Kate Marvel's dream of being a genius takes her to Cambridge to study astrophysics.

Kate Marvel is a scientist at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute of Space studies. She uses computer models and satellite observations to monitor and explain the changes happening around us. Her work has suggested that human activities are already affecting global rainfall and cloud patterns. Marvel is committed to sharing the joy and beauty of science with wider audiences. She has advised journalists, artists and policymakers, written a popular science blog and given frequent public talks. Her writing has appeared in Nautilus Magazine and On Being.  You can watch her Mainstage TED talk at go.ted.com/katemarvel

This story originally aired on Jan. 12th, 2018, in an episode titled “Origin Stories”.

Story Transcript

So I had really simple goals when I was a kid.  All I ever wanted to be was a genius.  Initially, I thought I was going to be a writer.  I was going to be a literary genius and people were going to talk about Shakespeare and Austen and Marvel, but there was one problem with that.  I actually have here an actual book of poetry that I wrote when I was a teenager and I’m going to read you some of it right now. 

I look through the window at the cold black rain,

It is black like my soul,

Black like my heart,

Black like my broken heart.

Why do you not love me with your heart…

Steve?

So clearly literary genius probably not on the horizon.  But that was okay because I had a backup plan.  I ran the drama club in high school and I was totally that kid.  I would go full method for Guys and Dolls or whatever.  So my backup plan was I was going to be the greatest actor of my generation.

I had it all worked out.  I was going to go to college.  I was going to major in drama and then something practical like English.  Then, four years later, I would move to L.A. and just become a movie star because that’s how it works. 

And my mom, who’s generally very supportive but has like a more realistic understanding of the economics of the film industry than I did, was just dead set against this plan and was trying to do everything she could to discourage it.  So we would watch TV and you know those commercials where some poor woman has to look directly at the camera and talk about her yeast infection, my mom would always be like, “See her?  She went to drama school.” 

But you know what?  I was not deterred.  So I went to college and I started going to auditions.  Turns out that film and theater are very visual mediums.  Like who knew?  For better or for worse, you are generally competing for roles against people who are the same physical type as you.  Turns out, there's a lot of tall, blonde girls who want to be actresses and also turns out most of them are more talented than I was. 

So it was really hard because I would go to auditions and I would get nothing, not even a callback.  I was like, “Does somebody need me to talk about my yeast infection on national TV?  Because I will do that.”  And nobody did.  Nobody did. 

But simultaneously, something else was happening.  While I was going to all these auditions and getting nothing, I was sitting in other classes.  Because I went to one of those universities that’s really annoying, that doesn’t just let you take whatever classes you want.  You have to take a bunch of really boring classes that you're never going to use again.  Like horrible shit, like science and math. 

And if I knew anything about myself, I knew that I hated science and math.  I especially hated physics because, honestly, I did not and I still do not understand why anybody would give a shit about that ball rolling down an inclined plane.  And like all of the problems in our textbook were about shooting things, like that’s acceptable behavior. 

And the problems would be like, “Bob has a rocket launcher,” but then if you had like the newer PC textbook, it would be like, “Luanda has a rocket launcher.” 

I was like, “You know what?  This is not for me.” 

So I wanted to get the science distribution requirement out of the way as soon as possible and I'd heard that there was this class in astronomy that was actually kind of interesting and really easy and they don’t make you take any math, so awesome.  I signed up for that just to get it out of the way. 

So simultaneously, as I was going to all these auditions and getting nothing, I was sitting in that astronomy class thinking, “Oh, my God.  Did you guys know there's a giant black hole in the center of our galaxy and like the universe began and we’re all gonna die a heat death as entropy takes over?”  And I was like, “I did not even know it was possible to know this stuff.  This is amazing and I really wanna know more.  If I wanna know more, I’m gonna have to learn some math.” 

So I started really seriously thinking about maybe like majoring in astrophysics, which was really weird.  I knew that would be hard and I knew that I would have to take some math.  But you know what really swung it for me?  You know what you get to call yourself when you know astrophysics?  You get to be a genius. 

So I switched my major.  It was hard at first.  I was getting C’s, but I got a lot of help and I got a lot of support.  And those C’s turned into A’s.  By the time my senior year rolled around, I started seriously thinking about going to graduate school.  I don’t really know what that was, but I knew that when you think about geniuses, you think about Einstein and Feynman and Stephen Hawking.  Two of those dudes are dead, so no good to anybody.  And the other guy is at Cambridge University. 

I was like, “That’s where I’m gonna go.  I’m gonna go to Cambridge University.  I think it’s in England.” 

So I applied for a scholarship and I got an interview, so I flew out to D.C.  And the interview panel was these two British guys who were so upper class that they were both named Nigel, and a third guy who, I’m not kidding, had lost his tongue in an accident. 

