpaid internship, like, full time requirement in order to become I think licensed or certified. And I was like, I literally will not be able to do that. I can't do it. Like even being a student, I was still having to work two or three jobs.

Nichole [00:44:56] I've lost my train of thought. But anyway, you get what I'm saying is that there's just such this level, and I do think it's really tied into systemic racism and classism. Because even for you, I think hearing all of these things that you're being expected to do, it's kind of like a way to say... I think to your point, to say oh, she's a good one, right? She's jumped through all the hoops that we've asked her to jump through, so she's not going to cause any problems. And so we can use her to increase our brand and she'll be fine. And it's the same thing being poor. It's like if you can find a way to do an unpaid internship as a poor person, then you might be able to be let into the club. But if you complain or if you're a single parent or a parent in general, right, and you start complaining and saying this is unreasonable and it's like, well, then we don't really want you here.

Nichole [00:45:56] What a mess. So I think to that, and you can respond to that if you want to, but I would really love to make sure that we have time to dig into your experiences specifically as a woman of color, specifically as an Indian American person in this field. And, you know, just what your experiences have been in general, but also maybe if you have any comments on being an Asian person versus maybe how other ethnicities are perceived in your field. Just all of your thoughts, you've always said so many interesting things to me off air so whatever comes up for you. But I would love to make sure we really get into that today, is like your specific experience in this like white male dominated space.

Mohera [00:46:43] Yeah. So I think being Indian and being like a woman, it's definitely different, I would say, than - OK, so one of my basically best friends in engineering, like going through my program, is a Black woman. And, you know, she and I definitely had very different experiences. So like, and of course for me too, you know, the university that I attend, that's where my parents teach. So basically all of the professors I had knew who like, for example, who my dad was. Almost all of the students in my class ended up taking my dad for math at some point. So for me, I kind of, in a way, had this like, this thing where people sort of automatically took me seriously because of my dad. But also I think, you know, subconsciously because I'm Indian right? They see me and they think, oh, she must be smart. She must be good at math and engineering, like, obviously right? Otherwise, why the hell would she be here? You know.

Mohera [00:47:48] And so I would say my experience, I felt more sexism like as a woman than I did racism, for example. And so, like I had, you know, I tried to make a point when I first started college to not like namedrop. So I had the same last name as my dad. It's obviously a very unique, last name so any time I'd say it, anybody would be like, wait, is that your dad? And I would be like, yup, you know, that's me, I'm the kid, ha ha ha, you got me. So I tried really hard because I wanted to make a name for myself, like I wanted people to take me seriously on my own. And, you know, I remember my very first semester being in essentially an introduction to engineering, an introduction to our campus kind of course. At our school we call them like connections courses, basically helping you acclimate to your major and to the university. And my instructor for the class was actually a PhD student. And he basically forced me, he forced everybody to say their full names. And so when I did, he ended up finding out who I was. And I think it just maybe rubbed him the wrong way because he would always be very, like, patronizing towards me.

Mohera [00:49:05] You know, I had an experience where, in the past, like any time, my dad's a boss at Excel, so any time I needed something to be done in Excel, I'd be like-

Nichole [00:49:15] I love Excel!

Mohera [00:49:15] I know! I was like, hey Papa, can you program this for me? And he would just be like, OK sure. He's a nerd so he'll do anything, like he doesn't care. And, you know, like we were expected to do like some pretty basic programing in class and we were trying to figure it out and I had no idea what I was doing. And he came up to me, this PhD student, and he was like, I would expect you of all people to know how to do this. And I was like, look, I'll be honest, like any time I need anything programmed I just ask my dad to do it. And he was like, well, daddy's not always going to be there for you now, is he? And I was like-

Nichole [00:49:49] Oh my god! Wow.

Mohera [00:49:49] You know? And of course, I mean, I would assume if I was a guy, he probably wouldn't have said that to me. But it's like this whole oh, I bet you're just Daddy's little girl kind of thing. And coincidentally, I ended up having this PhD student, I ended up having his dad as an instructor for one of my labs. And this man was just like racism, sexism, homophobia, all slapped into one person. I mean, just awful. And he would constantly be like patronizing the women in the class. Like, you know, I remember I was the only one at one point, like literally the only woman in my lab. And he just took it upon himself to say all kinds of things. He'd be like, oh, you know, like we know how like women like shiny things. Or he asked me, he asked a class, this was his test to see if you'd be a good engineer was if you knew how to change a flat tire. Fun fact. I don't know how to change a flat tire. I can be honest about it.

Nichole [00:50:56] Me neither.

