Yvonne Rodriguez and Jesús Pando

00:03 My name is Sue Spano. I'm 54 years old. Today is October 2nd. We're at the Anaheim Convention Center and my relationship to the other speaker here. Yvonne Rodriguez is a friend of hers.

00:18 And I'm Yvonne Rodriguez and I'm 47 years old.

00:28 Today is October 2nd. And we're at the Anaheim Convention Center at the Southwest Conference and my relationship.

00:36 To Jesus is that we're friends.

00:42 Yvonne we talked a little bit about this earlier today. One of the things that you and I have in common is that we both came to physics late. We both had we're both Mexican-American. We both had grown children when we started her career and we were both much older than our classmate. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that experience when I was in my thirties, actually, I unlike most of the physics professors in our department. I didn't have scientists as parents and I wasn't out in the garage all day doing all kinds of crazy stuff. I don't know what they were doing out there, but I actually wanted to be a World Famous Chicken a poet and I ended up being the first to Ghana to get a PhD in physics at UC Santa Cruz and the way that happened was I originally I went

01:38 In high school, I learn how to type and take shorthand. So I when I went to a community college, I quickly dropped out of every single class cuz all I knew how to do is to type in to take shorthand. So I dropped out and I went to work at the mall and while I was working at the mall if a recruiter came in an army recruiter and said you can see the world if you join the military and I was too young and stupid to know that I could just save money and go and see the world. But cuz my we didn't take vacations my father would get time off we go to weddings and baby showers, but never heard of a caitian. So there I went at the age of 18 to the Air Force and my father was disappointed and my mother was disappointed. She wanted me to stay home and find a husband and I ended up in Germany and I ended up getting married and I start having children right away. And so I didn't go to college right away, but later on.

02:38 Found myself working supporting my kids and I just and I always thought I should have gone to college. So I started taking classes at the junior college again the same the very same junior college and this time I was involved with the fund a project and that is an English counseling mentoring program for Chicano Latin Latino students, and we took English classes where we learned how we where we read about Latino Chicano authors and students also got to write about their own experiences and all the sudden I started doing really well in school in all areas and I loved it and that that's where my gold that's where I dreamed of living my life for the world famous pecan a poet and they took us to a conference at UCSC UC Santa Cruz. It was a Statewide Puente conference and it that day was full of Chicano Latino students and it was a real sea sip where that type of day was the only University I had ever been to.

03:38 And so I applied and that was the only place I applied to and I know it's going to go there to be a poet and

03:47 Just before I transferred after I'd already been accepted. I took a math class to the math class that I kept putting off and I did really well in it and the instructor showed us a video of scientists doing math using that so they were trying to calculate the probability of lightning striking at a particular place and I was very intrigued about it. So I thought when I get to UC Santa Cruz, I'm going to check out the sciences and I use air quotes on Sciences cuz I don't really know what it was that he's a scientist they were doing science and it was just pretty mysterious. So when I got to ucic I took a class called Earth catastrophes and we learned about earthquakes and volcanoes and the big bang and I had to take a physics class and I learned what really count me was a wave on a string when I saw the wave traveling down the string. I just I couldn't believe it. So I ended up I guess the poet in me was captivated and I ended up.

04:43 Declaring a major in physics, so that's how I came about you know physics. And so, how about you? How was your

04:52 How did you come about it later unless similar story in the sense that I came too late in high school. I did not have a very good high school experience in a sense of a good educational experience delivery gangbang in at like that kind of stuff and back in the 70s when I was in high school.

05:12 Is there a bad crowd there around the wrong with it the difference between then and today's guns we have guns. So you are a fist fights all the time. But now they want this fight. They just take each other so

05:28 I think probably a similar story to a lot of people that know very poor guidance counselors. I didn't know anything about going to college or anything.

