Once I was saved, my interviewee ushered me up the stairs and down a short hallway. Her office is wood-paneled and well-lit, cordoned into a workspace in one half and a seating area in the other. It’s well furnished — homey, even. In the corner, proudly displayed on shelves, are 17 decorative gnomes. I knew I was in the right place. 

Dr. Anjelica Gonzalez holds three official titles at Yale: Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty Director of Tsai City and Head of College for Davenport. To say she wears many hats would be a cliché, but the image of a HOC gnome switching between her many gnome caps is too convenient to resist. 

I asked her what started her on the path to have such a significant presence on campus. She tells me that she used to be unfamiliar with even the concept of graduate school, as the first in her family to go to college. During her undergraduate years at Utah State she had “no idea” what being a professor would be like. By chance, a flyer in the mail led her to apply and attend a summer medical and research training program with Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. There, she was able to learn more about the process. Pursuing graduate studies in the sciences and engineering was a way for her to have a job and support her work — even though so many other aspects of academics and careers were foreign. 

Later, she pursued a Ph.D. at Baylor College of Medicine in Structural and Computational Biology. Today, Gonzalez runs a lab at Yale focused on inflammation. Dr. Gonzalez explained the process of trying to model the human lung, engineering the tissue and examining the blood vessels of it, as the lung progresses from an inflamed state then to a scarred fibrotic state. She wants to understand how the blood vessels contribute to the shift in progressive disease. “In doing that, what we can start to work with pharmaceutical companies to say, ‘Oh, if we can see disease starts to happen, can we identify points where we can interject?’”

Dr. Gonzalez is only two years into her tenure as Davenport Head of College. To see students in the classroom or in research labs is wholly different from living with them in the college and sharing the dining hall with them. She describes the role as being a “CEO” of the college: making sure that the budget is aligned, making sure that the college operations run, but also endeavoring to create a space — somewhere that encompasses the great number of passions and interests that its students hold.  

“I get to see students in the whole 360 — as whole human beings. I see what they eat. I see them when they wake up,” she said. “I see them at the height of their accomplishments. I see them at some of the lowest periods in their experience here. It’s different from my role in the classroom. Now, I have a better understanding of who they are and what they experience. I look for ways to support them.”

The way that the Davenport staff, students, and community have embraced her family is one of the highlights of her experience so far. HOC Gonzalez noted how having a dining hall and support system make it possible for her to be present for her boys as a single mother while continuing with her work elsewhere on campus. 

In Davenport, one project she has taken on is the Innovation Studio. This new space was designed in collaboration with the Center for Engineering and Innovative Design and brought resources like 3D printers, sewing machines, and hand power tools to the college. 

“Sometimes the term creative is associated with the humanities in the arts, but in actuality, it spans the STEM fields, the social sciences and so, so many of different areas,” Gonzalez said. 

The characteristic that surprised me the most about HOC Gonzalez was how she seemed reluctant to lay claim to all of the amazing work that she has done. I was sitting on her couch, listening to her speak about building models of human lung fibrosis, creating spaces for entrepreneurial creativity on campus, finding the best way to be there for the students in her college, and raising her sons on campus, whilst never seeing the thoughtfulness and care in her words waver. 

I think we’ve all met someone who makes you want to be a better person — to be a better student or friend or teacher — just by being in their presence. Anjelica Gonzalez is one of those people. It seems like the Davenport students think so, too. I mentioned to several of my friends that I was writing a piece on her, and every single response after the fact was a version of, “ HOC Gonzalez? She is amazing. I don’t know how she does it all.” 

I was sitting on her couch and wondering if this person was uncannily humble or just truly unaware of the respect she has earned on campus. 

What is on HOC Gonzalez’s mind right now? Baseball. Her twins are on a travel team, and HOC Gonzalez was their Little League coach until they aged out of parent coaches. She became interested in how Yale’s student athletes take on the challenge of committing to a team while also pursuing a university education, because — in her words — “a place like the residential colleges are built by so many members of the broader community and they all bring something to Davenport. But what that means for me is that I also have to figure out ways to be uniquely supportive to those communities.” 