Mohera [00:50:58] I was sitting there and, you know, like I didn't raise my hand because I didn't know how to change a flat tire. And he looked at me and he was like, he's like, how can you not know how to change a flat tire? It was like, I've never run into the issue before. And he was like, so what happens if you do? And I was like, I would call maybe roadside assistance or call my parents. And he goes, I bet you'd call your boyfriend now, wouldn't you?

Nichole [00:51:24] Ewww!

Mohera [00:51:26] You know, and that's, but that's the thing is like you get comments like that. And at one point I got so sick of it that I called him out and I was like, why are you making all of these assumptions and saying all these things based on the fact that I'm a woman? Right, like I literally just said that to him in class one day and he got super defensive about it and was like, oh I'm so happy like women are here, you know, like back when I was in engineering, there were only like two in our class. And it's like, yeah, because they probably had to deal with assholes like you like 24/7 and they thought it wasn't worth it. I mean, and that's kind of thing that you get and obviously these are more like obvious forms of like sexism and things like that, but then you'll get the more discreet ones where like a male professor, if a woman answers a question wrong in class, so especially like my friend who is Black, if she answered a question wrong, my professor would be like, no, that's wrong. Very blunt and straightforward. Whereas if a guy answered the question wrong, he'd be like, well, I mean, you're on the right track. It's not exactly that, but, you know.

Mohera [00:52:33] And it's like it's very subtle, and if you're not like a marginalized person, you probably wouldn't pick up on it. But I would constantly notice these kinds of things. And, you know, it's something you just have to deal with and unfortunately, like at a certain point, you either have to A) be willing to call it out, which will basically exclude you from people. Right, so like, you know, your classmates are in a way supposed to be like your comrades, especially in engineering and STEM. You do a lot of group work. So you have to kind of decide, like, do I want to call it out and then potentially exclude myself and hurt my education? Or do I want to just deal with it and like, suck it up? I face this a lot in, like, you know, math especially. Guys would constantly... Guys love very proudly saying the wrong answer, which is just like baffles-

Nichole [00:53:31] Oh, they love it.

Mohera [00:53:31] Because I'm like, how does anyone just have that audacity? Like, I'm just like, I never understood it. But a guy will just happily shout out the wrong answer. And again, the professor won't say anything. But I will say the right answer, and then a guy will take that and shout it out behind me and they'll be like, good job, man! And I'm like, dude! I just said that! You know, and stuff like that happens a lot, like men get away, especially with mediocrity. Mediocre white men are guaranteed jobs in this life. I swear to fucking God, it is the most frustrating thing ever. Like, you will be going to career fairs. You'll see a guy who literally, like, probably rolled out of bed wearing like wrinkled khakis and a polo with the stain on it. And he will get a job at the most prestigious company there. But you as like, especially for me, like a woman, woman of color. I'm in like the most fucking professional whitewashed attire I could possibly wear, trying not to look too ethnic. And I've got my resume stacked, like a great GPA and all this stuff, and they're like, hmm, I don't know. You don't really have these experiences. And like, neither do all those fuckers and you hired them?!

Nichole [00:54:51] Yep. I've watched so many men, white men, fail upwards at companies. I have a rage that will never be quelled in this lifetime. You can bury me under the ocean and I would still be burning hot with rage over it. I have worked with so, and I'm not exaggerating, like dozens of white men who have fucked up projects and get promoted to a different department because they're a problem because they keep fucking up their projects. But no one will just fire them or demote them or stop putting them in charge of stuff so they just think, well, maybe he'll be better at this thing. So let's give them a raise, more responsibility, and put him over here. It has happened countless times, countless times.

Nichole [00:55:44] And then you have someone like me who is like kicking ass at all the jobs that I was doing and would just be like, can I please, can I please, can we please give me a little bit more responsibility, give me a little bit more money? Can I have a change of title? Can I please get anything that will help me have more status in this job market? And they're like, mmm sorry no, we don't have the budget for that. You don't have the budget to increase my pay by 10 percent but you can give this guy a job that now pays one hundred thousand more a year. Cool. It's... Unbelievable.

Mohera [00:56:25] It's amazing to me how like, so many times there would be a project, and I would be the one who essentially did all the work, including the calculations, the programing, the like, everything to it. And when the time would come for the presentation, the guy would be like, OK, you can do the introduction, and I will talk about all of the graphs and the math and all this. I'm like OK honey, if you, oh please, go right ahead if you seem to know what you're doing. And then, like, they get halfway through and the professor like asked a question and they have no idea what they're talking about. And I'd have to swoop in and be like, yeah, so actually, this is the method that we use to accomplish these calculations. When I input this into Matlab, these are the - like I had to be the one to say it. You know, and it's frustrating because you constantly, like if you say something, you're a bitch. If you don't say something, people walk over you. Like you literally lose either way.