And so the two Nigels, I think they were like playing Good Nigel, Bad Nigel with me, but it didn’t matter because I couldn’t understand a word they said.  They had such posh accents.  Then like no-tongue guy would try to clarify and it was like a total fiasco.  I just started answering like stock questions, like, “Yes, I would say my greatest weakness is that I’m a perfectionist.”  I don't know.  So afterwards I flew back to California and I was so sad. 

Then two weeks later I got an email saying I'd gotten a scholarship.  I’m still, to this day, convinced it was an administrative mix-up but please don’t tell them.  So I was going to go to Cambridge and that was amazing. 

Let me tell you a little bit about Cambridge.  Cambridge is Hogwarts, but there's no magic and everybody is in Slytherin.  They have all of these requirements that make no sense, but like some monk came up with them in 1300 and now nobody can change them.  They have these dinners that you can go to every single night where you have to wear full academic regalia and you look like a giant bat. 

When I did my masters there, they announced the results by having a guy put a giant pin cushion on his head and climb to the top of the tower, read out the results and then throw the papers in the crowd, like that’s normal.  They even had secret codes that you could use to ask somebody to pass the port without directly asking them to pass the port, because it’s England and they can’t use that word or something.  Seriously, no British novels make any sense if people just use their words. 

But that didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter because I was there to be a genius. 

So the way that the British academic system works is it’s based on this sort of like medieval, monk-style guild apprenticeship system where you get matched with a senior professor.  That senior professor is your supervisor and they're supposed to kind of guide you into the ways of becoming an expert in physics, a.k.a. a genius. 

So I sat down with my adviser and I was like, “I’m so excited to be here.  What should I do?” 

He kind of looked at me and he's like, “I think you should do some physics.” 

So I went away and I tried to do some physics.  You guys, turns out that’s really hard.  I had no idea what I was doing and I was really struggling.  I would read papers and theoretical cosmology and I would be like, “I don't know what any of these words mean.”  And it was hard because I saw the other students and they seemed to be getting more help and more mentorship than me.  I think a lot of that was because they reminded the professors of themselves when they were younger.  I don't know how much you guys know about the gender balance in theoretical physics but I was not reminding anybody of themselves when they were younger. 

On top of that, the faculty, especially the younger faculty, they didn’t want to mentor me.  They wanted to do other things with me and it was just awkward.  I felt sad and I felt scared and I felt out of place and, most of all, I felt like an imposter.  Because this is theoretical physics.  We’re supposed to be finding the theory of everything.  How are you supposed to understand the theory of everything if you feel like you don’t understand anything? 

So I kind of gave up and after a year I went to go find my adviser and ask for help.  He wasn’t in his office and he wasn’t anywhere else in the building.  Finally, I asked the department secretary and she was like, “Oh, that guy?  He moved to Canada six months ago.” 

So I was in need of another supervisor.  That was a tough proposition.  Was I going to go with the guy who referred to all women as Anna, like that was an acceptable approximation?  Probably not. 

So it turns out that the only guy who was available to supervise me was available because, in addition to being a professor of physics, he also had a second job.  His job was he was the wine steward of Cambridge University, which meant that it was his job to go to France and buy the investment wines and also the everyday drinking wines. 

He took this job very seriously, like very seriously.  He was always in a state of what I would call advanced refreshment.  But you know what?  He wasn’t in Canada. 

So I worked with him and I wrote a thesis.  If anybody is curious, my PhD thesis is on the probability that a giant bubble of nothing will spontaneously materialize and eat the entire universe.  Given at 2017, the answer to that question is “not soon enough.”

So I had this thesis and it was enough to get a PhD.  It was enough to pass, but it wasn’t very good and it certainly wasn’t a great thesis.  It was not enough to be a genius. 

You know what?  By that time I was okay with that.  Because let me tell you something about studying the entire universe.  You look at the entire universe and, honestly, most of it sucks.  Like this right here, this planet is really the only part of the universe that’s any good.  It’s true.  I’m sorry, exoplanet scientists.  They are boring.  There's like no bars. 

So I switched my fields again.  I became an earth scientist and now I study climate change.  Being a climate scientist, you get called a lot of things -- like a lot of things.  You should see my email inbox or my Twitter mentions.  Actually, my Twitter mentions are fine because I block everybody who doesn’t amuse me, so that’s fine.  But the one thing you don’t ever get called is a genius because we don’t really associate climate science with genius. 

I don't associate climate science with genius because I know I’m not one. I know that, eventually, I will come to a problem that I can’t solve and I’m going to go need to talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about, an oceanographer or a biogeochemist or somebody who understands how ice sheets melt. 

I’m not a genius and that’s okay because, guys, the ice sheets are melting.  We don’t have time for this shit.  So I’m not. 

If I had to talk to myself as a 16-year-old, I would say, “You know what?  You're not a genius and that’s okay because you have a job, you do work that you find interesting, that you love.  Sometimes people listen to what you have to say, sometimes people you don’t even know, and eventually there will be an invention of a miraculous technology called Facebook. And Facebook will allow you to look up Steve, and you would not have worked out.  Thank you.