“A year ago. Why were you walking around the department at night?”
“I can’t remember. Maybe I had a deadline. Or maybe I was going home.” He shrugged, and scanned the hallway until his eyes fell on the water fountain. “Maybe I was thirsty.”
“Maybe.” She took a step closer. “Maybe you were secretly hoping for a kiss.”
He gave her a long, amused look. “Maybe.”
She took another step, and another, and another. And then her alarm beeped, once, right as she came to stand in front of him. Another intrusion of his personal space. But this time, when she pushed up on her toes, when she wrapped her arms around his neck, Adam’s hands pulled her deeper into himself.
It had been one year. Exactly one year. And by now his body was so familiar to her, she knew the breadth of his shoulders, the scratch of his stubble, the scent of his skin, all by heart; she could feel the smile in his eyes.
Olive sank into him, let him support her weight, and then moved until her mouth was almost level with his ear. She pressed her lips against its shell, and whispered softly into his skin.
“May I kiss you, Dr. Carlsen?”
Author’s Note
I write stories set in academia because academia is all I know. It can be a very insular, all-consuming, isolating environment. In the past decade, I’ve had excellent (women) mentors who constantly supported me, but I could name dozens of instances in which I felt as though I was a massive failure blundering her way through science. But that, as everyone who’s been there knows, is grad school: a stressful, high-pressure, competitive endeavor. Academia has its own special way of tearing apart work-life balance, wearing people down, and making them forget that they are worth more than the number of papers they publish or the grant money they are able to rake in.
Taking the thing I love the most (writing love stories) and giving it a STEM academia backdrop has been surprisingly therapeutic. My experiences have not been the same as Olive’s (no academic fake dating for me, boo), but I still managed to pour many of my frustrations, joys, and disappointments into her adventures. Just like Olive, in the past few years I have felt lonely, determined, helpless, scared, happy, cornered, inadequate, misunderstood, enthusiastic. Writing The Love Hypothesis gave me the opportunity to turn these experiences around with a humorous, sometimes self-indulgent spin, and to realize that I could put my own misadventures into perspective—sometimes even laugh at them! For this reason—and I know I probably shouldn’t say it—this book means as much to me as my Ph.D. dissertation did.
Okay—that’s a lie. It means waaay more.
If you’re not familiar with it, a few words about a topic that comes up quite a bit in the book: Title IX is a US federal law that prohibits any kind of discrimination on the basis of gender in all institutions that receive federal funding (i.e., most universities). It legally compels schools to respond to and remedy situations of misconduct ranging from hostile work environments to harassment and assault. Covered schools have Title IX coordinators, whose job is to handle complaints and violations and to educate an institution’s community about their rights. Title IX has been and currently is critical to guarantee equal access to education and to protect students and employees against gender-based discrimination.
Lastly: the women in STEM organizations Anh mentions in the book are fictionalized, but most universities host chapters of similar organizations. For real-life resources on supporting women academics in STEM, visit awis.org. For resources that specifically support BIPOC women academics in STEM, visit sswoc.org.
Acknowledgments
First, just allow me to say: asgfgsfasdgfadg. I cannot believe this book exists. Truly, afgjsdfafksjfadg.