05:37 And I had a chemistry teacher who I was taking chemistry for dummies and in my senior year and I told her and she said are you are you thinking about going to college and I go

05:50 I want to work him back Godfather. My body knows roofing company and she goes now. You should really think about college. I think you can you can do it. So that got me a little bit excited and she helped me do applications and Grant applications. I got a Pell Grant. That's what that okay why I go to college and after one semester, they asked me not to come back because I didn't think I was ready and I wasn't ready and I met my former wife, you know knocked her up pretty soon. I had a baby and a full-time job and we were I was on my way to having a regular.

06:30 That the life that I recognize, you know, working stiff with a with a family of growing out of my my Troublesome teenage years and pretty soon. I had a son as well. And so my my marriage broke apart. Luckily my wife my ex-wife and I stayed on friendly enough terms that the kids never up kids always have her but they didn't suffer as much because of the split up and I've always been very grateful to her. But then I got a job as an office machine technician. I used to work on copiers and typewriters in this kind of stuff and after a few years of doing that it doesn't take very long to become an expert doing that and it gets very boring because you recognize every single problem cuz you seen it over again in a monkey can do your job be going there. All somebody tells you on the phone my copier is doing this and you know exactly what it is. You can go in there with almost no tools cuz you know exactly what it is change the pardon off Hugo.

07:27 Do I have a lot of free time? And at this point I was also in my thirties and I decided Well, I can spend my nights.

07:37 Getting back into trouble or I can do something else and I started to go to a community college and the first class. I took was a math class because I figured that's where I had the longest to go cuz I knew that there was a requirement math requirements and so forth and I took the math class in like you had a very well and I said well, let me take another one then let me let me take another what I also had no intention of being a physicist. It was no for me aha moment, you know, and then I took more of physics more more mad and a math professor. I had the intention of being a math major. Cuz that started the like it

08:11 And it goes you should take a science you should take physics and that I took physics and I thought it okay. I like that one. I'll take another one that took another one and pretty soon it at at I quit my job, which is very difficult cuz I still had to support my kids at 35 and finish my undergraduate Century in one year where I could go full-time cuz I've been taking classes at 9 and then I got into the PHD program and I got the page 341 and by that time I was hooked on physics. You're right it is.

08:42 Poetry there's something really poetic about physics not everyday, you know It's a Grind but but but then there are times when it's really just poetic. It really is something that GI understand this or what I'm teaching a class. I kept teaching special relativity right now and you see that you get excited about a concept when you're talking to kids and then they you know, it's just really G. Look what I can do that that a history major doesn't understand. I can understand some of history or much of history, but they don't have access to my universe which is sort of more wide. So I found that really exciting interesting. So that's how I that's my story.

09:27 So how did you so what kinds of things did you have to do? Like if you work at a tell your kids?

09:36 Don't do this or do this. What kind of things would you say about going to call or life in general ER?

09:50 Well, it's funny because I'm I always eat actually, I wish like I long for time with my kids were I can have these kinds of conversations where we can have like a heartfelt conversation and I could let them know how much I love them.

10:09 In what kind of things I I wish for them, so.

10:14 But I I guess I want to say to my kids because I the whole time that I was going to school. We lived at Family student housing and I suffered a lot because I love physics and

10:29 I wanted to be a good mom. So I never felt like I was doing very well in either one of those areas because I was always trying to make both of them. Right and so I I wouldn't either if I was doing really well in school. I ate it was always bittersweet because if I did really want to school that meant that I just spent like a whole week. You're not spending enough time with my kids are sometimes I'd be sitting at the table.

