It’s not always easy to make friends, but in this week’s episode, both of our storytellers take us on heartwarming and sometimes unexpected journeys to find true friendship and meaningful connections.

Part 1: Eva Chebishev gets voted “Most Organized” in first grade and struggles to fit in with her peers.

Eva Chebishev (she/her) is a microbiology PhD candidate in the lab of Dr. Ana Fernandez-Sesma at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). Her research focuses on the immune response to Dengue virus (DENV) with hopes of creating a safe, effective vaccine that is protective against all four serotypes of DENV. When she finally finishes this PhD, she aims to combine her enthusiasm for science communication and public outreach with her life-long passion for musical theatre. To this end, she recently had the incredible opportunity to perform in the limited, Off-Broadway run of “Lifeline” an original musical which tells the story of Alexander Fleming’s discovery of Penicillin and the ongoing, rising global public health threat of antimicrobial resistance. She was also an attendee of ComSciCon-Flagship-2024, a science communication conference for graduate students, and has guest starred on the podcast “Mattsplaining” by Matthew Storrs. Outside of the lab, she performs in, directs, and produces “The Sinai Story Project”, a student-run showcase of original stories from the ISMMS student body. Finally, she is a diversity and disability advocate for equal opportunities in science and would like to thank The Story Collider for this opportunity and her Story Collider Workshop instructors for helping her find and craft her story.

Part 2: Morgan Roberts is worried about how people will see her if she enters a high school math competition.

Morgan Roberts is a Mechanical Engineering major in her junior year at Boise State University. She is currently pursuing aerospace engineering and has had wonderful opportunities interning for various aerospace companies in the US and is hopeful to get more! She loves playing volleyball, reading, spending time with friends and family, and working in the machine shop on campus.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

My first grade class is sitting in crisscross applesauce, patiently, uncharacteristically quietly waiting for the results of the end of the year class superlatives to be announced. Now, I'm not going to go into the details of how problematic of an idea it is to have six and seven year olds socially rank each other and prescribe labels that would follow those kids for years, except that among the classics, like Most Likely to be President and Most Fashionable, there is also the arguably questionable Coolest Girl and Cutest Girl.

Now, you're probably wondering what identity I was saddled with as an impressionable six year old who already felt like she didn't fit in. Smartest Girl? Nope. My fellow first graders unanimously voted me Most Organized.

And I was proud. I took it as a compliment, until recess when I overheard some of the girls in my class giggling to each other. “Too bad we couldn't vote Weirdest Girl or Teacher's Pet. She's such a freak.”

Eva Chebishev shares her story at QED Astoria in Queens, NY in May 2024. Photo by Zhen Qin.

Sitting behind a nearby tree, I curled up with my favorite pop up book, the fold out Atlas of the Human Body, and cried, soothing myself by tracing the path of blood through the heart with my finger over and over and over and over and over and over again, until my silent tears stopped falling and my stomach stopped hurting.

You see, when I like things, I don't just dip my toe in. When I like something, I do a full deep dive into full on obsession and want to know everything about it. I collect fun facts, like Pokémon cards, to hand out and trade with other curious kids, but somehow I always overdo it and scare them away.

I don't understand this invisible line of being too excited or too much. Why is it bad to be passionate?

I try to restrain myself. I do. I bite my cheek until it bleeds and I sit on my hands to keep them from springing upwards to answer a question when I'm worried about being a show off. I quickly flip my exam paper over so no one can see the perfect score I got and make fun of me for being a know it all. I try so hard to shield my overwhelming or annoying personality with a carefully curated mask of indifference, but it doesn't work. It never works.

In Science class, I overhear a classmate complain, "Ugh, why are bug bites so itchy?" And I feel the urge to share the reason bubble up inside of me like a kettle about to scream, and I try to push it down, but wait. This is AP biology. We're all nerds here, right? I mean, maybe they'll appreciate having their rhetorical question answered and share their cool fun facts. Then we'll become best friends and get to hang out and have sleepovers and talk about microbes and fun animal facts together.

I bounce over to them excitedly and say, "It's because when you get bitten, your body sends out itching signals called histamines, which attract immune cells to the wound site to defend your body. And it's actually the same thing that happens with allergies, which is why allergy medicines like Benadryl are called antihistamines, because they actually fight off the histamines because you don't want an immune response. But it also depends what you mean by bug bite, because mosquito bites specifically are extra itchy, because mosquito spit actually has the power to keep your blood from clotting like it normally would when you get cut. Isn't that so cool?”

