Kind: captions
Language: en
as a kid I loved playing outside and my
two brothers and I would just you just
sort of use our imaginations outside and
outdoors you can be anything you know
you can be you could drive a spaceship
you could be the captain of a ship you
could you know be a police officer and
so we love to climb trees we love to
explore nature we had these beautiful
woods in our backyard and so we would
sort of get lost in that and I was just
inspired by being connected to nature in
that way and just having the freedom to
use my imagination I was fascinated by
ants I would watch them outside and so
they would like crawl on the back porch
and in a straight line and so one time I
sort of ran my finger through and I
noticed that the line stopped and it was
like they were confused oh that's weird
like can't they just see that the ants
like right there in front of him and
that was when I realized that they left
some type of trail and so then I'd go
through and like start running my finger
and I noticed that they got confused and
then eventually they'd find their way
back to each other and so I loved
watching ants because I loved how they
work together and how they would sort of
communicate and I'd love to watch them
carry big things because I thought these
little tiny things are like carrying
this big beat Oh like how in the world
do they do that
so ants fascinated me as a kid even
though I grew up with this connection to
biology I found that I was really great
at mathematics when I got to high school
I took some AP courses one of them was
AP calculus
and I really gravitated toward math but
I didn't know any people who look like
me who did math and so I didn't really
think anything of it until I got to
Spelman College and which is a
historically black college for women and
I met black women mathematicians for the
first time oh oh this is something I can
do okay great
and so that's sort of what got me
excited about math and then they sort of
kept me on the path I mean they really
mentored me and pushed me to go as far
as I could I often gazed at stars
because in my mind they were really
small it was later than I found out that
they were these big balls of you know
this gasps but at the time they just
look so teeny and tiny and touchable and
I always sort of wondered specially when
they would twinkle like what was
happening and I I mean I didn't really
understand about how light was traveling
at the time but I was like oh that's
cute that little twinkle star it's like
if you were close to that you'd be dead
to look at it I didn't know the moon was
round until later and so you know as a
kid when you see a half moon or you know
I just think like that was the oh the
moon is shaped like a banana you know
what it was later I was like wait a
minute it's just the way that the light
hits the moon I'm sure we all had that
as children but so yeah I was always
sort of amazed looking at space and and
I loved seeing how my thoughts developed
as I got older and understood how things
worked we didn't have cable as a kid
sorry mom dad for Kona so we watched
public television because it was either
that or you know the news and so my
brothers and I grew up watching PBS and
as I got older I started watching Nolan
I was just inspired you know and that
was that was how in my mind books came
alive when I watched PBS
because growing up we had books but they
weren't as exciting and there wasn't a
lot of shows that did a lot of science
animation and so it was my imagination
or it was sort of a more boring
scientific book Nova was like here's
what it looks like here's how you can
imagine science and now here's how we
can you know show you what a black hole
really looks like and so for me as a kid
that was really amazing because all of a
sudden my imagination now had a visual
image to go with it I'm so excited to do
Nova wonders because I really want to be
an example for the scientists that came
before me and for the kids who are
coming after me and so I grew up
watching these scientists on television
and talk about their work be excited
about their work and I remember as a
little girl you know watching them and
thinking oh my gosh like they get to
spend their whole life exploring what I
daydream about and so for me to have the
opportunity to be that example for the
next generation is so exciting