Nichole [00:57:26] And you get, like it's not just that people will walk over you, but people see you as weak as well. You know what I mean? Like, it's like a double whammy is like people walk over you and they then perceive you as weak. But the only other option is, yeah, to be seen as someone who can't work with other people or is a problem. I realize now that it's autism, but I got in a lot of trouble at my job for speaking out in projects where the project plan was flawed. And I would be like, that literally doesn't work. And I would get in trouble. And I even had in one of my annual reviews was like I needed to learn when to back down and stop talking. But it would literally be like whoever had put the project plan together didn't actually understand how the technology worked, so the plan that they had was for functionality that didn't exist in the current system.

Nichole [00:58:27] So that would be the kind of, it wasn't like I was just being a jerk and being like, oh, I don't, like that's not the best plan. Which still is valid. Right, that's still a valid conversation to have. But I would be like, no, but like literally it doesn't work that way, it's not going to work. And I was told that I needed to learn, even if I was right, when to stop talking. But you get dudes who just, like, are out there just saying whatever they want to say and getting away with it and being wrong and getting promotions, and it's just so... It just takes something away from you. And I think that's a big piece of what your examples demonstrate, is that you learn through all of these small ways over time. I mean, it was my autism that would make me see a problem and then not be able to, like, let go that no one was listening to me about it because your brain gets stuck with like, but no, there's a problem!

Nichole [00:59:22] But anyway, when you, you learn over time that, like, you're not going to have a mentor, right. You're not going to have someone take you under their wing. You're only going to get negative attention or we'll call it neutral attention, like you're never really going to be praised and given the full weight of recognition for what you've done. It's just all of this stuff wears on you and then you get to a job and it's the exact same thing. I never had a male superior take me under his wing and groom me and help me and, you know, stand up for me and, like, get me a promotion and do stuff for me. And honestly, even a lot of the women were too busy trying to protect what they had gotten, to do that for me either. I had one manager in particular who is a woman, and then our department head was a woman. She was like executive C level. And they both were just so caught up in like, not being unlikable, that when I came blazing in and was like, this is bullshit, let's change it! They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's maybe not. Let's calm down. And that was the manager who told me, it was a woman who put in my review that I needed to stop speaking out and back down.

Nichole [01:00:46] So anyway, just a lot of conditioning, and I loved your examples of just, it is subtle, but it's also not subtle to the people it's happening to. Like you, it's not subtle to you. It's just subtle to people who are not experiencing it that you just know you're alone and that you have to be flawless and perfect and overqualified in order to even have a chance.

Mohera [01:01:12] Yeah. I mean, definitely, I would say, like, when you're a woman in STEM you, you represent the masses. So if you don't do well or you don't succeed, automatically it's like, see, this is why women shouldn't be in engineering. Or this is why girls shouldn't be in math. Because clearly you don't know what you're doing. And it's like, but how many mediocre men are there in like literally all of these fields, but none of them are automatically representatives of the entire population.

Mohera [01:01:45] And you know too, I think you also see just I guess the ego that men tend to exert, like just throughout life. Like I notice, you know, so in a lot of the upper level math classes that I'm taking, we have to do like proofs essentially, right. So where you, you know, there's a statement, it's like actually go through and use like these like principles and stuff to prove that this statement is in fact true. And there is a joke that in math, whenever somebody says "clearly", the term "clearly", it's actually something that's not so clear. So I always make sure to never say "clearly" unless it is something like so blatantly obvious that you can't miss it. And yet guys will do proofs where instead of writing out like the work that they did, they'll just be like, so clearly this is a linear operator.

Mohera [01:02:43] And then the professor will be like, can you explain? And it's like, well, I mean, it's clear, right? And I'm like, I'm sorry, my feeble minded female brain can't understand. Can you please explain to me why it's so clear? And they can't do it right, they have no fucking idea. And, you know, so that's like an unfortunate thing you have to deal with. But of course, it's not going to stop them. Nobody's going to like call them out for it, they're just going to keep on doing it and they have no problem even like slightly getting humiliated because it's like, it's not a big deal, I'm still a guy, like I'm going to still get a degree and I'm going to end up getting a job, so like at the end of the day, what does it matter, right?

Mohera [01:03:29] And you know, professors play into a lot of it, too. Like, I think there's one layer of like being your peers. Right, so like me, a woman of color in a class of like all mediocre cis het white men. But then professors are a huge thing. You would not believe how many administrators, instructors there are on campus that are wildly unqualified to be in the positions that they're in. One of the biggest problems, I think, in STEM is that a lot of people who do like STEM based research and have degrees in STEM, they often try to then take that and go into STEM education because there's a ton of funding for basically initiatives. And like NSF will throw fucking money at you if you have like a good idea that relates to STEM education, like how can we make engineering students learn better? And if you come with a proposal, you will get shitloads of money for it.