There's silence and sideways glances to each other tell me all I need to know before the inevitable chuckles. Histamines weren't funny and neither were blood clots. Why were they laughing? Oh, right. They were laughing at me, of course. Every time.

You know what I don't get? Rhetorical questions. Why do people ask if they don't want to know the answer? Why do they shame me for providing one? How are they satisfied just not knowing? Doesn't their curiosity keep them up at night too?

In college, I learned about bacteria, viruses, and the microbiome. You may know the microbiome from its acting debut in the Activia Yogurt and Dove Body Wash commercials, but it's so much cooler than that.

Okay, without geeking out too much, did you know that of all the DNA in your body, only about 10% of it is actually yours? The rest belong to the millions of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that call your body home, protect you from all kinds of disease, help you digest food, and may even influence your diet and behavior. Without your gut microbiome, it would take 50 years to digest a hamburger.

So, microbiology became my new special interest. Once again, I stuck out by being too passionate. What can I say? I found kinship with these tiny little freaks trying their best to be helpful and useful but so misunderstood and labeled as a germ.

This one time in college, we had an hour downtime in lab. And while everyone else worked on homework, I decided to look at my hair and dead skin under the microscope. The others weren't really about it. They said, "Ew, that's so gross, Eva!"

And here I was confused, dismayed and betrayed. Because here was a class of exclusively Biology, Biochem, and pre health upperclassmen. Okay, future scientists, doctors, nurses, dentists, PAs, and I was still the weird kid. Would I ever find my people who wouldn't look at me like I was the specimen on display if I rambled about how absolutely wack the rabies virus is or show them the musical theater science parody song that I randomly came up with the night before. In the moment, I felt small and embarrassed as usual and wanted to curl up and hide, but later I buckled down on anger.

"What do you mean 'gross'? We all just centrifuged vials of horse blood and dissected pig brains for lab, and you think hair and dead skin are gross? Seriously?”

For the first time in my life, I didn't blame myself for not fitting in. Why should I have to hide parts of myself away or dull my excitement to be liked or even tolerated? My passion is what brought me here and I'm proud of myself, quirks and all.

Once I accepted myself, I started to find true friends. Friends like Claire, who spent lunch giggling with me over really bad cheesy Chemistry jokes like, "Did you hear about Oxygen's date with Potassium? It went OK.” And friends like Tessa, who shows up to our first PhD seminar wearing bacteriophage earrings and an antibody necklace. Another friend tells me that when she was in high school, she was voted Most Likely to Build Their Own Boyfriend. So, maybe Most Organized is actually pretty tame.

I wish that I could go back in time and see that little girl crying into her anatomy book. I would hold her so tightly and say, "Eva, there is nothing wrong with you, and you don't need to be embarrassed about how smart you are. You don't need to dull your light or hide your passion or anything and change for anyone because your curiosity will carry you to distant places with so many cool opportunities. And one day, you won't even care about whether people think. I promise. You are worthy of love just the way you are.”

Part 2

Growing up, I had a best friend and we had the perfect childhood that every kid dreams of. We were the same age, next‑door neighbors, and we had the same elementary school teachers. We spent every single day together and I adored her with all my heart. She had my soul and, as an extremely emotional person, that meant so much to me.

Every day we would spend together, we would be playing like we were demigods from the Percy Jackson series, or like we were in the Hunger Games, building obstacle courses, making dances. We did it all.

Morgan Roberts shares her story at The Lookout Room at the Boise State Student Union in Boise, ID in November 2023. Photo by Joseph Rodman.

As we grew up into 13‑year‑old teenage girls, all we wanted to do was fit in. For me, that meant playing sports, straightening my crazy head of hair or trying mascara for the first time, which was a big deal to me back then. It just felt like no matter how hard I tried, nothing was ever good enough and I never fit in with my peers or my so‑called friends at the time.

One day, I found myself sitting at the cafeteria in our middle school and the room was just buzzing with activity, you know, middle school cafeterias. I was sitting on the edge of my friend group, like where I normally sit, and we were all at our designated spots at our designated table. My best friend was sharing a story in a lively tone and everyone was chipping in, just adding to the story and just having a good time, having conversation.

For me who was extremely quiet back in middle school, I added into the conversation because I wanted to feel included, I wanted to feel heard, and I wanted to be a part of with my friends. And when I said something, my best friend looked at me and she just rolled her eyes and completely dismissed me as if I didn't even deserve a glance without an eye roll and a scoff in response. So, that best friend that I've spent so many years with and who held my heart just completely crushed it to dust without a single thought.

