Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills
to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.
When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find
that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research
program.
Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.
However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.
For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians
the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene.
Hello everybody.
Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast.
I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is a pleasure to be here speaking to you today.
Thank you for listening.
Today, I am super, super excited to have with me on the show, a really special guest, Dr.
A. Bimpe Adesina, and she's going to tell you how to say her name for real, but I'm
excited to have her here.
She's a fellow clinician researcher who's got a lot of great things to share with us
today.
I'm just going to step back and allow her to introduce herself.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you so much for inviting me to your podcast.
I'm very excited to be here.
I feel very honored, actually, to be asked.
So I'm Bimpe Adesina, and I am an assistant professor at the University of California
in Davis, but just actually in Sacramento, California.
And I've been there now.
This is my third year as a UC Davis faculty, but overall, my sixth year as an assistant
professor, I started at the University of Washington in 2017.
So it's been quite a journey.
And you know, not, you know, these things happen organically sometimes, but not in necessarily
anticipation of this meeting today.
But I've had to be reflecting on my journey to where I am right now.
And it's crazy.
If anybody told me, you know, eight, nine, 10 years ago that this is where I would be,
I would have laughed in their face.
But it just goes to show that sometimes, you know, we have this passion, we have this drive.
There are many things that come along the way as barriers and sometimes make you doubt
yourself.
But you know, I'm sure as this conversation progresses, I can share a little bit of my
story and how I navigated some of those things or how I'm still navigating some of those
things till now.
Or sure, Benkwi, thank you for bringing that up.
And you went there right away.
But you know, it's great because what you're sharing is just that there's a story to this
journey and there's a journey that's already in progress.
So we're meeting you kind of in the middle of that journey.
And there's just so far that you've come.
And so I do want to break from our protocol and ask you if you would to share a little
bit of that journey and why that switch was needed at the point at which you made it.
Yeah.
So like I said, I was doing a little bit of reflecting, just thinking about, you know,
who I am as a person, who I am as a scholar, and you know, who do I see myself as just,
you know, just globally, right?
And so, you know, my journey, I grew up in Nigeria, my journey, as early as I can remember,
maybe eight or nine years old, I knew I was going to do medicine.
I just knew I didn't, there weren't any doctors in my immediate family.
Maybe I had some uncle and maybe a cousin or something that were in medicine, but we
weren't like we weren't in my immediate steer, you know.
And so I just I was very curious as a child.
I was very fascinated by science and wanting to learn how things work, not in a mechanistic
way, but I was just very curious about how does, you know, how exactly does a plant grow
and how does an insect move and, you know, how do bodies work?
And so I think I knew from around eight or nine that I was going to do medicine.
I just knew.
And I think one of the things that was very instrumental for me is that in my family,
there weren't any limits to what you could achieve.
I don't know if that's typical for Nigerian family, but my family was like that.
You know, I would say to my parents who are not in medicine at all, I would say to them,
I want to be a doctor.
And they're like, oh, great.
That's it.
They wouldn't like put any like clauses around it or, oh, you have to do this and you have
to do that.
It wasn't at least not that I remember.
Maybe I'm looking back with rose tinted glasses, but I remember very specifically, they were
not phased one way or another.
When I said I wanted to do medicine, they were just like, okay, that's awesome.
You know, that's helped me.
I actually think that helped, you know, because I was just very free to explore what I wanted
to be.
There wasn't any pressure of you must do this or you must do that.
I mean, I think a lot of families, you know, where I grew up, a lot of families, you know,
they're like, well, you should be a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer.
My family was different.
I don't know.
I don't know exactly how to describe it, but I just, I just knew when I told them and they
were supported in as hands off way as possible.
And you know, I think that just shaped my approach to so many things because when I
moved after high school, when I moved to the United States for college, I, you know, I
was only 16 or 17, but I was pretty independent and I had been independent for a long time.
So I was just pretty independent.
I was pretty driven.
I was pretty independent and maybe because I'm an oldest, I'm the oldest daughter.
I just knew that, you know, I needed to get this work done and I needed to do it well
because I needed to set an example.
I don't know whether that was good or bad, but it was just something for me where medicine
was always my plan and it didn't matter what it was that I was doing.
I always knew what that end goal was.