Second, allow me to further say: this book would not exist if approximately two hundred people hadn’t held my hand for the past two years. *Cue end credits song.* In a very disorganized order, I must acknowledge:
Thao Le, my marvelous agent (your DM changed my life, for the very best); Sarah Blumenstock, my fantastic editor (who is not that kind of editor); Rebecca and Alannah, my very first betas (and shout-out to Alannah for the title!); my gremlins, for being gremalicious and for always defending the c.p.; Daddy Lucy and Jen (thank you for all the reads and the SM and the infinite hand-holding), Claire, Court, Julie, Katie, Kat, Kelly, Margaret, and my wife, Sabine (ALIMONE!) (as well as Jess, Shep, and Trix, my honorary grems). My Words Are Hard buds, for the whining support: Celia, Kate, Sarah, and Victoria. My TMers, who believed in me from the start: Court, Dani, Christy, Kate, Mar, Marie, and Rachelle; Caitie, for being the first IRL person who made me feel like I could talk about all of this; Margo Lipschultz and Jennie Conway, for the precious feedback on early drafts; Frankie, for the timeliest of prompts; Psi, for inspiring me with her beautiful writing; the Berkletes, for the pooping and the knotting; Sharon Ibbotson, for the invaluable editorial input and encouragement; Stephanie, Jordan, Lindsey Merril, and Kat, for beta reading my manuscript and helping me fix it; Lilith, for the stunning art and the amazing cover, as well as the peeps at Penguin Creative; Bridget O’Toole and Jessica Brock for helping me make people think that they might want to read this book; everyone at Berkley who has helped getting this manuscript in shape behind the scenes; Rian Johnson, for doing The Thing that inspired me to do All The Things.
The truth is, I never saw myself as someone who’d ever write anything but science articles. And I probably never would have if it hadn’t been for all the fanfiction authors who posted amazing pieces online and encouraged me to start writing myself. And I certainly wouldn’t have had the guts to start writing original fiction if it hadn’t been for the support, the cheering, the encouragement, the con-crit I got from the Star Trek and Star Wars/Reylo fandoms. To everyone who has left a comment or kudos on my fics, who has given me shout-outs on social media, who has reached out in DMs, who has drawn art for me or made a mood board, who has cheered me on, who has taken the time to read something I’ve written: thank you. Really, thank you so much. I owe you a lot.
Last, and let’s be real, also definitely least: some half-hearted thanks to Stefan, for all the love and the patience. You better not be reading this, you pretentious hipster.
Don’t miss
Love on the Brain
coming soon from Berkley Jove!
“By the way, you can get leprosy from armadillos.”
I peel my nose away from the airplane window and glance at Rocío, my research assistant. “Really?”
“Yep. They got it from humans millennia ago, and now they’re giving it back to us.” She shrugs. “Revenge and cold dishes and all that.”
I scrutinize her beautiful face for hints that she’s lying. Her large dark eyes, heavily rimmed with eyeliner, are inscrutable. Her hair is so Vantablack, it absorbs 99 percent of visible light. Her mouth is full, curved downward in its typical pout.
Nope. I got nothing. “Is this for real?”
“Would I ever lie to you?”
“Last week you swore to me that Stephen King was writing a Winnie-the-Pooh spin-off.” And I believed her. Like I believed that Lady Gaga is a known satanist, or that badminton racquets are made from human bones and intestines. Chaotic goth misanthropy and creepy deadpan sarcasm are her brand, and I should know better than to take her seriously. Problem is, every once in a while she’ll throw in a crazy-sounding story that upon further inspection (i.e., a Google search) is revealed to be true. For instance, did you know that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was inspired by a true story? Before Rocío, I didn’t. And I slept significantly better.
“Don’t believe me, then.” She shrugs, going back to her grad school admission prep book. “Go pet the leper armadillos and die.”
She’s such a weirdo. I adore her.
“Hey, you sure you’re going to be fine, away from Alex for the next few months?” I feel a little guilty for taking her away from her boyfriend. When I was twenty-t
wo, if someone had asked me to be apart from Tim for months, I’d have walked into the sea. Then again, hindsight has proven beyond doubt that I was a complete idiot, and Rocío seems pretty enthused for the opportunity. She plans to apply to Johns Hopkins’s neuro program in the fall, and the NASA line on her CV won’t hurt. She even hugged me when I invited her to come along—a moment of weakness I’m sure she deeply regrets.
“Fine? Are you kidding?” She looks at me like I’m insane. “Three months in Texas, do you know how many times I’ll get to see La Llorona?”
“La . . . what?”
She rolls her eyes and pops in her AirPods. “You really know nothing about famed feminist ghosts.”