What’s her favorite MLB Team, you may ask? HOC Gonzalez has an answer for that too: 

“​​My favorite player is Shohei Oheitani. He switched teams from the Angels, so wherever he is right now.”

I made myself comfortable on her couch. We talked baseball, true crime podcasts and the best spots on campus for when you want to hide away from everyone. The purpose of a head of college is to have a person who is considering the whole student. Their task is to create a place — physically, culturally and socially — that students can return home to during their four years at Yale. 

The post Professor, ex-Little League Coach and Queen of the Gnomes — how does HOC Gonzalez do it all? appeared first on Yale Daily News.

I’ve been involved in the STEM world since middle school. I still can’t speak about science without romanticizing it. What was promised to me was the world — from the fossils underground to the furthest galaxies — and coming to understand it if I could look hard enough. Scientists and technologists embrace their roles as a mighty, ever-expanding search for knowledge. I wanted to be at the frontier of something important.

When I started to get my hands dirty with competitions and projects, I saw how science inspired my teammates. In philosophy, an agent is someone with the ability to act, and the exercising of that ability. When done correctly, I saw that science is one of the most accessible ways to make people believe they are agents. Science empowers. When you hand a kid a bottle rocket or telescope, they believe they’ll make it to space one day. 

STEM fields (especially engineering and applied sciences) have a retention problem when it comes to women and gender minorities. The lack of parity can be seen in youth STEM programs, graduate schools and retention rates of women taking on STEM as a career, even though some progress has been made in recent decades. This is why DEI and immersion programs exist: to open up pathways into fields that have historically kept many groups out. 

To be one of the only women in those rooms is hard. I am grateful I didn’t experience discrimination or ridicule because of my identity (and I’m not sure how I would have handled that) but it’s a much more subtle experience that persists. 

When you’re the only girl, nobody mentions it out loud. But every time I was in that situation, I noticed that I was the only one. It was the feeling that people didn’t expect your presence, or that you had to make friends differently than everyone else. It was the frustration of having less technical knowledge. The onus is on you to prove that you’re just as good, and having to catch up if you aren’t. 

There’s the pressure to not expect special treatment, but also the nagging feeling you might have needed it. To be the only girl in the room is to represent all the others who aren’t there. I wanted to prove that I — we — didn’t need special awards for making it this far, because I had always been capable to begin with.   

Especially once you’re immersed in that world, constant messaging promotes STEM to girls as difficult, practical and praise-worthy. When you are a “Woman in STEM” you become a “trailblazer,” a “glass-ceiling-breaker,” an advocate, and a role model for the kids who will follow in your footsteps.

The more involved I got with STEM, and the more I came to care about the people involved with it, the more attached I became to these responsibilities. I decided that I wanted to become an engineer because I wanted to solve problems. Most of all, I loved introducing other people to it and seeing them make their first models and machines. 

As much as I could speak about fascinating ideas, I struggled to get excited about the real work. I loved the idea of STEM and the challenge that came with it. I gravitated closer to people, but further from the content in my textbooks. Eventually, I chose to break away entirely.

The unintended consequence of the “Women in STEM” narrative is unwittingly comparing them to the women doing everything else. Where DEI messaging can slip up is praising STEM as the most challenging and important path. I earned respect for “choosing” the STEM path because it is painted as the superior one. 

I still haven’t figured out how to explain this trajectory. Did I burn out of STEM, or was I going down the wrong path in the first place? Was this just the patriarchy getting to me? Was I just scared that I couldn’t cut it? Even now, I’m hesitant to fully renounce the sciences in case I have a change of heart and decide to return. 

I think much of my hesitation comes from matters of self-image. I feared that people would respect me less if I decided to shed the whole “Woman in STEM” thing. That’s how I knew something was wrong with my approach to it. 

I don’t regret any of my STEM pursuits. What I wish someone had told me is that there are other ways to seek understanding and push boundaries. Being the only girl in the room is hard, but it’s even harder to know that and still walk out the door. 

There should be more types of all types of people in STEM. How can we make that happen, for the right reasons? I want a bright future for the women in STEM — not because they have something to prove, but because they chose it for themselves

The post OPEN TABS: Death of the “women in STEM” appeared first on Yale Daily News.