So even when I in college decided to be a chemistry major, which I absolutely loved
because I loved chemistry, everybody said, but nobody who wants to do medicine will do
chemistry because you'll just end up in a lab, but it didn't, how should I put it?
I felt that pressure.
I won't lie and say I didn't feel the pressure of like, oh, maybe I should do biochem or
I should do biology or microbiology or something more traditional, but I just, I knew I needed
to stay true to myself and do what I really enjoyed and what I excelled at.
And for me at that time, in that phase in my life, it was chemistry.
And so I did that.
You know, I got my bachelor's in chemistry at the University of California in Berkeley.
I loved it.
I loved everything about it.
Maybe not everything.
I didn't like being in the lab.
So I knew I wasn't, you know, cause I always knew I was going to do medicine, but I was
like, this is just, I don't know how to put it.
It was like a detour, so to speak, right?
Being in the lab, you know, doing all these experiments.
I'm thankful for it because it just, it taught me a lot of discipline, which at the time
I didn't think it was going to be instrumental or important in my life as a clinical researcher.
I didn't even know I was going to be a clinical researcher at the time.
I just knew I was going to be a physician, but I didn't know what type.
And I didn't know why for me in my college years, it was really important for me to learn
chemistry.
I really don't know, but you know, it gave me my first job out of college.
I worked in industry for a couple of years.
I worked as an analytical chemist.
And yeah, it's very interesting.
It came up a lot when I was in the med school.
You're like, what?
That's totally untraditional.
But I loved it.
I loved being in the lab.
It helped me save up money for medical school because at this point I was sort of fending
for myself for different circumstances, but it was very important for me to have that
freedom to, you know, in that season in my life, to have that freedom to pursue my passion,
which at the time was being in the lab.
And even my interesting, when I interviewed for my job, I was not, I guess, worldly and
wise enough to know not to say, oh, I want to do medicine when I'm clearly interviewing
for an industry job.
So I said to them, basically this is like a short term thing for me.
I was open and honest about that.
I don't know if I shouldn't have been, but I was open and honest about it.
And I said, this is a short term thing.
I want to work in the lab.
I really love it.
I love the analytical side of chemistry.
I love designing experiments.
I love the idea and I'm working in that sort of, at the time it was a pharmaceutical company,
but I was in the lab.
I love that aspect of my life.
I was really interested in that.
But I always, always knew I was going to do medicine.
So I told my prospective bosses, I'm like, yeah, this is great, but I actually want to
go to medical school in a few years.
I didn't get that first job.
In fact, I interviewed for a series of jobs at that time and I didn't get the job.
And then the same people that I interviewed with right after graduating or right before
I graduated from college, they circled back to me like six, seven months later.
And they're like, we really want to hire you.
You made such an impression on your interview.
And even though we know this is short term, maybe we might change your mind or whatever.
I don't know.
So it ended up working out just fine.
So I guess lesson number one is oftentimes we might get advice about how things should
be, how things should be done, how we should do things.
And it just doesn't sit right.
And I just wanted to put it out there that it wasn't always easy.
It was hard not to have a job for six, seven months.
I'm trying to fend for myself, but it wasn't easy.
But I kind of stuck.
I was true to what I wanted to do.
And I had a lot of self-doubt.
I won't lie.
I had a lot of self-doubt.
Am I doing this right?
Will I get into medical school?
So on and so forth, blah, blah, blah.
With my background being completely different from any other person that I knew.
And I'm 100% sure there are many other people who go a different route to get to medicine.
But I just kept thinking, am I making a mistake?
Should I have done biology?
But it didn't sit right with me.
It didn't come natural to me.
What came natural was chemistry.
And I pursued it.
And I pursued it up to the point where I knew, OK, I'm done with this now.
Let me move on.
So I don't know if that fully answered your question.
But for me, my path, I always say this word because I love the word.
It's a cuetus.
It's just been all over.
But my compass was always set.
It was always set, do, people say do north or whatever.
But I was like, do medicine.
That's where my compass was.
And how I got there, the journey was to cuetus.
But it was true to me.
And so I appreciate all the twists and turns on the road.
I think it made me a better clinical researcher because of that.
Sure, wow.
Thank you for sharing the story, Binggui.
I've known you for a few years.
And I've never heard the story.
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing it.
And you know what's interesting?