I bite back a smile and turn back to the window. In 1905, Dr. Curie decided to invest her Nobel Prize money into hiring her first research assistant. I wonder if she, too, ended up working with a mildly terrifying, Cthulhu-worshipping emo girl. I stare at the clouds until I’m bored, and then I take my phone out of my pocket and connect to the complimentary in-flight Wi-Fi. I glance at Rocío, making sure that she’s not paying attention to me, and angle my screen away.
I’m not a very secretive person, mostly out of laziness: I refuse to take on the cognitive labor of tracking lies and omissions. I do, however, have one secret. One single piece of information that I’ve never shared with anyone—not even my sister. Don’t get me wrong, I trust Reike with my life, but I also know her well enough to picture the scene: she is wearing a flowy sundress and flirting with a Scottish shepherd she met in a trattoria on the Amalfi Coast. They decide to do the shrooms they just purchased from a Belarusian farmer, and mid-trip she accidentally blurts out the one thing she’s been expressly forbidden to repeat: her twin sister, Bee, runs one of the most popular and controversial accounts on Academic Twitter. The Scottish shepherd’s cousin is a closeted men’s rights activist who sends me a dead possum in the mail and rats me out to his insane friends, and I get fired.
No, thank you. I love my job (and possums) too much for this.
I created @WhatWouldMarieDo during my first semester of grad school. I was teaching a neuroanatomy class and decided to give my students an anonymous mid-semester survey to ask for honest feedback on how to improve the course. What I got was . . . not that. I was told that my lectures would be more interesting if I delivered them naked. That I should gain some weight, get a boob job, stop dying my hair “unnatural colors,” get rid of my piercings. I was even given a phone number to call if I was “ever in the mood for a ten-inch dick.” (Yeah, right.)
The messages were pretty appalling, but what sent me sobbing in a bathroom stall was the reactions of the other students in my cohort—Tim included. They laughed the comments off as harmless pranks and dissuaded me from reporting them to the department chair, telling me that I’d be making a stink about nothing.
They were, of course, all men.
(Seriously: Why are men?)
That night I fell asleep crying. The following day, I got up, wondered how many other women in STEM felt as alone as I did, and impulsively downloaded Twitter and made @WhatWouldMarieDo. I slapped on a poorly photoshopped pic of Dr. Curie wearing sunglasses and a one-line bio: Making the periodic table girlier since 1889 (she/her). I just wanted to scream into the void. I honestly didn’t think that anyone would even see my first Tweet. But I was wrong.
@WhatWouldMarieDo What would Dr. Curie, first female professor at La Sorbonne, do if one of her students asked her to deliver her lectures naked?
@198888 She would shorten his half-life.
@annahhhh RAT HIM OUT TO PIERRE!!!
@emily89 Put some polonium in his pants and watch his dick shrivel.
@bioworm55 Nuke him NUKE HIM
@lucyinthesea Has this happened to you? God I’m so sorry. Once a student said something about my ass and it was so gross and no one believed me.
Over half a decade later, after a handful of Chronicle of Higher Education nods, a New York Times article, and about a million followers, WWMD is my happy place. What’s best is, I think the same is true for many others. The account has evolved into a therapeutic community of sorts, used by women in STEM to tell their stories, exchange advice, and . . . bitch.
Oh, we bitch. We bitch a lot, and it’s glorious.
@BiologySarah Hey, @WhatWouldMarieDo if she weren’t given authorship on a project that was originally her idea and that she worked on for over one year? All other authors are men, because *of course* they are.
“Yikes.” I scrunch my face and quote-tweet Sarah.
Marie would slip some radium in their coffee. Also, she would consider reporting this to her institution’s Office of Research Integrity, making sure to document every step of the process ♥
I hit send, drum my fingers on the armrest, and wait. My answers are not the main attraction of the account, not in the least. The real reason people reach out to WWMD is . . .
Yep. This. I feel my grin widen as the replies start coming in.
@DrAllixx This happened to me, too. I was the only woman and only POC in the author lineup and my name suddenly disappeared during revisions. DM if u want to chat, Sarah.
@AmyBernard I am a member of the Women in Science Association, and we have advice for situations like this on our website (they’re sadly common)!