10:55 Doing homework, and I don't know how many what I realized. How many hours are going by until like late at night. I'd be done and I would look up and the house is dark and everybody's already gone to bed and I would feel really lonely like in that moment, even though like I finished the homework and I spent so much time on it. I felt so lonely. I miss my kids so much and they had gone to bed and then I wish I could have spent time with them. So

11:23 I have this is not really your question, but I would like to say to them that how much I miss them in those moments and

11:33 On the other hand, they're doing fine. And so sometimes I talk to students who they cry and they tell me how did you do it? I I have kids and I never spend enough time with them in the end. It's so hard because I'm the only you know, I'm only person of color in the department and I have to prove myself and you know, I have to prove myself have to work hard. And so I I feel like I'm not spending of time with my kids in it and I say to them. I wish I didn't worry so much. Like when I remember I see their tears and I cried Those Tears. I remember what it felt like and now I wish I had me worried so much cuz they were fine. I wish I would have said to myself. I'm not going to quit I can't let go of this.

12:14 So I'm going to do well and then when I come home after doing really well, I'm going to come home a happy person and I'm going to my kids are going to see me being happy and then they're going to be happy. So I want to say to my kids to just go live life to the fullest cuz I feel like I didn't live life to the fullest really cuz I was always worried about one thing or another now. I wish I had I had put in 100% and and and then they wouldn't had seen an example of a woman living 100% not a woman living with so much regret one moment excited the next moment and back and forth. Did you have those kind of I think it's easier for a man, but it's easier for a man with kids and then I had my kids full-time only over the summer. So we don't have one of these Arrangements words on it when I'm very grateful for

13:08 Just on the weekend or something instead. I had him for a whole summer because that lets you actually be a parent instead of the for a week in your babysitter either Feels by but in the summer courses when we get a lot of our research done cuz you're not taking courses, you know when you're not coming to TA or whatever. So that's when the bulk of your research oftentimes takes place and that's when my kids were here. So I couldn't go for instance to conferences or two with collaborators to do when they had time. So we had collaborated in Maryland. I could never go, you know and luckily had a thesis advisor that was fairly understanding but that that was really difficult not being not but not to be able to follow that.

13:53 What was expected of me are they and what other graduate students would do because I've got the kids now over the summer, you know, so that part that part was difficult. They also the group. I know you know why I now have two grandchildren, you know, and they're doing fantastic. My daughter has a engineering degree. My my son is just about to become a journeyman electrician. They're doing fine fine and all that guilt that I felt it so forth.

14:22 Really I think in the end if I look at it was more about me than they have suction and probably been doing that. And you know, I think it would have been better for I think they would have been okay. They're not okay now, but I think they would have been just fine. I'm glad I didn't take those trips over the summer cuz I know the time I got to see them so that was not going to happen. But I do do kind of beat yourself up and I know I made a lot of decisions that I thought would be right for them. Any one of them is going to UCSC and bringing them to live in families to my house. And I think that was a good move. And also, I mean that there are internships and jobs and things that you can do all across the country, but I always chose to stay in Santa Cruz. I was there as an undergrad I was there as a grad student and I stayed on as a postdoc I didn't want to move my kids cuz I thought it was important for them to have some stability, but even then and I feel like a probably I probably cheated them out of some really exciting experiences. I could have taken them to other countries or even just across this country. I guess that probably is not wouldn't have

15:22 In such a bad idea. It could have been would have put me in a better position. I probably would have been chair some Department by now, you know if I had if I had done that so

15:33 Yeah, I sometimes I I mean I don't regret it. But I know there were things that I didn't we didn't get to do we are working with incomplete information right? You have to be on decisions based on there's no one to talk to about this thing. Very few babies are at that age of mid-to-late twenties. They're not it's an entirely different kind of world. It is very similar in that we were isolated not only because of our of RS knit a little afterward. I can't say because we were Mexicans but also because we were older we had kids we had been in the workforce and new.

16:23 Expectations in a work of a Workforce which are different than the work expectations of the student in the end, you know, and and and sometimes I felt like these kids even though they weren't of privilege they felt like they were kids of privilege just because it had been have those kinds of issues facing them.