You call it the cuetus.
But the truth is, you kind of had like a north star.
Like you knew where you were going.
And even when you were kind of hearing in other directions, you're like, yeah,
I'm going this direction right now.
But I'm coming back to this thing, which is really incredible.
And it almost, it sounds like even with the story of you, of how you grew up,
it was like your parents just let you be.
And you're like, whatever you want to be.
We were very hands off.
They were very hands off.
I don't know if it's maybe just my family.
I don't really know.
But I actually think it was very good because it made us,
my siblings and I were very independent.
We don't necessarily seek permission to do things.
But I do think, okay, so I do think maybe sometimes our mother's anxiety seeps in.
If she thinks, okay, I've let you do your own thing now for quite a while.
You should be doing this.
But as far as I can remember, I've kind of just been left alone,
not alone in a bad way, but kind of like you have the ability to do it.
So go ahead and do it.
Wow.
I'll hold you back.
Wow.
Now that's incredible.
Because what I hear you saying is that from a very early age,
you've been leading yourself.
You've been leading your career.
And so now you're going to tell us the journey of how you became a clinician researcher.
I'm interested to hear.
But just you've already established that you lead your own career,
which is incredible, which is awesome.
So now tell me, at what point did you now decide that,
okay, the next thing that you are going to do is become a clinician researcher?
How did that come about?
So I kind of backed into becoming a clinical researcher or clinician researcher.
I was in medical school at UCSF at the time.
And I think I was in my second year, maybe, maybe third going on fourth year.
I can't remember exactly second or third year thereabouts.
And I, I was in my second year.
That's what right.
And I, we had the opportunity to do research in the break between first and second year.
And I, like I said, I'm from Nigeria, so I really wanted to do something in Nigeria.
At the time I had started developing a love for sickle cell disease for a variety of reasons.
But, you know, I grew up in Nigeria.
So there were a lot of people that I knew in my life personally,
and outside of my personal life were affected by the disease.
And I was just really intrigued.
I felt like there was so much about it that I didn't understand.
And I had a lot of, you know, hearsay knowledge, but I didn't have a lot of in-depth knowledge.
And so I think I was on holiday maybe the year before,
and it had come up in conversation that, oh, there was this sort of movement in Nigeria
to sort of make it mandatory to do sickle cell treat or sickle cell testing before marriage,
because it was such a high prevalence of sickle cell treat in Nigeria.
And as a result, a high incidence of sickle cell disease.
And so I just, first of all, I was kind of like astounded by that.
Like you could actually make people.
First of all, I didn't even know people weren't like,
I didn't realize people were not often aware of their sickle cell street treat status.
And I just remember thinking to myself, huh, well, there's a lot of stigma around this disease
because a lot of people don't understand what, myself included,
don't understand what sickle cell disease is.
And I can understand why people would hide that from their potential partners, right,
because of the stigma.
But that's what I thought.
So I asked myself this question.
Why do people who know they have sickle cell treat or may not even be aware,
but when they become aware, why do they hide that away from potential partners?
Is it because they're afraid of stigma?
Is it because they don't really understand what sickle cell treat status means?
Is it because they don't understand what sickle cell disease means?
Or is it because they think, you know, even if I have sickle trait
and my partner has sickle trait, we're not going to have a child with sickle cell disease?
I asked myself these series of questions and I pondered about it over the summer.
And then when the opportunity came to do global health research elective,
I knew I was going back to Nigeria and I said, OK, well, I'm going to apply for this opportunity
to give you like a travel stipend or whatever.
And I'm going to design a simple questionnaire about sickle cell treat status and concerns
about it, stigma, knowledge, so on and so forth. I literally wrote this out.
No guidance, no mentorship. I just I was just genuinely curious.
I wrote it out. I submitted it as a proposal as a second year medical student.
I got some funding to travel back home.
I worked my connections there to get myself into Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
And I just proceeded to do a summer research project on this topic.
That I found really fascinating and interesting.
And that's where I was bitten by the bug of research.
I just I don't know.
I don't know what I was thinking at the time.
But sometimes what you don't know is actually helpful, right?
Because I didn't really know what does it entail to, you know, come up with a concept,
actually implement that study and see it to completion.
If perhaps if I had known all that it would entail, I would have been discouraged.