@TheGeologician Going through the same situation rn @BiologySarah. I did report it to ORI and it’s still unfolding but I’m happy to talk if you need to vent.
@SteveHarrison Dude, breaking news: you’re lying to yourself. Your contributions aren’t VALUABLE enough to warrant authorship. Your team did you a favor letting you tag along for a while but if you’re not smart enough, you’re OUT. Not everything is about being a woman, sometimes you’re just A LOSER
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a community of women trying to mind their own business must be in want of a random man’s opinion.
I’ve long learned that engaging with basement-dwelling STEMlords who come online looking for a fight is never a good idea—the last thing I want is to provide free entertainment for their fragile egos. If they want to blow off some steam, they can buy a gym membership or play third-person-shooter video games. Like normal people.
I make to hide @SteveHarrison’s delightful contribution but notice that someone has replied to him.
@Shmacademics Yeah, Marie, sometimes you’re just a loser. Steve would know.
I chuckle.
@WhatWouldMarieDo Aw, Steve. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
@Shmacademics He is just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her to do twice as much work as he ever did in order to prove that she’s worthy of becoming a scientist.
@WhatWouldMarieDo Steve, you old romantic.
@SteveHarrison Fuck you. This ridiculous push for women in STEM is ruining STEM. People should get jobs because they’re good NOT BECAUSE THEY HAVE VAGINAS. But now people feel like they have to hire women and they get jobs over men who are MORE QUALIFIED. This is the end of STEM AND IT’S WRONG.
@WhatWouldMarieDo I can see you’re upset about this, Steve.
@Shmacademics There, there.
Steve blocks both of us, and I chuckle again, drawing a curious glance from Rocío. @Shmacademics is another hugely popular account on Academic Twitter, and by far my favorite. He mostly tweets about how he should be writing, makes fun of elitism and ivory-tower academics, and points out bad or biased science. I was initially a bit distrustful of him—his bio says “he/him,” and we all know how cis men on the internet can be. But he and I ended up forming an alliance of sorts. When the STEMlords take offense at the sheer idea of women in STEM and start pitchforking in my mentions, he helps me ridicule them a little. I’m not sure when we started direct messaging, when I stopped being afraid that he was secretly a retired Gamergater out to doxx me, or when I began considering him a friend. But a handful of years later, here we are, chatting
about half a dozen different things a couple of times a week, without having even exchanged real names. Is it weird, knowing that Shmac had lice three times in second grade but not which time zone he lives in? A bit. But it’s also liberating. Plus, having opinions online can be very dangerous. The internet is a sea full of creepy, cybercriminal fish, and if Mark Zuckerberg can cover his laptop webcam with a piece of tape, I reserve the right to keep things painfully anonymous.
The flight attendant offers me a glass of water from a tray. I shake my head, smile, and DM Shmac.
Marie: I think Steve doesn’t want to play with us anymore.
Shmac: I think Steve wasn’t held enough as a tadpole.
Marie: Lol!
Shmac: How’s life?
Marie: Good! Cool new project starting next week. My ticket away from my gross boss
Shmac: I hope so. Can’t believe dude’s still around.
Marie: The power of connections. And inertia. What about you?
Shmac: Work’s interesting.
Marie: Good interesting?
Shmac: Politicky interesting. So, no.
Marie: I’m afraid to ask. How’s the rest?
Shmac: Weird.
Marie: Did your cat poop in your shoe again?
Shmac: No, but I did find a tomato in my boot the other day.
Marie: Send pics next time! What’s going on?
Shmac: Nothing, really.
Marie: Oh, come on!
Shmac: How do you even know something’s going on?
Marie: Your lack of exclamation points!
Shmac: !!!!!!!11!!1!!!!!
Marie: Shmac.
Shmac: FYI, I’m sighing deeply.
Marie: I bet. Tell me!
Shmac: It’s a girl.
Marie: Ooooh! Tell me EVERYTHING!!!!!!!11!!1!!!!!
The Love Hypothesis Page 33