Having my self‑confidence and self‑worth on that very last straw, it just snapped. All my insecurities and everything just fastened itself around my chest. My cheeks flushed, my chest just burned and tears pooled in my eyes, worsening as the friend across from me looked up at me in pity.

At that moment, I just knew I couldn't stick with those people who treated me like I didn't deserve to be there, like I was invisible and they didn't care about my presence let alone my feelings.

After that, I kind of just threw myself into school. I had had done well in school in the past, love math, love science, but it just seemed ever more important that I do well in my studies to at least prove myself with my intelligence, if nothing else. So over the next few years, I just numbly floated throughout middle school up until high school. Acquaintances and friends kind of came and went, but I was essentially alone. I would sit at lunch alone. I had no one to sit with and it was heartbreaking. I was all alone.

After that, I kind of was just trying to prove myself in my studies, but it seemed like no matter how well I did, it was never good enough. I was just never smart enough. Not only was I doing bad in school, I didn't deserve to have friends.

One day, I was talking to my math teacher because I sometimes ate lunch with her in her classroom and she told me about this math competition that Boise State was holding. It was a math competition that a bunch of the schools in the Valley were holding.

I at first was like, “A math competition? No.” Like, it's a math competition. That's so dumb. And the label “nerd” still had an extremely negative connotation in my mind.

But then she told me that some of my closer acquaintances were going to be joining me and I was like, “Okay, fine. I'll do it.”

So, the day came and the group of eight of us that she managed to gather together, we all gathered up at the math building just down the road and we were all ready to go, excited to be there. They held introductions, the ice breakers where you would have to untie a knot without letting go of the rope. All those silly little ice breakers. And we were split up into four and dispersed into the rooms where we were tasked with solving three complex college‑level math problems.

At that time, I was 15 years old and I am surrounded by some of the most brilliant minds in my graduating class. What in the world am I doing here? And those people: Sarah, Hannah, and Amber, who are actually all engineers today, we all just sat down and got started.

The time started ticking and we were all just scribbling away on the whiteboards that were all around the room. It was crazy to me that they actually had whiteboards on every single wall. And then we were just scribbling on our notebooks, just doing anything we could to solve the problems that were handed to us.

When we were getting through a few of these problems, all of a sudden, we just came to one of these and we were stuck. We had no idea what to do. And even after a hint from the volunteer who was proctoring our competition, we were like, “I have no idea what to do.” So, we were just sitting there, just staring on it.

Then all of a sudden, something just clicked in my head. Like a literal light bulb went off in my head, you know, like the “ding”. I was just, “Oh, my gosh, guys, I got it.”

So, I excitedly was just telling them, “Like, you just do this and this and this.” Then I was writing it down as I went and we finally came to that solution because of something that I managed to come up with.

So, just pride and joy fizzled in my chest because, for once, something that I had done mattered. I had felt heard and my ideas were being used to come to a solution to something. I just felt so happy.

My parents and sister and grandparents showed up for that silly little math competition and I ran up to my mom and got to tell her all about the epiphany I had during solving one of those problems. She was so excited for me. And even though they were just handing out participation awards at the end of it, I was just so excited.

And it's crazy because, all of a sudden, this newborn self‑confidence and doubt were clashing in my mind and I was just now struggling because I still wanted to feel like I belonged but I also, for once, felt heard and, like, I mattered.

Finally, over through many trials, I finally found a friend who I'm able to call a best friend now, even if she lives in Arizona a hundred miles apart. I finally found a best friend and I also, because solving that problem at that math competition, I fell in love with the problem‑solving aspect, especially when it's the part of engineering where you do problem solving. So I had a newfound purpose to go to college and become an engineer.

Because of that, I, today, am now working in the Engineering Innovation Studio on campus, which is home to amazing shop supervisors on campus who I'm lucky enough to call my friends and I finally feel like I belong and I'm a part of a community at Boise State in the College of Engineering that makes me feel loved and seen and heard.

And just looking back, I just think that people are so worried, like, just thinking and worried about themselves and how other people see them that they're not worried about you. If they are, then they have their own insecurities to worry about.

And looking back at the cafeteria table, I just think that what my best friend did sucks, yes, but we were all just trying to fit in. She just did that by finding other friends, which is okay because we're all in our own lives trying to figure out things as we go.

And thinking of the timid little girl that I was, I'm just proud to say that she would be proud of the person she became and in awe of just what I'm doing now. That I am in a world where she deserves to be loved and take up space.

Thank you.