But I didn't know. So I suppose my naivety.
But yeah, my curiosity was what launched me on this path.
And I have lived back ever since.
Wow. What a great story.
And you did it just on your own.
You didn't even have a mentor to show you the way.
Not at that point.
No, not at that point, no.
So then moving on from that story, at what point were you finally like,
I'm a clinician researcher.
This is who I am.
Yeah.
Gosh, I think that didn't come for several more years,
probably when I was towards the end of my residency, I think.
So this is fast forward, you know, 2011, thereabouts.
And this incident that I talked to you about with doing the
Wibble Health research back in Nigeria, that was probably 2005, 2006.
So, you know, six, seven years down the line, or five, six years down the line, actually.
And so I just, I kind of, you know, you're told a certain thing.
Oh, you should be a clinician.
You should be a primary care doctor.
You should be a family doctor.
You should be, you know, I felt like people were always telling me what I should do.
But deep in my heart, I'm like, no, I want to continue to ask questions
about things that I found really interesting.
I, at that point, I knew I was going to do something in sickle cell.
I didn't know specifically what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to do something
in sickle cell, and I had said that to everybody who, who bothers to ask me, you know?
And so I said, no, I don't, I don't want to be a clinician.
I actually want to continue down this path of asking questions
and trying to figure out a way to answer the questions.
I just, I found that to be very, how should I put it?
It was just very, it kind of just gave me this feeling inside of, you know, what can I learn?
And how do I learn?
And in addition to that, when I do answer these questions that I think are very important,
how do I share that with others?
You know, because at the core of it, and I was reading through my journal,
at the core of it, you know, I'm a learner.
I think I've always been a lifelong learner.
And, you know, nothing excites me more than learning about a topic that I'm fascinated by.
And then turning that around and, you know, I've learned about it.
How do I share it with others?
So teach, right?
So I think it didn't sink in until probably third year residency, possibly first year fellowship.
I miss all the noise of everything that's happening around all that sort of clinical demand
and the long hours and the, you know, just the really brutal schedule.
I just never let go of that furious person that I was when I was in medical school.
And I kept saying, I want to do this.
I want to do this.
And I can't tell you how many people told me,
but that's not in the cards for you.
You're starting too far behind.
You know, a lot of your colleagues who want to do this,
they've already sort of enmeshed themselves in research groups.
And, you know, maybe part of my upbringing, part of my experience, I just thought,
well, yeah, maybe they've had a head start.
But there's something we would say in my family all the time.
My parents would say it to us all the time.
It really translates to, they don't have two heads, right?
They don't have two heads.
Meaning the people who are accomplishing these things,
they don't have anything that you don't have, right?
I don't know if my parents knew that that's how we interpreted it,
but that's how I interpreted it.
So I could hear my mom and my dad's voice in the back of my head.
They don't have two heads.
They don't have two heads, you know, figure out how they did it
and figure out how you can get to that stage, you know?
And so I think when I was a second year fellow,
and the reality was sinking in of, OK, if you're going to do a research,
you're going to have a research career, you need to start now.
You know, I think there was a little bit of urgency as well.
And a lot of people said it couldn't be done.
A lot of people, you know, kindly and unfriendly would say,
this is not for you.
It's too late.
You haven't done this.
You haven't done that.
A lot of, you know, you haven't, you know, checked off X, Y, and Z box.
But I knew my potential and I knew my tenacity.
And even when I would sometimes have a lot of doubts,
I would just always sort of lay back in my mind, you don't have two heads.
If they figured it out, I can do the same, you know,
and I just kind of took it from there.
Wow.
I mean, it just sounds like you just had such a strong foundation
of believing in yourself.
And so that when people told you that you couldn't, you just didn't take their word for it.
I didn't.
Sometimes I would let their voices or these voices overpowered my voice or my inner voice.
But if I could just remove myself sometimes from that area of noise,
and I would dare say negativity, I could listen to myself and listen to the voice of my parents
and the voice of other people who had like, you know, supported me throughout the years,
you know, my siblings, my parents, other people in my family, other people in my sphere, you know.
And I just had this deep belief that I wanted to do more, not what was expected,
but I really wanted to do what I wanted to do, what I was interested in doing.
And if I just let myself be quiet and hear those voices, the supporting voices,
it would eventually drown out the negative ones.