Mohera [01:04:29] And what ends up happening is somebody like me who actually has like a little bit of background and experience in understanding like education and things like that, you'll see like that their ideas royally fucking suck and they're getting all this money. And so I try to ask them, like, how exactly is what you're doing different than this thing that's existed for like 50 years? And they're like... And instead of like actually answering it - because plot twist, they can't - instead of answering it, what they'll do is they'll be like, well, you wouldn't understand, and you need to respect that we are authority figures, I have a PhD. I'm like, honey, just because you have a PhD in one thing doesn't make you qualified to do something else.

Nichole [01:05:17] Right. But they're like, no, I got a certificate saying I know the most of all the people, so doesn't that mean I can just use it wherever I want to? That's, I think you touched on an interesting thing, that as someone who's, I guess in the education field in my own way, not academically but professionally, it is amazing to me how much men generally cannot explain themselves. Like, they just, they don't understand. Like they didn't learn... They didn't, I don't know. I think there's something about like we always have to, anyone who's marginalized really, like you always feel like you have to explain yourself, right? So you understand that, like, you don't have this sense that you can just move about the world and do whatever you want and just be above ever describing it to someone or explaining it to someone.

Nichole [01:06:12] Like I've been on so many projects where I'm like, hey, I have a concern or I have an idea, like can we sit down and talk about it? And a big way that my brain works is tell me how we got here, tell me why we got here. And then I'm very good, I think it's an autistic trait, I'm very good at optimization and problem solving. So it's like if you can get me how did we get to this today and how did you figure out like this is the solution, I can see stuff and be like, oh, I can make this 100 hundred times better or I can fix this issue we're having. And I've been shocked at like men like cannot, so many men I've worked with, literally it goes beyond they even don't feel like they have to. Like they cannot explain themselves.

Nichole [01:07:06] It's just like you're "clearly" thing. They get up there and it's like, well like walk me through the process, like what was the thought process? And they just look at you like what thought process? And it's like, well, from looking at your work, that tracks, however, like we're here now. Anyway, I think it's one of those like toxic masculinity things, you know, mixed with like corporatism that really doesn't hurt men. But it frustrates the rest of us, I think. Because there is just such a sense that, like, I don't have to explain myself, so I don't even know how to explain myself and I don't feel that I need to. And you're like, well fair I guess, but also not good for a work, like a collaborative work environment.

Mohera [01:07:57] Yes, absolutely.

Nichole [01:07:59] Umm, oh sorry, go ahead.

Mohera [01:08:01] It's just like super quick. Like a lot of the thing is that, so I'll say this is like especially common in STEM fields because, so I notice my mentor actually has her PhD in sociology. I ended up taking her for a women and gender studies class and she just basically took me under her wing and is like the most incredible badass human being on this fucking planet. So I was very grateful to have somebody like her in my life. But I noticed that the thing is, universities especially with respect to STEM, they don't hire faculty to teach. They hire faculty because they do, like, kick ass research and that can bring in a lot of funding. So, for example, they might publish a lot of papers, they might have received a lot of grants and stuff like that. And so those are the kinds of things that they look at. Like we literally have professors who like everybody just fucking hates. Like it is unanimous. Everyone hates this person, but they will never be fired because they are doing research that is bringing in money to the department. And so then therefore, as a consequence of that, the department gets more notoriety and things like that.

Mohera [01:09:10] And so, you know, you'll see a lot of things where like... I mean, STEM is fucking hard. Like some of these upper level math classes I'm taking, upper level engineering classes, God bless I have my dad at least there too who can help me and like, sit down with me and work through things with me that I don't understand. But they can be like really shitty teachers and then be like, oh OK, well you just need to figure out how to do it on your own. And it's like, OK, one class, yeah maybe I can do that, but five classes and I'm expected to attend class because attendance is a part of my grade? And you're essentially telling me, like I have to learn this all on my own on top of hours and hours and hours of homework as well?

Mohera [01:09:55] And they don't care. Even if you ask, hey can you do like this, can you do that? Could you maybe like record your lectures? Because, you know, like something. Like there's just such an unwillingness. Whereas at least I noticed in other fields, maybe like psychology, sociology, more humanities based fields, there is at least more of an understanding towards like human cognition and like the way that we learn. So like when I had my women and gender studies professor, she would always say before the test, like, hey, don't worry about it. The test is not that hard, you all are going to do great. And then afterwards she would say, psychologically, the average will naturally increase just by me telling you that the exam is not hard.