This internet search reflex has become a means of time travel. There is freedom in experiencing the future as the present.  While the next screen loads, I hope they had their questions answered, doubts assuaged or dreams realized. I hope you made it. 

….

If I read an interesting quote in an article that is over five years old, there is a high chance I will Google the author. 

Pulling up a stranger’s digital footprint is akin to grabbing a random bag from the baggage claim and rummaging through its contents. When I do my research, I go on Incognito mode. This is undeniably silly, since no one is looking through my search history. But it does feel like I’m committing an invasion of privacy. It feels like flipping to the last page of a book or skipping to the last scene of a movie, like I’m cheapening the years that have passed. Almost, but not quite. 

It’s hard for me to connect those words, frozen in the annals of the internet, to the former versions of people. The publication date is irrespective; their words are there, sitting right in front of me. I can see them! The author and the quote are facing off, just on the other side of my screen. They exist in the now. 

I am more likely to research people if they staked a claim, were young when speaking (my age, preferably), or expressed uncertainty about their future. 

We do not know each other and will likely never meet, but I recognize them. I like to see that the strangers in the articles had some sort of path that they went down, good or bad. As a self-professed worrier on these issues of the future, it is comforting to know that the murk clears one day.  

Yet, for all of my peeking into the futures of strangers, I pay surprisingly little mind to my own digital footprint. With all of the talk about the newest heights that technology has reached, the internet has always felt new and present, even though I’ve spent almost 20 years growing up with it. 

In person, I give more attention to my image. I am more likely to be swept away by my stream of thoughts. I am scatterbrained and a touch more serious. I do think about my clothing, my makeup and how I speak. I am more selective with my words and less likely to speak in certainties. I’ve pieced together different conversation scripts and ways to introduce myself. I return to self-curation again and again because I want this version of myself to be exactly what I choose. 

While online, I must be several orders of magnitude less high-strung. In doing so, I’ve left a paper trail (ha ha). At Yale, I’ve met people who remember me from group chats or online competitions or some other place I decided to park myself to kill a few hours. 

As I begin writing more in college, I imagine my pieces collecting like snow drifts on the side of a road. I find myself at my most honest in writing, both online and in my notebooks. 

It’s still awkward to find someone who’s seen part of my digital footprint, but the appeal of the imperfect introduction online is interesting. To exist online is to relinquish some control over the separation between your past and your future. All of those different versions of me, at once, together.

The post OPEN TABS: Time travel appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The journal was initially started in 2010 to share undergraduate scholarship in the fields of Medieval and Classical Studies. The first issue was released in 2011 and featured 10 essays. In its prologue, the publication is described as focusing on topics such as “imagery in the early Italian Renaissance,” the “divine economy” of Plato’s Euthyphro, a comparison of the Mongol and Roman imperial guards and Christ’s image in Byzantine churches. The journal released five issues, culminating in 2016 with six essays in the final issue.

“Undergraduate journals help demystify the world of academic publishing and uplift the scholarship and the very real contributions that undergraduates make,” said Religious Studies professor Maria E. Doerfler.

Yale began offering a Medieval Studies Certificate to undergraduate students in winter 2022. The program has since seen increased interest from students, to the point where there are more undergraduate students than graduate students in the Medieval Studies program. 

Isaidy Medina ’25, who is currently pursuing a Medieval Studies certificate, was searching for ways to engage with the material beyond the classroom and stumbled upon the old website for Vexillum last spring. She brought up the topic to Professor Doerfler, who was then the interim chair of Medieval Studies — a role in which she also functions as the director of graduate studies and the director of undergraduate studies for the department. They went to work tracking down previous students and faculty involved in Vexillum.

Medina emphasized that paper submission is not the only way that the group hopes to engage with students. She is hoping to recruit and train students to review submissions and choose papers for publication. She noted that Vexillum’s revival also depended on contributions from students experienced in advertising, website management and design.

Attendees of Tuesday’s event included several graduate students in Medieval Studies and related fields who were interested in assisting with the revival of the journal. 

Second-year Ph.D. student Angus Warren attended the meeting and expressed his support for the endeavor.