It wasn't easy. I won't lie. It wasn't easy.
There were many, many sacrifices along the way.
My son was just a baby at the time.
And I can't tell you how many times, you know, I would put him to sleep late at night
and then start working.
Or, you know, how many times I would have to wake up very early in the morning,
get some work done before he wakes up.
And, you know, most parents know what I'm talking about.
And it was a lot of sacrifices, a lot of sacrifices along the way.
But I'm thankful because I think for me, at the times when I was most doubtful of myself,
other people would be that encouraging voice to me.
And at the times when other people were like, oh, you can't do it, you can't do it,
then I would be that encouraging voice for myself.
But, you know, I just learned along the way that, for me at least,
like I learned along the way that I know what I want.
I'm going to learn how to achieve it or accomplish it.
And I'm going to work hard to accomplish it.
Learn to cut your losses along the way, I guess.
I can give a little bit more detailed example of that.
But yeah, I just felt very, I felt very, how should I put it?
I'm a very young age. I just felt like, you know, if I want to do something,
I need to learn how to do it.
And at least try. If it doesn't work out, it's not because I didn't try.
So, yeah.
No, this is really awesome.
I mean, I guess it's almost like, I'm like, it's no small wonder you succeeded.
Oh, goodness. You've never let anybody stop you.
So awesome.
Well, let me ask, though.
So you described some challenges, actually, along the way.
And I would ask you, what was the challenge?
I want to ask you, what was the single biggest challenge that you had to overcome in this journey?
Single biggest challenge I had to overcome in this journey.
I hope it's not cliche.
With self-doubt. Self-doubt.
I was riddled with self-doubt.
I was riddled with, you know, do I really have what it takes?
Can I really do this?
This comes up from time to time, even now.
Even though when I look back, I've accomplished a lot.
But, you know, imposter syndrome is real.
Self-doubt is real.
Perfectionism is real.
And it's a big struggle.
I went back and I looked at something that I wrote to myself about almost two years ago now.
And I, you know, without explaining the context, I just wrote this to myself.
And I'll just read it out to you.
I'm just giving a little bit of an example of some of the things I was talking about in this context.
What I said here, amidst the crucible of pressure, the facade of perfectionism started to crack.
And I knew I needed help if I wanted to survive and thrive in this world.
I was writing to myself what my experience was in my first year of academia.
And I was really, really struggling with self-doubt and imposter syndrome and thinking I landed on my job by mistake.
I didn't do anything to deserve this position, even though I worked my butt off all these years to get to where I was.
And I had this perfectionism thing that I was trying to project to the world around me at the time, even though I was really struggling.
And at some point, I had to learn to let that go.
I had to learn to say, no, I can't do, I can't be everything to everyone.
I have to prioritize what's important to myself.
Sometimes I have to let people know that, you know, yeah, I don't want to.
I don't want to write this grant or I don't want to write this paper or I don't want to give this talk.
It's just not the right thing for me at this time.
And so one of the things that I really struggled with was people will, I don't know how to put this, but, you know, oftentimes people will say, oh, I remember, you know, when I first started my first faculty job, I was told, oh, you have to write a K in your first year.
Now I knew deep in my heart that, yeah, writing a K wasn't my future, but it wasn't realistic in my first year as a faculty member. Like, what was I going to write about? You know what I mean?
And people read me all kinds of advice. They're like, oh, a K is not a big deal. You just write it. And I'm like, really? You just like wake up a warning, Mr. Write a K. That didn't sound right to me.
I put so much pressure on myself and I was just filling myself to write a grant that I knew I was not ready for. Like I was not ready, you know?
And even though I kept saying that I'm not ready, I need to get this, people said, oh, you're just procrastinating or you are overthinking it. Just write it and just check it off, you know?
And so I really, really, you know, I basically burnt the candle on both ends trying to write a K that deep down I knew I wasn't ready to do.
And so when I didn't get the K, I was actually kind of relieved. I was just like, oh, you know, I didn't, what I put forth was not what I wanted.
You know what I mean? It wasn't, it wasn't maybe a little bit of my perfectionism was seeping in, but I knew that it wasn't a strong application or at least it wasn't as strong as I would like it to be.
