For those of you who don’t know me, I highly suggest taking the time to read my story, found here: About Me .

But in the meantime, here’s the TLDR:

• I’m 35 years old and going into my third year of undergrad getting a physics degree with a science communication certificate
• I am late diagnosed neurodivergent
• I had to go through a heck of a lot of “real life” to get to where I am now, including burnout and homelessness
• I am now where I want to be and I’m doing well

I spent the past two summers working at SNOLAB, the very institution that led my friends into my life and not-so-subtly nudged me into following my dreams and getting my degree in science. It’s been such an unreal trip, actually having some of my dreams coming true. You know that old expression about pinching yourself to see if you’re dreaming? I may have had some red marks on my arms the first day or so. I also had a long period of waiting for the other shoe to drop (I still do, sometimes) because I’m just so unused to the feeling of something actually turning out my way.

But I’ve been doing it, and (if I may tootle my own horn), I’ve been doing it well. But even still, colour me surprised when my boss agreed to allow me, with only two years of undergrad under my belt, to represent the experiment at the Women+ in Physics Canada Conference. I made my first ever real academic poster, travelled to another city, and signed in at a table that had a name badge waiting for me… It was like a really geeky Cinderella moment for me. I loved that conference, I met so many great women there.

But… at the conference was a career panel, and it was not the first career panel I had attended by then. I’ve been to some at the lab, some at school, and watched some online in the general academic community, and I will say that never, not even once, did I see another woman on one of those panels that I really could resonate with or see myself in. I have heard so many diverse stories, and I hear the conversations that happen after, where people find each other and celebrate the fact that now they see that they can succeed too, because someone else just like them had done it! It’s a little bit isolating not being able to have those conversations and those celebrations. At the conference, I remember kind of wandering around on my own sipping coffee for a bit, in between the small groups that had formed, pretending I was simply taking a break until the next session started.

And so that feeling is what led me to making this site, I suppose, and for two reasons: One is that maybe there is someone out there who has walked a similar path, someone who can tell me that I can do it too, who may find this site one day (doubtful, but it can’t hurt to try). The other is that even if that never happens, that doesn’t mean I’ll be giving up. I’ll do what it takes to succeed and then one day I can be that voice for whoever comes after me. One day I can be the one waiting at the finish line and telling someone who has had to struggle their whole life that they made it. They succeeded.