Dear PatternMD

It’s difficult to think of something that could genuinely help people—and even harder to follow through with it. Ideas are easy to romanticize. You imagine the impact, the lives changed, the problems solved. But the moment you try to build something real, doubt creeps in. You start asking yourself if it’s even good enough. If …

Dear Resting Lab Face

In all honesty, my new motto entering the lab was: “Act like you give a sht.”* I would literally repeat it to myself before walking in. Not because I don’t care — I do. I genuinely love research. I love thinking deeply, solving problems, contributing to something bigger than myself. But I realized something uncomfortable: …

Dear Lab

Dear Lab, Coming into the lab, I worried I wouldn’t fit in. Girl straight out of Nigeria. New to microbiology. New to American academia. New to everything. And then I walked into a room full of Indians, other Nigerians, Pakistanis, Koreans — Christians, Muslims, Hindus, atheists. Different sexualities. Different genders. Different ages. Different stories. And …