And so some of the some of the real things that I struggled with were expectations of others, even though deep down I knew those expectations were unrealistic or the timing was off or it just wasn't what I wanted.
I would still pursue it because I was trying to please others and it took me a few years, probably two or three years of trying to do this and literally dying inside from sheer exhaustion and not having any time whatsoever to rest and rejuvenate.
And it took me about two or three years. Yeah, sorry, 2017. I think it wasn't until 2019 and I'm like, I can't sustain this. I really have to let the cracks show so people can know that, you know, I'm a human being too.
I'm a wife, I'm a mom, I'm an assistant professor, but I'm also all these things. And these things that my family is much more important to me than some grants that I knew wasn't just the right time for me.
And so I remember very well. This was June, I think 2018 when I was attempting to submit my first K, and I didn't make the deadline, because it was just so overwhelming it was just so overwhelming and I told the administrative assistant at the time I told them,
I'm not, I'm not submitting this cycle. And my division chief called me she's like, what, what we already talked about it and why you're supposed to do this.
And I just told her, No, I remember seeing it I was very respectful I just said no, the timing is not right. And I just felt so liberated in saying that, and I remember very very well.
I was kind of like just on my own, or not on my own I guess but I just said okay well I didn't make this deadline I'm just going to let it go, because I didn't make this deadline I didn't fulfill somebody else's expectation, and I had no trouble when my division
chief called me I had no trouble telling her. No, this was not appropriate this is not the timeline for me. And I remember very well because that same week or weekend, one of my best friends from high school was getting married.
And I went to that wedding, and I was so happy.
I was so happy and so relieved, because this awful grants that I was being forced to write was I had just told them, No, I'm not going to write this grant at this time I'm not going to submit a half baked idea.
This is not the right time, you know, and I just remember having the best time at that wedding. I had let go of these unrealistic expectations. So I do think, you know, oftentimes the, you know, yeah, I really really really struggle and I continue to struggle
sometimes but there are things now that I feel very confident saying no, you know, I'm not doing this I'm not doing that, and feel no guilt about it. And then sometimes when self doubt creeps in, which it inevitably does right because I think imposter syndrome is for me
it's it's almost always, you know, sometimes when I let the self doubt drown out my, my own inner knowledge of myself, imposter syndrome creeps in. And I just have to tell myself.
You've been down this path, many times, you know what you need to do. Just give yourself space and grace to do it.
I sometimes have to get a reminder from people. But yeah, I just these things these struggles come up from time to time. And they're always with me I guess but they come up from time to time and I just have to remind myself.
I've done this many times before I can do it again. And I actually think one thing for me now in my, in this phase of my career, having other people reach out to me, other junior investigators or other trainees who are interested in pursuing a path of clinical research and sharing
my experience coming on sharing with you. I also think that that reminds me, you know how much I learned for the years and that's also another way that I found a silence that self critic or that self doubt, you know, when it comes up from time to time.
Wow, thank you for sharing that. So what I hear is someone who has always kind of been sure of herself or like a great great part of the journey, and then coming to this phase of the journey having self doubt kind of hold you back.
And as long as you were doubting yourself, you couldn't move forward. Yeah, when other people are like this is what you need to do this is what you need to do it didn't feel right because, in a sense, your mind was divided, do I go the way they tell me, or do I follow my, my inner person
and not even leading myself. Yes. You're so right. You're so right, I feel like, you know when I stop and think about it.
When I was growing up, you maybe we battled sexism I don't know, but definitely not racism, definitely not a sense of you don't belong that never it was never a thing for me, like it was never like I was never the other, you know, and then as I climbed up the
every tower in academia, that othering was always there,
which is something I never grew up with.
And I still, at first I didn't even recognize it, you know,
and I would sometimes feel that, right?
Like I am the only one of color here.
I'm the only woman here.
Like I'm the only, you know, it just, you know,
it would come up and then sometimes I would think,
do I not belong here?
You know, and I just had to tell myself that,
no, I belong here just as much as everybody else
who's in the majority.
The folks in the majority might have a leg up,
but that doesn't mean I can't work.
Maybe I had to work twice as hard,
maybe sometimes three times as hard,
but it doesn't mean I can't let my work speak for itself,
you know?
And so I do think that sometimes, yes,
when I grew up, when I was growing up,
I had a lot of self-confidence
and that kind of got eroded a little bit,
the higher up I went here in this country,
but the core value of self-knowledge, self-worth,
self-belief is always there.