16:44 But I had today was a wonderful experience graduate school to me. Was it just a really great experience because that's where I sort of, you know at the ripe old age of 38 39 and 40 is when I bought Blossom, so that was kind of interesting. It's kind of a weird experience to be older in a physics department and you know a student with a lot of very young very very sharp physics nerds who I love I have nothing but affection for them but unions as an older student, you know, why you walk in and right away you already feel like oh my God, I'm not as quick and they don't have to worry about it and they don't have like a shopping grocery list going on in the back of their in their heads. They don't have these types of distraction. So it's hard to tell yourself. Yes, you can keep up. Yes, you can do this when you're if you're going to compare yourself.

17:38 To them kids are home sick and I feeling guilty because you're not home. And this is a million things that that you got to think about that all people down or even just money. I mean lot of them are young they did get money. I know the students who got money from didn't have to work all summer that your aunt had, you know, a fund some sort of a fund that ain't no paid for them to live in to go to school and the parents took them on a trip and then and there's just the one I know this one student whose mom came into town and bought a townhouse for her to live in so she wouldn't have to worry about where she was going to live.

18:15 More power to them but I mean like it is I think money is one of those things that's always been and now I'm at a point where it's not an issue for me, but you know my parents destitute, but then we weren't rich either and my dad refused to you in an Paso Texas hidup instruction. And if you do construction there, it's a tough tough thing to do because you have all the the people from what is it come across the border in and work for a dollar an hour or whatever, you know, and my dad had a family to support any also had

18:49 What he thought and what I think is a skill worth paying for you know, and so that meant he will only take union jobs that meant a lot of time. He was out of work, you know, when we would go to The Onion Field and pick onions, you know, and so money has always been a big kind of thing from it's right. I'm scared to death to be without a job at work since I was 14 or 13 or whatever, you know, and I refuse to be out of a job, but it just scares the hell out of me and to see as you get older I think money becomes more important for you because you build up obligations kids and so forth. And so when you're 20 and 25 or 26 you can live on 12000 or $15,000 or whatever it was, but as a as a full of doubt that that's barely making it that's just tough to deliver on that on that salary and I think it affects me or affected me more.

19:49 Yeah, I was looking at it. And again I get some of this is almost like a commercial for UC Santa Cruz, I guess living at Family student housing at I say I was looking at it mean I know I don't mean I had a lot of money but the rent was pretty cheap and everything was right there. I mean we gave her the funding for all the family through the house and get to have started or they had bus pass city bus passes for all the UC Santa Cruz family student housing kids. Like they really helped out.

20:27 The two have a question for both of you. Both of you said the guilt of dealing with school and children. What did you do with that guilt during.

20:41 I can't I don't know what I don't know. What a gun that I carried it. That's what I mean. I don't know what to do. As I said. I mean I couldn't walk away from physics. It's like where was I going to go? I found this thing that I thought that was so amazing and so engaging and so hard that it could hold my attention for so long. I couldn't just quit and act like that never happened and that we would go work at Target or something like that at the time. I didn't know that all the time what I said to myself I should be quite should quit I should I shouldn't be doing this but really what it was was I couldn't quit so so I that was just there and then of course I would I love my kids and I wish I always wish I could do more for them. So you just keep going and carry your guilt is as Jesus said and it's draining.

21:38 And so I wish yeah, I wish I could have put that down. It's funny because

21:43 I know that other mothers in different situations feel the same way. So like my daughter are all three of my kids. Actually they started doing there. They did their own laundry like my daughters and she was in the first grade. She did her own laundry and we had a laundromat laundry key and I'd give her a role that they all had their own rules of quarters. And I need to see my daughter there. She goes with her laundry basket and her clothes in a roll of quarters in her keys. And I don't know if this is selective memory. But what I remember is she thought she was all that with her but I would feel guilty about it and UC Santa Cruz is in this kind of affluent area. And so like at the elementary school there whenever I go over there there was moms that never had to work now. They had lots of money they're always involved with the school and sometimes it sometimes I would talk to them and I would stand there and they'd be talking about how they do too much for their kids and have guilty they felt about it.