Mohera [01:10:43] And so there are things like that that I would notice that these professors in these fields would do that were different, whereas professors in my field, they're just like, oh fuck you, I don't care. Like, whatever, that's fine. You know, if you can't handle it, then you shouldn't even be an engineer. That's not my problem. And they'd happily say things like, like literally my very first class I took, my freshman year, our professor walked on stage and she said, a third of you will fail and change your major. I was like, what?!

Nichole [01:11:16] OK...

Mohera [01:11:18] Yeah, that was like the first thing she said! A third of you will fail this class, change your major. Yeah, you'll probably end up going into business, something like that. I was like, why would you say that?

Nichole [01:11:32] Wow. Well, and I struggled with that because math, math and science are not my strong suit and I always would say that I was bad in them. But when I look back on it, really, my STEM teachers were terrible. Like they were so bad. And I remember this one guy in particular, I think he was my physics teacher. He would do exactly that. He just he could not explain how or why to get to the answer. And he would get mad and he would basically tell you you weren't working hard enough or trying hard enough, or maybe you just didn't get it. And I'm like, we're in high school. We're children. Of course we don't get it. You know what I mean? But he just, he was incapable of explaining how to get there.

Nichole [01:12:24] And even like I had a female calculus teacher and she was the same way. She just prided herself that her class was the one that would break the smart kids. And I got my lowest grade ever in her class. And yeah, she just loved it. She loved this thing that she had. And she would not ever sit with you and just walk you through it in a way that would make sense to you. And they both had this sense of like, this is how I teach, get over it. Versus what you mean where I've also had teachers and professors who are like, oh I obviously have an awareness of like learning and I'm doing things to make the class more accessible to more people.

Nichole [01:13:08] You may find this funny. So I'm an instructional designer, I know a lot of other instructional designers through courses that I've taken and we talk to each other and a lot of them who are freelance get work through colleges and institutions and they say that professors are their worst clients, period. Some of them to the point where they will not work with these institutions anymore because it's so bad. And they say that the biggest struggle that they have with them is that a lot of institutions hire them to translate in person sessions into online content, and the professors won't give them the materials they need to do the work. Like they won't hand over their presentation materials and they will reject anything that the person does that's even slightly different. But it's like you have to, it's a different medium so you have to change things, like you have to do things in a different way. Anyway, I just always thought that was very funny that my friends who are independent are like professors are the absolute worst to work with of any client.

Mohera [01:14:19] I will definitely say, academic programs, especially in the fields that I'm in, they really get off on being like, our class is the one that will make or break you as like X Major, you know? And there's so many things that are intentionally done to make things inaccessible. Like, for example, if you ever read like a research paper, I know like when I was doing research, I had to read papers. I would sit there and be like, I have no fucking idea what this person is saying. And I would look at my dad to be like, can you just tell me what is like this one paragraph saying? And he would look through it and be like, oh OK, this is like all they're trying to say.

Mohera [01:15:02] And I, like I remember asking my research adviser, I'm like... OK look, I get that you shouldn't just be like, hey yeah, so this is this. Like, OK fine, I get it, right. But like, why not write it in a way that's accessible to more people and things like that? And he was like, that's just kind of like the nature of it. Like you don't want it to be accessible because the moment it seems accessible, then it loses that like sense of like caliber that comes with it. And I was like. But shouldn't the point of education be that it's something everyone can access because everyone mutually benefits from becoming more educated? And they're like, what?! What?!

Nichole [01:15:50] And it shows how, again, how capitalist the whole system has become, because the whole point, really, of education, and I think, I mean you could say for any field, but I would say in terms of like benefiting humanity, STEM in particular, is to expand on what's been done before. So we should be making stuff as accessible as possible so as many people as possible can say, this is interesting, let me take this and see if I can break it. Let me see if I can advance it. Let me see if I can change it in some way. Let me see if I can apply it in a way that hasn't been done before because that benefits all of us. But you can't do that if you're trying to get published and have some kind of notoriety, right, around the fact the thing that you came up with, that no one else can do the way that you do. And it's just so fucking backwards to what academia is supposed to be. It's supposed to be the literal sharing of ideas, the literal transitioning of ideas to more people to have new and different ideas.

Mohera [01:16:58] Yes.

Nichole [01:16:58] It makes me so mad, I'm a fucking corporate trainer and I'm so fucking hard for education and learning, and these people literally have learning, like jobs that they're teachers, like that is their job and they could not give a shit.

Mohera [01:17:14] I mean, I've literally had friends who had like a class with a professor who was like a complete asshole and they changed their entire major because of it.

Nichole [01:17:23] Yeah, I have too.

