Interdependence
Friday afternoon and late September sun just barely spills into a 9th grade biology classroom. Mr. Mulvey stands in front of a chalkboard pointing at an oversized cartoon of a cell. I stare at the clock, watching the hands slowly tick towards the end of the day. I’m not particularly interested in biology.
Another Friday, seven years and seventy miles away, it’s far too late in the day in January for there to be any sunlight on my lab bench. I’m writing up my work in an overstuffed notebook that catalogues four years of successes and failures. As everyone filters out of the room, lights turn off over incubators and tabletops for the weekend, and the noise and chatter die down just enough for me to hear a quiet email notification. Interdependence, the subject line reads. How do I think about interdependence in my life?
My mind goes immediately to my cells — little blobs of DNA and proteins and fats and carbs that stick to the bottom of a plastic dish, covered in a soup of salt and sugar and phenol-red water. Try and grow too few and, without being able to signal to each other, they die. But grow too many and they strangle and starve each other. Cells can’t survive independently or co-dependently. Their lives require a careful interdependence. Just like my cells grow based on their environment, turn into bone on hard plastic but brain on gel, swell and shrink based on the signals and suffering of those around them, I went from a bored, blue-haired 14 year old to a college senior applying to MD/PhD programs by relying on the people around me to challenge and change me, to hold me close, closest, or not at all as my future fell apart and came back together again more times than I can count.
Back in ninth grade, the memory of me who didn’t know any of this is snapped out of the heat-induced haze by chalk screeching down the board in the front of the room.
“Most of you,” Mr. Mulvey interjects between squeaks of chalk, “will never care about most of what you’ll learn this year. Most of you WILL” he pauses for emphasis, “forget everything. That’s okay. If you don’t remember anything else, though, I want you to remember the answers to two questions. First,” the chalk returns to the board, tracing out his words in pale white, “biologically, why do we exist?”
He turns to see the room of blank faces and sighs, but continues.
“Second, why does anything happen? Why do cells and people do what they do? What is ultimately the answer to any question you will ever be asked in science?”
Then, I had no idea. But if you bear with me as I turn the intervening years into a coming-of-age teen indie movie film reel that I have always dreamt of starring in, I’ll hopefully explain why I have an answer now. Biologically, why does anything happen? Why do we exist?
Cut scene to a few months later where I’m sitting on a pile of gymnastics mats in the back corner of the elementary school auditorium, tallying up scores for the 5th grade science fair and trying not to cry. When I was in 5th grade, I made DNA from chopped kiwis for this exact science fair and I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn’t know what had happened in the in-between time that it took me to become a high school freshman that made me feel so lost. Alex*, who arrived at school from Vienna as a scrawny second grader sat down next to me on the torn up blue mats and, even though we hadn’t spoken for years, put his arm around my shoulder and promised me that everything was going to be okay.
“No matter what you choose to do in life,” he said as I silently cried into his chest, “I know you will be amazing, but, for what it’s worth, Anna, I think you’ll make a brilliant scientist.”
A blur of months, and I’m in the orchestra room. I asked Sara*, who I now haven’t spoken to since sophomore year not because anything happened but because time sometimes does that, why the math and science department made me take placement test after placement test while the boys who wanted to skip ahead just walked into what they wanted.
“Should I just study English?” I asked her, not confident enough in my own intelligence to fight for what I wanted. “I’m good at English, and girls aren’t great at math anyway. At least I’m not.” Sara, who understood long before I did that just because you’re good at something doesn't mean you have to like doing it and, conversely, just because you have to fight for something you love doesn't mean it isn’t worth it, laughed at me in the kindest way possible.
“Anna, they’re just a bunch of sexist assholes. If cells and numbers make you happy, it’s worth jumping through their hoops. Maybe you’ll even prove yourself dramatically enough that the next girl doesn’t have to.”
Sophomore year, I was sitting in Amanda’s* kitchen when she got into Yale. I wondered idly if that’s something I could do, too. Just over a year later, Ms. Leanne, my English teacher, told me I reminded her of Amanda. Someone who likes writing and biology, a musician, immigrant, with long brown hair and formidable willpower. I liked the comparison. I added Yale to the list of colleges I wanted to apply to.