22:40 And so we can do here. I was feeling guilty cuz I didn't do enough for my kids they feel guilty cuz they're doing too much for their kids. So like who's going to nobody's happy, you know, nobody feels like they're doing right by their kid. So if I would have known that and realize that as well as I could have put down my guilt and I could have used that energy.

23:00 I could have been a share of physics department right now. I'm a postdoc right now and my kids would have seen their mother working hard and being happy and being a picture of physics department right now. But but I guess you can't really say that to me bullying and they just have to get past it and look back and say why I wish I would have surely you can't you don't have you don't have the wisdom yet? So it's kind of unfair of us to expect us to be wiser when we weren't ready to be wise and yet that's what we do and then on top of it in a physics department anybody who looks like they're and their experience and they can't advise you about how did your expressive freak for them? And then I shouldn't generalize but for the ones I didn't die. Talk to you. It's pretty easy for them to know that they had wives who were home taking care of the kids and they had money and then

24:00 Their parents put them to school because of trust funds or whatever and so it's a totally different experience.

24:15 Wall or the window, but what happened to Redfield?

24:24 I think I go through stages. I don't think there's one answered through at 2 that I think sometimes I feel like

24:33 Sometimes I think I feel.

24:37 I'm at peace with it. You know, I I I did what I did and hope everything turned out well and your kids are healthy your Healthy, you know and so forth and then there are other times when that doesn't work. Well and so I think I've come to the conclusion that I I I will probably carry I carry guilt I think I'm one of those people that just carries it with with me. So I am so guilty about things that happened when I was getting banging, you know, and then crap that shit that happened then and so I think rather than fight it and deny it. I've simply come to accept that that is part of me. And so rather than try to hide it in the corner. I just acknowledge that it's there and and that from time to time it's going to affect me and em and rather than try to

25:29 Try to hide from that. I just simply understand that that's that that's me. So so no, I haven't gotten rid of it. But I've come to accept that it's part of who I am.

25:47 Yeah for me, I I guess it's still there. Although I don't feel it as much anymore. So I'm just we're here at the soccer news conference on the first day. I was one of the speakers and after there was a question and answer for in students were coming up. And as I said this woman came up she was crying and she was talking and she said I said I came here to talk to someone just like you and I really and then she couldn't say anything else, She just stood there for a few minutes crying and and and that's why I said to her I wish her and then when I when I was in your place and I feel the same way, but I wish I would have not built that way and when I said that to her

26:27 I felt it lift. I don't know how long this lift is going to last. You know, it'll come back. I'm sure in a few days with that happens. When you go to these kind of Converses you get really like get riled up and you think you can get it. Take over the world being a baby when you feel so good to see we seen other Chicano Latino scientists. And and we we know that we are happy for each other. We so proud of each other and we feel like we can do anything. So in that moment when I said to her, I wish I could have just not felt that way because the kids are fine. Your kids are going to be fine. Like I felt it left. So right now I don't feel guilty good for you that's good for you. But you know, there are times when I gave any time with my kids do something or I feel like it's not, you know quite right I feel guilty cuz I feel like I'm the mom.

27:16 My fault, you know, if they're not doing any way that I don't want to say that my cat's name. Is there something wrong with my kids there. They're all doing they're all doing really well all three of graduated from college and my oldest is a medical school. So I think they're and Eminem Not that that's the gauge for do you know whether somebody is okay or not where they have a college degree, but they are they seem happy so and I don't feel guilty as much weight. Do you have grandchildren? I think because I missed that you know, or I missed that I'm in now. I'm catching it with my grandchildren and that's when it hits me sometimes if I missed that happening, so pale. Grinch by my grandma granddaughter is for my grandson is 1 1/2. Okay, so I don't say that to my kids.

28:09 What do your parents think of your?