“In undergrad publishing, I’ve seen the travails. I’ve seen how hard it can be and I would love to see Yale’s medieval journal flourish,” Warren said.

Discussions during the event on Tuesday included introductions among the new group of interested individuals, a review of Vexillum’s previous achievements and conversations about how the revived publication would be adapted to modern technology and developments in Medieval Studies scholarship. 

“There were other people who existed and did really interesting things rather than just the Franks or the Germans, et cetera, et cetera. So this has also allowed for bringing medieval studies in conversation with a lot of other fields,” said Professor Doerfler. She explained that the publication is currently navigating how to establish its own niche while engaging in cross-disciplinary work. 

Doerfler explained that undergraduate journals such as Vexillum occupy a niche in academia that is different from the “traditional” journals that publish the work of established academics. They allow for students to try their hand at preparing work for publication, from engaging with higher-level ideas and questions in the field to participating in a peer review process. 

Focusing on undergraduate scholarship allows for a lower barrier of entry for engagement, meaning that students have an avenue to explore an interest in Medieval Studies even if they have not previously done work in the field. These publications also allow for connections between universities and broader audiences to be made.  

Professor Emily Thornbury is the current Medieval Studies program chair and undergraduate certificate director. She will be serving in an advisory capacity for Vexillum. 

“Classical and Medieval worlds are living things for many people, and are aesthetically and politically productive for them,” Thornbury said. “Vexillum will offer one route for students to present their discoveries to a wider community.”

Vexillum has a target publication date of spring 2024.

The post Undergraduate medieval studies journal Vexillum returns to Yale appeared first on Yale Daily News.

To set the scene: it was one of the first duty nights of fall. Back when the high of moving into college was still pumping us with energy, and the rush of trying to find our forever-friends turned every person into a potential conversation partner. The September heat still lingering past sundown. The smell of takeout wafting through the air. The room packed with sweaty 18-year-olds, fanning themselves with paper plates and floating from couch to windowsill to armchair, looking for a place to perch. 

We were sharing intro spiels — major, college, hometown — and learning how to make small talk — filling lulls of conversations with recent Yale revelations — the dining halls! the doors! — and asking how everyone was settling in. 

As I was leaning on the back of an armchair, crammed between a windowsill and some other first-years from my college, the conversation turned to hometowns. Specifically, the question of what our favorite part was — or what we would miss the most. 

Moving out of state for college means losing that little bit of shared context with people. To describe Sacramento is to speak in relation; three hours eastward from the bay, two hours westward from the mountains, and no, not close at all to LA. Many people say the best part of living in Sacramento is how close you are to all of Northern California’s interesting parts: the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco’s city life, Napa’s vineyards, and skiing in the Sierra Nevadas. 

I would like to mount a defense for Sacramento as a gem in its own right. In complete transparency, I really live in a suburb around half an hour away. The city sits at the tip of the Central Valley, which is bookended on two sides by foothills of rolling grass that turn gold in the summer sun. To get to the city, I drive down a highway that splits between the hills, going up and down and up and down again until the very last crest, where, for a few moments at the top, the whole valley opens up in front of you and the skyline of the city glimmers in the distance.

As I gained my independence with driving, my friends and I took it upon ourselves to explore the city on our free afternoons and weekends. 

Sacramento was born a gold rush town, and Old Sacramento still looks straight out of a Western film with its wooden storefronts and old-fashioned candy shops. The top of the parking garage there affords the best view of the Tower Bridge — California’s real golden bridge — over the Sacramento River. 

A short walk away is the Golden One Center: the home of the Sacramento Kings, where a purple beam shoots into the sky for the entire city to see when they win a home game. The city is interspersed with government buildings, but it doesn’t feel like the head of the nation’s largest economy. Much of the city is still bordered by farmland and open space. At the peaks of the summer heatwaves, time seems to slow to a crawl. 

On 12th street is Hiso, the Asian Fusion restaurant we frequented after school dances and concerts, where I found the city’s best-fried potstickers and Thai Tea.  East Sacramento is known for the picturesque houses and sycamores of the “Fab 40s,” where the whole town comes together to see the Christmas lights. I’ve frequented any cafe with a mocha and pleasant ambiance; I’ve combed through every used bookstore for Joan Didion’s works. She came from this city too, you know. 