I just have to sometimes dig deep to find it.
But you're absolutely right.
I do think in the beginning,
I think I suffered a crisis of self-confidence
and felt very obligated to do something,
to do things or to fulfill other people's expectations
of mine, even though I knew deep down
it wasn't the right thing for me at that time.
And then lo and behold, when I did feel I was ready
and I had the building blocks to write a full thought out key
and I wrote that the second time around when I resubmitted,
I wrote it with so much more balance and peace.
It was really like, it just flowed, right?
There wasn't all these barriers
that I'd experienced the first time
where I just felt like I was fighting an uphill battle.
You know, the second time around when I wrote that key,
it just, it felt right.
I don't know how else to describe it.
It just felt right.
Like, you know, when I needed guidance,
I knew where to turn to.
When I needed time to write things out,
it flowed out of me in a very,
not that it was easy, but it just felt right.
And I tell you, when I submitted that key,
in the midst of the shutdown of COVID,
I can't tell you, I can't describe how it felt.
I just felt like, ah, now this is the time.
Even though I felt like the world was ending.
It just, it felt right.
And so I know what that feeling is like now.
And so now when I engage in things,
I always think to myself, does it feel right to me
to do this at this time?
If it doesn't feel right,
I have a lot more confidence in saying, okay, no,
I'm not gonna do this.
I'm gonna take a step back and re-examine and reassess.
And so, you know, I hope that folks that are listening
can understand sometimes people,
not that they have an agenda,
but people often tell you the path
that they've taken to success.
And they make you feel like if you don't follow this path,
you're not going to be successful.
And I'm here to tell you that that is as far
from the truth as it can be.
Many people get to success the way that you,
everybody defines success differently.
But many people get to success through different paths.
And you just have to learn what works for you
and what your path is.
And you have to be the one to define what success is for you.
So I had to learn to let go of those things
that didn't feel right and didn't sit right with me.
And just, I guess, march to the beat of my own drum,
which has never failed me.
So anyhow, I hope that answered your question.
And thinking you have a great drummer.
No, that was really awesome.
And actually I was about to ask you,
I was like, so someone's here and you've kind of said it,
but I don't know if you have something else
that you want to add.
And they're thinking, I don't know, Big Bay,
I've never done this before.
And I don't know if I have that strong
internal voice that you have.
What would you tell them?
What would you advise them to do?
That's a really good question.
I would say reach out and ask.
Reach out and ask others.
I did this a lot and I still do this to today.
If I'm doing something where I feel a little bit intimidated,
I've never done this before,
I've never stepped out in this way before,
I feel a little bit vulnerable.
Some people are afraid of trying and failing.
I will say sometimes I'm afraid of trying and succeeding
as ironic as that sounds.
I ask, I ask others, people that I know,
people that I trust.
And I'll ask them, hey, you've done this thing,
which I think it's phenomenal.
I want to do it too.
What was your process?
And I don't just ask one person,
I asked a few people because I want to get a rounded view.
Once again, one person's path is one person's path.
That's what it is, right?
And sometimes you have to glean things
from different people in order to build your own path.
So I'll use the K as an example again.
When I was writing the K, I had never done that before.
I was very intimidated.
I was also feeling a lot of pressure.
But I did ask other people that I had met along the way
who had written successful K grants
if they were willing to share theirs with me
and more often than not they were.
And when I read through the applications,
I was like, oh, I like this aspect of what they wrote
or I like how they presented this particular thing
or I like how they had a figure or a diagram
to explain their aims.
And I just kind of picked and borrowed
different things that I liked.
And then I crafted my own application
or my own proposal in my own voice, right?
But borrowing elements from others.
And so sometimes when you're stepping out to do something,
oh, I'm going to write a grant.
I'm going to apply for a job.
Oh, I'm going to give this talk
or I'm going to like engage in this particular thing
that nobody's ever done before.
I feel really intimidated.
Just know that the people who have done those things
were in your shoes at some point.
And if you have the ability,
I know that's not always the case,
but if you have the opportunity or the ability
to talk to these people, reach out and ask.
The worst they can say, or they could ignore you
or I can't tell you how many emails I sent
that I never heard back.