Mohera [01:17:23] And I was like, do these people not understand. Like, their one shitty class can completely change the course of somebody's entire life. And to me, that's a very serious responsibility. But, you know, again, that becomes the problem with academia is once money gets involved in something, that is when the entire scope and intention around it changes. And I think that that is the inherent issue with our academic system that we have today because, yes, you know, somebody like me, I think knowledge acquisition is like just a part of human nature, right? Like to understand, like literally it's about understanding the world around you and thereby you understand people and it should bring us closer together. I think it's a very beautiful and powerful thing. However, because these institutions operate off of funding and things like that, it loses that sense of purity. And I think that's so harmful.

Mohera [01:18:23] And I think when it really hit me was, I was interviewing with a chemical company because I was kind of a little bit financially desperate and I needed to have a backup plan. So I ended up interviewing for a summer internship. And at this point I had already had a research internship. I had done 15 bajillion different things, my resume was stacked, all of that. Came in for the interview. And, you know, the first question they asked me was they were like, oh, chemical engineering, but like I also see that you're a math major, how did that happen? And I basically said, well you know, I was trying to get a math minor and then I ended up taking this like pure math class called Proofs where you understand how you understand logic and how to, like, prove and disprove certain claims. And I was like, it was fascinating and beautiful and it really felt like an art more than a science. And, you know, as an artist, it really resonated with me on a deep level and it taught me that the scope of mathematics is so much broader and more abstract than what we learned doing like calculation based, like applied math based kind of work as an engineer. And so it taught me a completely different level of critical thinking. And they looked at me and were just like... But when are you going to use that? I was like-

Nichole [01:19:45] Literally every day of my life! It terrifies me that people are like, when are you going to use this critical thinking? And it's like, every time I get new information?! Is that not what you're doing?!

Mohera [01:20:01] I was like, do you understand I have the unique ability to literally take claims, apply pure logic to it and assess the validity of a statement? Do you know how useful of a skill that is?!

Nichole [01:20:10] Which is kind of what your entire field is sort of based on. Presumably, right? Is having this ability to, like, verify claims. Oh my god.

Mohera [01:20:23] It blows my mind, and they have no concept. And I was like, and at first I felt like, OK, do they maybe not understand me, did I misspeak or something like that? And, you know, and I was like, OK, you know what, that was the first question, let me let it go, it's fine. We move on and they're like, why did you decide to become an engineer? And I was like, well, you know, for me, I love science, I love math, and I love the application of those. But I also believe in social value and social impact. And so I wanted to do something that combined the two of them. And what better way than to go into engineering, a field where you literally touch the lives of people all over the world and you can make a difference in our communities, our environments, people who you may never see.

Mohera [01:21:07] Like I was going on about like all of this stuff and like to me, that's really powerful and I take that responsibility very seriously. And that's why I wanted to pursue engineering. They literally were like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, who, what mediocre white men are you fucking interviewing? The guy literally was like, I've never heard anyone talk like you before. And I was like, that should be a little concerning, right? Needless to say, I did not get hired, so yeah.

Nichole [01:21:38] Oh god. It's just heartbreaking. And infuriating. And anyway. Well, I feel like I could talk about a lot of this stuff for much longer, but I want to head towards wrapping it up. So what I wanted to make sure that we definitely tackle, because I think this is in some ways the most fascinating part of why I wanted to have you on today, is how have you found ways to sort of decolonize and reclaim STEM for yourself?

Mohera [01:22:11] Yeah. So I think, you know, that interview definitely was a big, that was like a big red flag for me that like I think something is fundamentally wrong in the way that we're, first of all, just taught to think. About what we do as people in STEM, whether it's engineering, science, math, whatever it is. I think there's like a fundamental issue like there. So that was a big thing that was like first there for me. A second was this idea of, I want us to stop thinking of our talents and our skills as something that will then incur profit later on, right? So an example that I always give is like, you know, I saw some article and it was like, studies show that if you play a musical instrument, you are three times more likely to get into med school.

Mohera [01:23:09] And if you want to go to med school, that's great and that's fine and if you think playing a musical instrument to get there will help you, great. Be my guest. Go ahead and do it. But what I realized, especially based on what happened to me, was that thinking like that causes you to lose that personal element, and I think the personal element is what gives something it's longevity, right? Like I always tell people, like, whatever it is, whatever's happening my life, like, fundamentally, I will never give up dance because it is a literal part of who I am as a being. It's like a part of my existence as a person. It's my identity. That is what gives me that drive to do it for the rest of my life. And I think it's the same thing here, is that we're so focused on doing a thing so that later on in life it will make us successful in our career. Whereas I say, what if we just do things because it causes us to think more broadly, develop a different path of kind of cognition in our brain, and it really just makes us happy and feel more interconnected, adding to its social impact overall. Like, why not think about things in that way?