Film junkies may make the Sacramento connection to Greta Gerwig’s “Ladybird.” The main character: Angsty Teenage Girl with Pink Hair who wants to escape the city and “go where culture is, like New York… or at least Connecticut.” At times, Ladybird is downright insufferable, but you can’t help but root for her. 

Funnily enough, I had my own pink hair phase when I was 17. And the airport from which Ladybird makes her escape to the East Coast is my airport — the same one where I said goodbye to my family before flying to Yale for the first time. 

Gerwig is a Sacramento native herself, and the city is as much of a character in the film as a  backdrop. Ladybird experiences the trials and tribulations of high school relationships — platonic, romantic, and familial — at the city’s most iconic sights. The McKinley Rose Garden, the Tower Bridge, and even the mural of a Midtown convenience store make their appearances. 

Right before I got on the plane to go to Connecticut, my best friend and I drove around the city one last time. We laid in the grass in front of the State Capital and took photos in front of places featured in the movie.

Ladybird ends with a phone call. “Hey, Mom. Did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento? I did, and I wanted to tell you, but we weren’t really talking when it happened. All those bends I’ve known my whole life, and stores, and the whole thing.” I took my last drive; I tried to commit every detail to memory. 

So here I am, “where the culture is.” Sacramento is not exactly my hometown, but in my mind, it is still my city. I couldn’t tell you one thing I miss most; one store or park or tree-lined avenue would be inadequate ambassadors. Sacramento is someplace where everything is more than the sum of its parts. Maybe that’s why this capital city flies under the radar. Maybe that is my favorite part. 

The post Do you know California’s capital? appeared first on Yale Daily News.

It’s more of a game than a list. Remember when you got onto campus for the first time and were hit with a never ending stream of names, hometowns and majors? I was pretty damn sure I had met half the campus by the time October rolled around. 

While lingering in the Saybrook common room, I found my way over to the Class of 2027 poster hanging on the wall. Mugshot-style, the faces of my peers stared back at me. We all live in the same building and I seem to see a fellow Saybrugian every time I walk across campus, yet half of these faces stirred no recognition. 

What? I began to count. Nine-and-a-half rows down and 13 columns across makes for the Saybrook first year class of 128. When I totaled up the number of people I had had a conversation with, I barely reached half that. 

I pride myself on being a good neighbor and a loyal Saybrugian. This wouldn’t cut it. 

I snapped a picture of the poster with my phone and began an expanded game of person-bingo with the markup tool. In bright red, I’ve X-ed out the faces of all of my friends and new acquaintances. It only counts if we’ve had a conversation and know each other’s names. People I would wave and shout hello to from across the street. The goal is blackout: I win when I’ve met every Saybrook freshman. 

Does this look suspicious and borderline neurotic? Of course. But looks are deceiving, and every person I’ve shown this bingo board to has come around to see its genius. 

1. It’s a great conversation starter. 

Everyone’s pretty settled into their routines of classmates and friends, so getting to meet someone new is a treat. Now, I can commence my pleasantries with a “let me cross you off. ” Followed by the inevitable, “What do you mean, cross off?” Et cetera, et cetera. 

2. I know who I haven’t met yet. 

As I get closer to winning my game, my number of targets shrinks. So by now, I’m familiar with some photos and first names. My friends have begun to aid me on my quest. “Oh you haven’t met [insert name]? Let me introduce you.” 

This has resulted in a growing curiosity about the people I haven’t managed to meet yet. Do you have secret study spots you go to? Do you hang around other colleges more? Now that I think about it, I haven’t met very many athletes. And, there’s a whole 8-person suite that is the exact mirror of mine (on the opposite side of Vandy) which I haven’t met a single person from. Is there a counterpart version of each of my suitemates? 

3. Actually meeting every first-year in Saybrook!

If each residential college is truly a microcosm of Yale, I will have conversed with a host of very different, very interesting people. I will have more people to wave across the street to and commiserate over midterms with! 

I do not expect to be friends with everyone. But I am an extrovert and an optimist and probably pretty stubborn. I believe in “putting yourself out there,” making yourself open to new people who could walk into your life, and maybe being proactive about it.