28:12 Well, my parents are both passed away. My mom passed away just a few months before I graduated and it was really

28:20 It was sad, I mean

28:22 She had cancer and she was taking chemo and I used to go and visit her and she used to ask me cuz she originally like when I went into the air force, you know, she didn't want me to go to the Air Force. She wanted me to find a husband and my father quiz wanted me to go to college. So at that point they were both really disappointed in me. And so

28:45 Even when I started taking classes when I had my kids and that we're living with her and her house.

28:53 You had her own room and I would go I was working. I have been working and it was even hard being a working mom and I I quit and I went back to school so she came in to the room one day and she looked around. She said place is a mess. You need to quit taking those classes and stay home and clean this house. No wonder you having problems with your marriage if that was what she was saying then and then I started going to school and then after a while she would call me cuz I'll be taking physics, you know, you can be a scientist if you're taking physics. I know.

29:29 And then in between when I when I got my bachelor's degree, she asked me what you going to do now and I said well, I don't know. I'm tired. I want to spend more time with my kids. Just keep going. You're still young keep going. You're still young so she changed and so when she got cancer I was like almost done. I was in my last year as a writing my dissertation as a matter of fact and

29:54 I come visit and she kept asking me did you finish did you finish keep going? You're still young and

30:01 That really helped me her saying that to me cuz I mean there were some down times where I felt like, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I'm can handle it. I don't know if I'm smart enough and she went to her and then what I remember one day she even said, you know, you need a new advisor. You need to find a new advisor. That guy is no good like so she said she was learning about how things work worked at the University and she was encouraging me. But yeah, she passed away. So and my father passed away when my oldest son was about

30:34 She was just a few months old. So neither one of them.

30:39 I almost didn't go to my my graduation. I didn't want to go because I I was just they weren't there. I felt like what's the point? Why should I go and everybody kept, you know telling me you need to go you need to go and it's funny cuz like the physics professors are the same age as my father would be if you were alive and I I used to like look around and really went out when I was young. My father took me to the thrift store to buy bike and he found a book Carl Sagan book The Cosmos and he used to read it and he was reading it all the time he would talk about and I was young I was little and you would say be a scientist mija fantastic like he was so excited about it. So I knew that he would have loved to death benefits assist and he didn't get the opportunity to do that and might need one of them finish High School.

31:32 So that day when I was you know, when they want everybody wanted me to go to ceremony finally went I went because it my family wanted me to go so I carried a picture of my mother and my father with me and stayed and there's pictures of me at the podium with there and I was going to say all the stuff and I all I do is cry and if I'd walked off the stage and I finally had a moment to say, you know, something important and I couldn't speak in my daughter after I can't believe you didn't think us. Everybody else was thinking their families, and I said, I couldn't talk I couldn't talk.

32:03 Let that says word that says volumes everything.

32:08 So. Not being able to speak I think that says a lot and yeah, I carried that picture with me cuz I ate my mother had just passed away and

32:18 This is picture of them when I don't know what is in the sixties or and had to be in the early seventies and in front of the Christmas tree and they were smiling. So I have that picture on my desk and I felt like I wanted them to like kind of like graduate with me and be there with me and

32:37 Yeah, but yeah, I cried a lot that day because they weren't there.

32:42 Did you go to your ceremony? I did and my parents are are still alive and they were there my my parents don't know anything about the university life or anything educational while I've got a sister and with a BS and MBA from MIT exit brother with a BS or in my t i sister with a BS from Smith college in a master's in education from Utah. And so we have a lot of sort of success again, if you want to measure that way and within my within my family, they never pushed education on us. They number all they did was do good and be good. That's it. You know, what is a funny story my

33:32 When I when I get hot my PhD, I went back to the puzzle and you know, which one of these neighborhoods we live in one of these neighborhoods where nobody's moved and in 50 Years. Everybody knows each other, right? They've nobody's moved and so see you in a few. It's our neighbor. She's passed away now, but she was her neighbor for 50 years and my mother is out there talking to her and I come out there just say hello and she goes to go to the singer for this is my son. He's a doctor and that you whisper.