Mohera [01:24:25] And so with that and then also understanding like my hometown is pretty rural, right? It's obviously, like I said, very conservative, very Christian. And I had the privilege of being able to travel to like nearby like more metropolitan cities to experience different things. Like right, different educational programs, different multicultural programs and things like that, where I knew that wasn't accessible to a lot of people in the surrounding areas. So a program that I developed was called Smarts, it's STEM Multiculturalism and the Arts. And basically what it was, which of course unfortunately COVID happened so we had to cancel the event. But the event essentially incorporated hands on STEM based activities for children, but all within an artistic and multicultural and kind of global perspective, right.

Mohera [01:25:24] So I'm a big believer in understanding the roots of things. And I think especially being in America, we try to think, like we kind of think like, uhh America's best and we're the smartest, and all this stuff. And it's like actually, you know, all across the world, there have been different developments throughout science and mathematics that have helped us get to where we are today. And so to understand that, and also to understand how those things influenced art and culture and society and history, and to have this kind of holistic view that we see so many things as separate, but in fact, they're all interconnected in a way that's developed the cultures that we exist in today.

Mohera [01:26:06] And so it was really there to give children, of course, accessibility to like a diverse scope of education, right, like a holistic form of education. But also we had just different, like fun things. So having you know, we had like movies and like videos of different like performing arts across the world. And we had like, we were going to have like international food there so people could try different things. A good friend of mine who is a Central Asian dancer, she was going to teach the families all a Middle Eastern celebratory line dance. And, you know, the goal of it really was to help people see that like it's not just us, it's not just STEM. There is this like broader scope to everything. And if you open your mind, it can actually make you better at the things that you want to do and it can help us feel more interconnected. And so that was a big reason why I worked on Smarts. And that really helped me kind of pave the way for what I want to do in terms of like my professional career in pursuing diversity based STEM education initiatives within like all of academia, but of course, particularly in basically p through 20. So like preschool all the way through undergraduate kind of level.

Mohera [01:27:29] And also too, I think just like embracing my own identity. Like I said, for a long time like I would walk into interviews and I would try to look as non-ethnic as possible. Try to wear like the string of pearls and like a nice, simple, muted tone blazer with like a slightly printed but not too printed shirt, like all these kinds of things. And then at a certain point I was like, fuck it, I'm just going to be who I am and I'll let that speak for itself, right. So, you know, I will say especially in, like, math, right. That is one of those fields where being feminine is actually kind of like a drawback. Like you don't want to be as feminine. You want to see as more like, oh, I'm too serious to, like, dress up because I'm like, I'm too smart for that or I'm too logical for that, like looking cute is like dumb. And for me, whenever I would give presentations in my math classes, I would like dress the fuck up. I would do my makeup, I would look as cute and feminine as I wanted to because I wanted people to see that, like, you can be intelligent, you can be logical, and you can still also be yourself and be enthusiastic and fun and gregarious and outgoing and things like that.

Mohera [01:28:51] So in my coursework, that was something that I decided to do because I wanted to change the way that people saw somebody like me. And then as a byproduct of all this, when I developed my portfolio, I wanted to make it my own, right? Like I saw a lot of my professors or graduate students, things like that, everything was like black and white. They had a basic headshot, they, all this stuff. And I was like, there's no personal element. There's no sense of who they are. And I figured this could also be a place for me to be a little bit more radical. So on my portfolio, I ended up getting a headshot that was looking very much like what I'm wearing now, I call it spicy professional.

Nichole [01:29:41] I love that so much.

Mohera [01:29:42] So, you know, like I have the blazer, but I also have, like, things that make me me. And, you know, so I did that. I included my pronouns. I even have my pronouns on my resume because, again, that's something that I think is important. I have a pronunciation guide for my name on my portfolio because I'm so fucking sick of people mispronouncing my name all the time. And I spoke about things in a way that I felt was important. So I made it clear that my purpose behind the things that I do is to make STEM more equitable, accessible, diverse, multidisciplinary, and that is my intention. My intention is not to make it this like elitist, you know, kind of study. Like I, I refuse and I reject all of those things and I made it very clear. And so for me, that's a way of, again, doing something that I believe is important, but also being like, I'm not playing these capitalist games anymore. I'm not doing it. Like I'm going to pursue work that I think is important and that I know will make a difference in people's lives long term.

Mohera [01:30:57] And yeah, I mean, that's, I think that is truly the most important thing is embracing the fact that, like I know a lot of us here, I would pretty much say probably everybody is fairly anticapitalist. Right, and unfortunately, because we do exist in the world, we are operating under capitalism to some extent. Yes, I get it. Trust me, been there, done that. But at the same time, I think wherever possible, it is important to make it clear that we, this is not the world that I want to see, right? If I want a radical existence for the world, I have to exist in the world radically. And that is just a fundamental belief that I have. And so I've decided that if I want to see something different in academia, I have to do that within the scope of academia. And that's the only way I'm going to enact change.