Hurtling forward, we’ve made it four years but I still don’t have the answer — Biologically, why does anything happen? Why do we exist? On the first night of college, Austin* tilts his head towards me where we’re lying on his common room carpet and asks me if I plan on changing the world. Drunk for the first time on something harder than cheap wine, I turn and say, “Austin*, my greatest fear in life is being unremarkable. Or unloved. Actually the dark is sketchy, too, and —” he reached up and clumsily waves his hand, silencing me.
“Dude, you’re already remarkable.”
Under fairy lights, in a suite of nine guys and one me, Sam* and I laughed hysterically when we tried to do a physics problem and get both -34 and 5,000 as hypothetically equivalent answers. When I went to try again, he grabbed the paper out of my hands and turned the lights off, telling me I can do the rest of the Pset tomorrow. In a summery glow in the middle of winter, we clumsily danced, tripping over one another, still laughing, as Perfect played over crappy computer speakers.
“We’re both going to be doctors one day,” he promises. “We’re good enough. This is a good song, but we don’t need to be perfect.”
Senior fall, I dropped a tray of cells, spilling shattered plastic and what looks like cranberry juice across the floor. I cleaned up and gave up, deciding that science is pointless, deciding that I needed to find something else to do with my life because I’ve worked in labs for six years and nothing is amounting to anything that will ever make a difference. I got back to my room at 3 am and when I opened the door, I saw Ahmed*.
“What’s wrong,” he said, “I know something is wrong,” and like Alex*, he held me while I cried into his shirt, sobbing incoherently about how hopeless everything seemed.
“You will help people no matter what you do,” he told me. “It's just kinda who you are, but, for what it’s worth, Anna-Sophia, you’re going to be an amazing scientist.”
And, with that, we’ve made it back to now. Biologically, why does anything happen? Why do we exist? I listened, Mr. Mulvey. I don’t remember anything else from 9th grade biology, but I remember these two questions, and the answer that I’ve found in the people who have shaped my life is pinned over my lab bench even as I write this essay, two post-its stuck over my desk with quotes from Walt Whitman. On the left, “these are the days that must happen to you,” and on the right, “if you want me again look under your bootsoles [...] I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
“Biologically, ” I hear Mr. Mulvey saying, “we exist for no reasons at all. You,” he points at me, “you, you,” his finger scans the room, “all of you,” he says, throwing his hands up in the air, “all of us are statistical anomalies. We exist because every tiny little thing happened correctly in the universe to set life — your life — into motion. You exist as you are because of the people around you; you exist because of the answer to my second question — biologically, why does anything happen? Why do cells and bodies do what they do? To maintain equilibrium. To respond to their environment and restore balance.”
That’s interdependence. In the absence of a catalyst that, as far as we know, has only succeeded once in the history of the universe, the prerequisite for life is other, preexisting and coexisting life. I’m pursuing a career fundamentally anchored in the faith that everything is connected, but it took me a long, long time to learn how to translate that from textbooks and tissue samples into an understanding that, no matter how lonely I feel, I am the product of the people around me, I am who I am because of the days that happened to me.
Things happen, and have happened in my life, to maintain equilibrium, dynamic homeostasis. Our cells react to stay stable in a changing environment. We shape, and are shaped by, the people around us. I am the living memory of everyone I have ever loved and lost and learned from. Alex, Sara, Amanda, Sam, Austin, Ahmed — the people I live with, the people I sing with, my family, all of you — more people than I can count. If you want me again, it says on the post-it, look under your bootsoles. If I want them again, I will always be able to look under mine.
Friday afternoon, alone in lab. My notes are written, the cells are fed for the weekend. On my way out, I turn off the lights and lock the door before putting on my headphones and bracing into the winter night as I bike home with music playing over the sound of lives happening around me. I think about dinner, my friends, my plans for the weekend. I don’t think about all the people I have left behind, or all of those I’ve yet to meet. Hungry, tired, and cold, I don’t dwell on all the people I have been. I don’t let myself worry about all of the people I’m eventually going to become.