Let the games commence. And if you’re in Saybrook, and we HAVEN’T met yet, come find me. 

The post You Might Be On My Hitlist appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Pay no mind to a misplayed note or stochastic rhythm. Do not let them disturb your walk to the dining hall. 

In between getting lost in basements and figuring out how to open doors, one of Yale’s quirks that stood out to me was its abundance of public pianos. They can be spotted in the more well-furnished dining halls and in every common room. In the Hopper common room, I even found two: placed back to back in anticipation of their next duet.

My problem with Yale’s pianos is that they don’t get played. I was sitting in the Silliman common room a few weeks ago, doing my anthropology readings and waiting for the dining hall to open. It was dead quiet. Everyone was engrossed in their work — headphones in and marooned on isolated couches. 

Two people entered the room, and the silence was interrupted by their announcement: “We apologize for the disturbance. We’ve been asked to tune the piano. It’s going to be noisy in here for an hour or so.” 

One sat down on the piano bench, and the other at a table nearby. They began to ring out the notes one by one, repeating each a few times before moving on to the next. Most common room inhabitants were polite enough to stay for a minute or two before they got up to flee. 

So, yeah. No one wants to listen to a piano get tuned. But this was the first time I had heard any notes at all from one of Yale’s common room Steinways. In the weeks since, I’ve been on the lookout for the common room piano players. One night, when the notes of a concerto floated up through the floorboards of the Saybrook library, I dashed down the stairs to see who was there. By the time I opened the door to the common room, the bench was empty. 

I’ve been lucky enough to hear one or two pop renditions during my walks to lunch. Some of my more musically-inclined friends have humored me when I begged hard enough. And there was one night in JE when we took a break from studying to drink cider and dance to someone’s music. But most of the time, the pianos sit still and silent in the corners — mere decorations for passersby.

Before my high school days, I too was a pursuer of the fine arts. I practically grew up in a classical ballet studio. I was training for 20 hours a week at my peak. Miss Pam, my instructor, was a Royal Ballet School trainee and ex-professional dancer. She imbued us with good technique, all else be damned. I learned how to not rush the arms of the port de bras and to time a turn such that you looked suspended, floating in the air for a split second before landing. I waltzed across the floor and launched myself into daring jetés. The music ruled you, and you had to rule the technique. 

We rehearsed for hours on end with our old studio speakers until it was time for the real deal. For our last week of rehearsals and final performances on the community college stage, we were graced with a real pit orchestra. Live music creates a relationship between the dancer and the orchestra. The dancer is at the whim of the musicians, but the conductor may take cues from what happens onstage. These were my first tastes of rhythm and music — of watching and listening and being watched. 

I left dancing behind when I was 13, along with other arts-y childhood phases: trumpet, guitar and yes, even piano. I wanted the time to do other things, and the arts faded into hindsight. 

My residential college dean was the first person who explained how Yale is the school of “and.” A capella and rugby and orchestra and debate; whatever your heart desires, you can pursue it here. I resisted this ethos of the liberal arts. It felt too idealistic, too impractical. And yet, something about those silent common room pianos still nagged at me. It’s not like we’re lacking in talent — I’ve met many trained musicians in these halls. Maybe they prefer to have their trials and tribulations in private. I wouldn’t know. 

My time here has just begun. I applied to Yale without knowing anything about this place, something I am usually too scared (or embarrassed) to admit. But there’s something to be said for the idea that nobody knows what Yale is really like until they’re here. 

I hope that my time at Yale does embody the “and” in the sense of the coordinating conjunction: linking together all of our passions and interests. But I also want to use “and” as a response to a question; use “and” as artillery against the pressure to perform in a place where most everyone is the best at what they do. As in, I don’t know anything about playing the piano — yes, AND? Here we have these beautiful instruments at our disposal. It would be a shame not to use them. 

In this school of “and,” it’s easy to get caught up in how good Yalies are at what they do. But I also want this place to embrace my not-so-perfect exploration. For the first time in five years, I took a ballet class again. I stumbled through it — yes, AND? I’ll be back again next week. When I think no one is listening, I might attempt a quick tune on the piano, too.

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