As a kid I fantasized about being a scientist. What discipline? Didn’t matter, I just loved asking questions about the world. The year after I took biology I wanted to be a biologist. The year after chemistry, a chemist. And the same with physics. In high school I loaded my schedule with as many STEM courses as I could fit. Science was my compass as well as my refuge – it gave me direction during a rough time in my life while also providing me with confidence and a sense of safety. And while I aced my science classes and AP exams, those good grades hid an unsteady foundation that collapsed when I got to college.

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was in middle school. My dad is a therapist who also has ADHD, so it wasn’t exactly shocking news to my family. It helped to explain the trouble I was having in school. I did well on every test, but couldn’t get homework and projects in on time because my executive functioning was utter garbage. It also helped to explain some of my social issues. No conversation went uninterrupted and no personal bubble was inviolate – I talked over others and couldn’t keep my hands to myself. For these reasons I struggled in my classes and in my friendships. Except science classes – those were my haven! The science department at my high school not only taught me to think, it supported me emotionally for four years.

Then I got to college. Good school, very prestigious. Except I quickly learned that universities accrue prestige through funding and citations, not necessarily for having good teachers. My professors were luminaries in their fields and their names were on my textbooks, but gone were the days of my teachers caring about me. In high school, my science teachers believed in me and with their guidance I flourished. But in college I was supposed to shut up, sit down, and listen. Which, for an eighteen-year-old kid with ADHD, meant I wasn’t learning much and my motivation was steadily eroding.

But my high school education was good, so I didn’t actually have to learn anything new for my introductory science classes. For the first two years I kept doing well on tests so I got good grades. But come junior year, after declaring a major, it started falling apart. My ADHD brain was poorly equipped for lectures and my senior year was an utter disaster. I didn’t end up graduating, not that year. Five years later I made up my coursework at another university, but in the meantime I was convinced I didn’t have what it took to be a scientist. I entered college dreaming of nanotechnology (I really liked chemistry) but by the end I thought science simply wasn’t an option for me.

I’m writing this because the last couple days brought up some bitter memories. The Twitter account @iamscicomm has a rotating curation and each week a different science communicator shares stories and engages with an audience of scientists and laypeople alike. This week was different, though. I don’t want to get too much into details – the internet shame machine is already spinning up and I have no interest in joining the chorus. But I do want to share why it hurt as much as it did. Because I can’t be the only kid who grew up playing with salamanders, dreaming of becoming a scientist, only to lose that dream in a sterile lecture hall.

Here are the only two tweets I want to consider. For context, the first is in response to a comment about active learning.

@AmandaFreise Some. It's a whole toolbox, but I strongly believe in 'sit down, shut up, listen to an expert' as a guiding principle. — I Am SciComm (@iamscicomm) August 3, 2016

Science is serious stuff. The glory and the 'fun' is found in the struggle; in the misery; in the grind. — I Am SciComm (@iamscicomm) August 2, 2016

My college experience shattered not only my confidence but also my sense of identity. I didn’t know what to do so I got a job working in software development. Let me tell you: I hated that job. And honestly, I’m thankful I hated it as much as I did because it forced me to reassess everything. I decided to pursue ornithology and now, four years later, I’m happily ensconced in a master’s program studying biogeography. In pursuing science, I’ve returned to my refuge.

Outside lectures, my ADHD works for me, not against me. ADHD, despite the word “deficit” in its name, isn’t a lack of attention so much as it’s an inability to direct your attention. People with ADHD tend to hyperfocus on the things that interest them. I can spend hours happily reading papers, writing code, or sitting in a blind waiting for a bird to return to its nest. I have exactly what it takes to be a scientist, goddammit, so when I read someone dictating that being a scientist means “sit down shut up and listen” or “the struggle the misery the grind” it pisses me off. Because I can’t do either of those things, not well at least. And there are so many people in positions of authority who think the same way that I took it as gospel. I almost missed out on my passion, my dream career. I almost spent my life as a miserable programmer because close-minded educators can’t muster empathy for a scared kid struggling with a learning disorder. The man who wrote those tweets above? He would have written me off without batting an eyelash.

At least I had the opportunity to get back on track. I come from an upper middle class family with a strong history of education. If I’d come from a background with less fiscal and social capital there is no chance I’d be where I am now. And that’s exactly who this attitude of “sit down shut up and listen” hurts most: those with the least resources. After college, I had the good fortune of taking biology classes from Dr. Scott Freeman at the University of Washington. A biologist by training, he has since done extensive research into the teaching of science at the university level. He’s found that alternatives to lecturing, like active learning, make very little impact on better prepared students from wealthier backgrounds, but significant differences for the less prepared [1]. Science is overwhelmingly white as it is, and expecting everyone to succeed in lecture settings won’t help. The author of those tweets is wrong to frame science that way and I hope the students he’s writing off are fortunate enough to find inspiration elsewhere. The ability to sit still and absorb information for 75 minutes at a time doesn’t make you a scientist – curiosity and a passion for understanding the world does.

[1] Freeman, Scott, David Haak, and Mary Pat Wenderoth. “Increased course structure improves performance in introductory biology.” CBE-Life Sciences Education 10.2 (2011): 175-186.