Nichole [01:31:52] I really love that because a lot of those women that I worked with who could have been mentors to me were so stuck in what they felt that they had to do to get ahead, that that is what they're trying to groom me to do as well. And so I think it's just so, I agree with you. I feel like it's so important for all of us to, in whatever ways we can, to push back against that sort of thing and try to pave a better path for the people behind us rather than teaching them to just go along with the status quo.

Nichole [01:32:30] Well, Mo, this was amazing! Again, I could go on and on, but we're at about time so thank you so much for coming on today. I knew this was going to make an incredible episode, and you just were incredible, I could listen to you talk for hours. If people wanted to follow you, if you want them to follow you, where can they do that?

Mohera [01:32:54] So I'm sure as everybody knows, I don't have mom's celebrity status, obvi.

Nichole [01:33:00] I mean, who does? [laughing]

Mohera [01:33:04] I'm just a basic regular person, so.

Nichole [01:33:06] Not everyone can have 900 subscribers on YouTube.

Mohera [01:33:09] I mean, honestly, it's an aspiration of mine. But yeah, I, so, I mean, honestly, if you just want to follow me, like just living life and being like, perpetually sad and depressed-

Nichole [01:33:23] Relatable.

Mohera [01:33:25] You can follow my Instagram. So it, and I think Nichole will link like all my stuff below. But if you want to follow me on Instagram, my Insta is @Mohera, so my name right here, yeah, down here, and then dot Manasa. So M A N A S A so that's me on Instagram. [@mohera.manasa] Same thing on Tik-Tok. I haven't posted any Tik-Toks yet, but that is a New Year's resolution of mine.

Nichole [01:33:55] I can't wait for that!

Mohera [01:33:56] Is to post ranty Tik-Toks because who doesn't want more of that? And Twitter is the same thing except instead of a dot in the middle, it's an underscore because Twitter is weird like that. And yeah, if you want to see also my portfolio, I know that might be good for other undergrads who are wanting to go maybe into graduate school or even entering the workforce. It's a really great way online to display the work that you've done and actually link to things that are tangible. Because I know it's one thing, obviously, to write about something in a resume, and it's totally different to see the work itself presented. So if you do want to see my resume, it's Mohera, so again my first name, Narimetla, N A R I M E T L A dot wixsite - I know this is like so fucking long and complicated, I'm so sorry.

Nichole [01:34:53] It's OK, the links will be in all the places so.

Mohera [01:34:55] And dot com slash portfolio. [moheranarimetla.wixsite.com/portfolio] So that's it. And if you want to check it out and you can also reach out to me if you want like tips. I had my mentor like literally work with me for like four months on developing this so I learned quite a bit about portfolios and resumes through the whole process. So I would be happy to talk with you about being a spicy professional.

Nichole [01:35:18] I love that Mo told me that spicy professional is what she called it, because I'm like, I always did that too! Because we were talking about how we will technically meet the dress code, but like we're not meeting the dress code at all, but like no one can actually report us because technically it all falls in line. And I was like, oh my god, I used to love that. Like, I used to wear teal tights under skirts, you know, just anything I could get away with, like loud blazers, big earrings, all of it. So yeah it was fun to dress up spicy profesh with you today. It was wonderful to talk to you. We're going to go hang out in the happy hour.

Nichole [01:36:03] And I wanted to say, in case you are someone who just listens to the podcast, that is fine. However, I want to let you know that our happy hours with guests usually end up like a second episode, and they're quite lovely. So if you have heard some of my past episodes and are really into them and wish there was a bit more, there actually is if you come to YouTube. Maybe you can get me more than nine hundred subscribers. But I just want to say the one we had with Kye and the one I had with Claire, we had really amazing happy hours after that ended up basically becoming second episodes. I feel like with Mo we're going to have a blast. So consider checking that out if you're someone who just listens not to the video.

Nichole [01:36:53] All right. That's it, we did it. We did it. It's done. That was amazing. All right, so thank you everyone for joining us this week. I will talk to you on the next one. I am going to be collaborating with Christopher Sebastian for the next episode. That's kind of like a lifelong dream of mine so I'm very excited about that. And for the rest of you, I'm going to pop on the video, we're going to take a quick little break and then we're going to come back to the happy hour.

Nichole [01:37:37] Hey Pynko, thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting it by making a monthly contribution on Patreon, by going to patreon.com/pynkspots. You can also make a one-time donation on Venmo to @pynkspots or on PayPal by using the link in the show notes below. Your donations help support a disabled neuroqueer anarchist live off her creative work, and that's pretty damn cool.

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Capitalism, COVID and Academia: Decolonizing STEM with Mohera!

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