Student view: From childhood dreams to my first-generation college journey
Annabella Lyndon (she/her/hers) is a first-year Genetics and Genome Sciences and Molecular Plant Sciences Ph.D. student. She received her associates degree in biology from Seminole State Community College in 2021, then in 2023 graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s in plant science. Annabella is currently an NSF graduate and MSU plant science fellow, and plans to use her experience as a first-generation and non-traditional student to help expand inclusivity in STEM and higher education.
By Debbie Walton
We all remember our childhood dreams. Those first ones are usually silly, like wanting to be Spiderman or own a thousand dogs when we grow up, and are easy to dismiss as ramblings of childlike wonder. However, I like to believe these aspirations reflect very real inflections of our young hearts and souls, just limited to small human vernacular. As we grow and mature, so does the way we express these dreams. What was once Spiderman and dogs becomes the desire to provide and care for others. We reach a special turning point in our lives where dreams, desires and aspirations become snippets of reality, not imagination. Then quickly, like the blink of an eye, we’re almost adults and things can’t be silly anymore. The clock is ticking to figure out how to make our dreams equate college, careers and our looming adult lives. What happens to us if we don’t know how? Who’s there for us if we can’t?
Since the age of 10, I would tell everyone that would listen that I was going to be a scientist when I grew up. I believe the author Richard Preston played a hand in that, and I would proudly preach the word of his biological thrillers to my teachers and peers. No one could convince me there was anything cooler in this world than anthrax or ebolavirus, although at the time Twilight was a close third. I had the periodic table on my Toms, designed the “science class” spread for my middle school yearbook and sent biology memes to my AP Life Science teacher before every class (she would add them to our daily PowerPoints). Wanting to be an Egyptologist or Dr. House topped my silly dream list, but I found my heart in these aspirations as I grew older. Really what I wanted more than anything in this life was to someday participate in scientific discovery.
But life rarely plays out just how we imagine it. For me, this came to a head when by age 20 I was a high school dropout working the produce floor to get by. A grocery store was anything but the laboratory paradise I had envisioned for so many years. No beakers, stir plates, incubators, electrophoresis chambers, fume hoods, centrifuges nor pipettes were to be seen in the produce department. Despite this, like all ecological niches in this world, the produce department was home to an array of biological curiosities if you looked close enough. While I didn’t know it as a fresh drop out and new clerk years prior, this place would eventually restore my will to chase my dreams again.
At my store, all produce clerks were required to take relevant learning modules covering agricultural practices, such as farm-to-table production, pesticide usage and post-harvest management. These were concepts I hadn’t really thought about as a lifelong city girl. I knew where food came from, of course, but until then had never considered food or produce in a scientific context. The purpose of this training was to help customers make informed decisions about their purchases, but I found it to be an unexpected and pleasant introduction to agronomy and horticulture - the sciences of crop, fruit and vegetable production. Clerks weren’t required to know how this knowledge came to be; regardless, I couldn’t help learning more on my own time. Partially wanting to be more knowledgeable for our customers, but also to be knowledgeable for myself.
Other things you’ll also encounter frequently as a produce clerk are pests and pathogens (preferably not on the sales floor, of course). Though these products were all destined for the same fate - the trash - I enjoyed browsing over them first, more than anything to satiate the accrued boredom from a 10 hour shift. As much as I didn’t acknowledge agriculture until that point in my life, I also hadn’t considered the microbial friends which inhabited that sphere. A scientifically important microbe was one associated with animals, not the acidic, foul blue dust that ate my strawberries before I could. But in the produce department these small, alien-like creatures became the source of endless curiosity. What influences mold selectivity for different fruits? What significance do mushrooms and molds -both fungi - possess ecologically? How can mold be present on the stem scars of potatoes and tomatoes, but the flesh remains uninfected? My scientific world seemingly expanded right there in the produce department. Here, I realized that maybe school was an option for me again.
College, however, was not something I understood. Being a first-generation college student, I had no idea what the college experience and subsequent workforce entailed. Scientists in my mind were people that went to Yale, Harvard, Oxford and so on immediately after high school, paid for with full ride scholarships which they earned with perfect grades in AP classes and prestigious internships. I was fully confident that having those three little G-E-D letters on my transcript would bar me from higher education. I didn’t even know that community college students could transfer to four-year institutions. Fortunately, I had people in my life, including my family and spouse, and even my grocery coworkers, who helped dispel these assumptions.
Courtesy photo
Five years ago I was a produce clerk, and now I am a PhD student in the prestigious biomolecular science and molecular plant science programs here at MSU, a world-renowned institution in my field of research. It seems obvious how my story ends: I eventually made it, and you would be correct. While a produce clerk, I received my GED, earned my A.A. in Biology, then graduated from the University of Florida with my bachelors in Plant Science specializing in horticultural plant-fungal interactions before coming to Michigan.
I need to note that in my story, “fortunate” reflects the support I had to pursue my lifelong dream. Stranger to stranger, we are all people who started this life with silly dreams and aspirations but diverged independently to get where we are today. Some of us inevitably experience setbacks during this process, whether by our own means or out of our control, but regardless, we are all deserving of another chance. I had and continue to have a strong, supportive community to help me get where I am today, and for that I am incredibly grateful. If there is one thing to take away from my story, it is to be there for others in science; you never know when you’ll be the difference.