But I was persistent and I was tenacious.
And if one person doesn't respond,
your need is just one, maybe two people, right?
And so if one person doesn't respond, it's okay.
You can ask another person or you can ask other people.
So yeah, I would say if you're starting off
and you haven't done something before
and you feel very intimidated, just ask, right?
Just ask.
A good friend told me, if you don't ask,
well, he was putting in the context of applying for grants,
because at that time I was like,
oh, should I apply for this grant
or apply for this grant or apply for that grant?
He's like, apply for all of them, right?
It's like 100%, you won't get funded
if you don't apply, right?
But if you apply for two things or three things,
you might get one, right?
So I would change that context and say, just ask, right?
The worst that could happen is they don't get back to you.
Not a big deal, it's a big world.
There are many other people out there
who have done those same things.
And feel free to ask them, you know?
And I think another important thing is,
surround yourself with a group of people
who have different skill sets that you need.
Don't put all your hopes and dreams on one magical mentor.
They do not exist, right?
But surround yourself with people
who have accomplished things that you want to accomplish,
who have the knowledge base or the skill set
to do what it is that you're trying to do.
And like I said, you're gonna learn different things
from different people, but take what you can,
not in a sort of parasitic way, obviously,
but take what you can, learn what you can
from different people, and then craft that into your own,
to basically guide your own journey.
Have multiple mentors, try to find multiple sponsors,
try to find multiple peers who are doing similar things
that you're doing, try to build a community.
For me, I've never operated well in a vacuum,
so I'm always trying to figure out,
are there other people at my institution
or other people outside of my institution
that I could community with,
and who can be supportive of me,
and who I also can support,
when and if they need that support.
I do think finding a community of other people
who are interested in what you're doing is very important.
And in this academia world, sometimes we're told,
that you are the expert, you should be able to do
all of this stuff by yourself.
And I don't think that's true.
I actually really don't think that's true.
I do think that having a collaborative mindset
is a way to go, and a way to sustain yourself
in this challenging world.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Thank you for sharing that.
I mean, there's so many gems in what you said.
And I think one of the things I wanna emphasize
is just that, you know, if you're afraid,
it's usually a sign that you may not be in a safe space.
And so looking for those safe spaces
where people encourage you to believe in yourself
and speak in your own voice and be your own person,
because people are trying to tell you how to be like them,
and you don't need to be like them.
They're already there.
Why would you wanna try to imitate them?
It's using what gifts you can get from them
to create a bigger, better you.
And how amazing is that?
Yeah, it's very amazing.
To create a greater version of yourself.
And it's not like that's what you've been doing,
and you're on the journey.
Yes.
Thinking today to do that.
Yes.
Yeah.
You know, I wanna say thank you
for sharing your story with us today, which is,
oh my goodness, it's a powerful story.
And I know that you have so much more to share.
And so actually I wanna invite you,
so if someone's been listening and they're like,
oh, Bing Fei is my person,
he's gotta be a mentor I talk to,
or he's someone I need to collaborate with,
how can they find you?
So, let's see, my email is adishinao.ucdavis.edu.
And I'm also, if you just,
my name is not very common,
you should be able to find me.
But then on the UC Davis website,
under the Hematology and Ecology faculty,
I think I'm number two, based on my last name.
So, very easy to find.
But yeah, email is the best way.
Sure, so it sounds like if you just Google Bing Fei,
you will find her.
You will find her.
Yes.
You will find her.
And she is open and available to kind of listen in.
If you're looking for encouragement,
she definitely wants to encourage you.
So, I just wanna thank you, Bing Fei,
for being on the show.
And to our listeners, I wanna say that Bing Fei made it.
She exhibited self-leadership,
and she silenced the voice of doubt.
And she was able to kind of re-energize her belief
in herself so that she could move forward.
And if she could do that, you can do it too.
And I was just wondering.
Yeah.
And so, I just wanna encourage you.
This week, think about what circles can you get into
that will help you encourage you to believe in yourself,
to be more of you rather than more of somebody else.
And if you're looking for ideas,
please definitely reach out.
We will send out weekly information
as to how you can grow more as a clinician researcher.
And definitely we'll share with you
as more episodes become available.
Thank you for listening with us today.
Enjoy the rest of your week.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic
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have a mentor.
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