34:03 But my dad very much like yours he wasn't he not, but he still reads the paper LOL speaks very poor English reads the paper every day when we were in school. He got us an encyclopedia set from also at thrift store and he would just be started at 8 and you know, it went through Z and it would do it again and over and over again just looked up. I'm not sure it was reading but just looking through the pictures, but he just paid all he just I think that Curiosity

34:38 While not expressed like you should go you should do you should do this. I think it just comes across cuz that's what you're doing. You know, that's then I think in that sense, they encourage all of us.

34:52 2

34:57 To be curious and 2222 good be good, but we were never say never check for homework. I mean, they wouldn't know my mother and father just recently have learned really speak English, you know, so they would have known from anything, you know, so I was

35:13 The translator for the family whenever they needed, you know something, you know, you know, you know talk to the insurance guy or talk to you whatever, you know, because they they didn't understand and then of course, I'm 12 years old. What do I do about insurance or whatever can online?

35:36 So I guess we're getting close to the end here. Are there other things been to huge?

35:42 Want to share with whoever's going to be listening.

35:48 Wow, I feel like I've said a lot.

35:52 Why don't you share yours first?

36:01 I don't know. I think I think the thing that I want to I want to.

36:08 Leave with is that there's a hit It's a Wonderful Rich culture that we come from and I don't want to ever leave that behind and at times I felt like in fact my brother. I have one brother was not so successful in our you called me a sellout because you know, I wasn't with the guys drinking beer on a Saturday, you know, whatever, you know, and it is a wonderful Rich culture and I don't want to leave that behind it and you can navigate so that you can do both but it does come at a price and and I think we should be aware that that maybe you are going to lose a little bit, you know, because you're going to be talkin.

36:53 You and I talking to each other would be very different than your mother and my father talking to each other. We have a level of hate to say this, but we have a level of sophistication. It doesn't sound chicano/a name or write it sounds more.

37:10 To me to my ears going when I go back to the pathway still here. I'll just let you know I can do it if I want to but do something maybe get septic eye, but maybe it's not maybe that left behind shut the right way. Maybe the right way of looking at it is it just gets built better stronger, you know as we bring in these other things stay in touch with yourself, especially when you're going into what feels like somebody else's world and their let you in under start to hear yours is broken want to be in this program hear this phone. I'm going to be in until like whatever Grant obligation they might have that they're trying to fill they want you to kind of pull you into what's important to them. What's going to what's going to bring in?

38:10 What's going to serve their purposes? Not necessarily not everyone but not let you know it's time for a lot of not necessarily thinking about. What's your what's in your best interest? And so I think it's important to pay attention to what's important to you. You value your community. What kind of science do you want to do that's going to support your community if that's important to you. If you want to be a doctor, I mean when people say that they just want to be doctors will if you eat beans help your community is important and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be a doctor. So I think you can just go into a new culture hanging onto your own values.

38:48 Then education can make you stronger and help you to to fulfill this, you know, whatever it is that you want to do.

38:57 So what's next for you?

39:02 Well, I want to continue to do physics. I like doing science.

39:09 I think any position where I mean, I'm a postdoc in any position where I can continue to do research is going to be is going to make me happy.

39:19 Great and you well, I'm I am Terre Haute to work with and I want to quit the interior of his apartment. So I want to be I want to go back to being a research faculty except that I have I think come to understand that if you want to effect big change, you really have to move higher in administration. So I have this conflict within me now where I want to go back to do physics, but I also understand that in order to help my community the best.

39:51 It would be.

39:53 I could do that better if I were an administrative position, so I don't know what's going to happen.

40:01 I don't know.

40:03 Okay, I don't know that I don't know what's good. So you never know what's going to happen. You never know.

40:13 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for talking me into it next time you can talk me into dancing.