MIT Museum education coordinator Faith Dukes wonders if there’s something wrong with her when she fails to couple up.
Faith Dukes is the Education Coordinator at the MIT Museum where her passions for inspiring the next generation of innovators and learning about the latest in science and technology collide. There, she creates interactive sessions for middle and high school students to explore using MIT’s exhibitions, collections and current research. Her dedication to outreach has extended to the local community where she chairs the Boston Blueprint Conference for Middle and High School Girls. Faith credits failed experiments during graduate school for helping her find the greatest coping tool ever, boxing. Today she teaches a weekly kickboxing class in Cambridge and calls the gym her meditation space. Faith earned her PhD in Chemistry from Tufts University and her BS from Spelman College.
This story originally aired on Feb. 10, 2017.
Story Transcript
I am a stickler for time, and timelines, and checklists. I have visions of vision boards and goals that I have for my life. I have probably had more fights with friends or breakups because someone was late or changed our plans at the last minute. My undergrad institution had this slogan: “To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late is unacceptable.” It was a match made in heaven.
So I have this thing about timelines and sometimes I wonder, “Where did this come from? Who made me think about these timelines all the time?” Then I get on the phone with my parents and they have questions like, “Are you meeting new people?” “Have you been out lately?” “Do you have a boyfriend? Are you getting closer?”
I get it. I’m on bridesmaid dress number eight or nine and they can no longer congratulate me on being a good friend. It’s more like, “That’s nice. I’d eventually like to go to your wedding one day.” We have these conversations. Again, I get it. It’s frustrating, but I get it, and I know that underneath those questions are real questions. “Are you happy?” “Are you leading a fulfilled life?” “Did we do everything right with you?” “Are you okay?”
Sometimes I hang up the phone and I go, “Is everything okay? Is there anything wrong with me?” I think about it and I think about those answers. I think to the alternate life, the alternate life the eighteen-year-old me had. Eighteen-year-old me who knew everything. She was a fortune teller. She had a timeline.
Around eighteen, I looked at my birth certificate and I noticed my mother’s birthday. I noticed how old she was. She was twenty-eight when she had me. I did a little math. She was twenty-two when she got married and graduated from college, twenty-three when she had my brother, twenty-eight when she had me. Perfect. This would be my timeline. I have it right in front of me. Never mind that they were divorced two years later after I was born or, that I had never been on a date at eighteen. I knew I could accomplish this goal in four years.
I wrote out my timeline. Step one: Go to college. Major in science. Because how would I get my children at the top of the science fair podium if I don’t have a fundamental background in science? Step two: Find some unsuspecting guy and get him to put a ring on it. Step three: Graduate with my BS in one hand and my MRS in another. Step four: Have some kids. Perfect, I’ve got it all down.
I get to college and I have fun and I meet these wonderful women that I will one day be a bridesmaid to and it’s great. But I get to graduation with my BS in one hand and no ring on the other. I’m okay with this because nobody else is getting married yet and I still have a little bit of time. So I do what any self-respecting student would do and I give myself an extension. Plan A [with] .ext for extension would now be, “Get married at twenty-eight. Have kids soon after.” We’d be good.
I start on that alternate path of going to grad school and it’s wonderful. I’m learning, and doing research, and really getting into the things that I love, and teaching. And again, not really dating or going out and I’m getting closer, and closer, and closer to this extended timeline date of twenty-eight. Again, I start to think, “What’s wrong here? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with us? What are we doing wrong?”
I start some mini-goals. Step one: Lose some weight. Guys like skinnier girls. Step two: Go down the rabbit hole that is online dating. And because I’m a person who likes to have goals and checklists, minimum three dates a month. That’s how we do it. That’s how we get this goal accomplished. Step three: Again, meet that guy. Step four: Have kids. You know. We got it. So we do those things. I join an MMA gym. I’m getting closer to graduation, and I found this love for boxing. I’m also fifty pounds lighter and I also have this PhD in chemistry. It’s exciting.
I also realize along with it I have this family, this family of women who boxes well, and this family of women who have had me be at their sides on their big day, and their children who call me aunty, and the biological family that I have that supports me in every step of the way.
And I have kids.They are the children that come to the MIT museum where I work and I build experiences for them that show them what science and engineering can be. I tell them that you do not need a certain background or a specific look in order to be a part of this world. Those are my children. And it’s a fulfilling life.
As I was thinking about the story that I would tell you all tonight and I decided there is kind of one thing missing. I went down the rabbit hole and I took a break from my dating sabbatical to online date again. I started talking with this guy who said all the wonderful things and he was this big romantic … and he said to me one day, “What if you get to this opportunity tonight and you’re telling this story and I’m sitting in the audience, looking at you, and I’m your boyfriend?”
Boy, did he kill my vibe because I was really working on what I was going to say and then you’re messing it up. I had what I was going to say.
Sorry to tell you all tonight, he is not in the audience. It did not work out, but it reminded me that even pragmatic me is sometimes a sucker for romance. Even if it hasn’t happened yet, on my checklist it still could. Now I have an asterisk by it, which means it’s still possible. It hasn’t happened yet, but the story is untold. This journey has not been lived yet, but it’s great so far.
On the journey with these untold stories, I may not know what’s happening yet, but sometimes I get some answers. The first is, “Yes, Mom and Dad, you did do a good job.” The second is, “No, Faith. There is nothing wrong with you.” Thank you.