So. The internship. I want to talk about it so I don't forget about it, because it really should make me super proud, and this is something I would like to remember.
A few months ago, an email caught my eye regarding an internship with MAST Research Center. The details of the internship were right up my alley. I don't really talk about school much here, really just as a peripheral obligation that is kind of a drain on my emotional economy. It isn't intentional, I just know I'm already kind of boring in my blog, and I don't want to dive into that any further by talking about my research or my focus. I will now, obviously, but this is probably a one time thing.
My undergrad is in psychology. I graduated with honors, magna cum laude, got a special cord and everything, so you KNOW it's real. The cord makes it legit. About halfway through my undergrad, I started noticing how fucked up the studies I was reading all the time were. How they left out so much of the population. Marginalized groups were barely included in any academic studies, and if they were, the studies themselves were designed with a deficit perspective in mind. So the representation in psychology was abysmal. My capstone paper was twenty five pages on the lack of inclusion in psychology, and how we're unable to be effective practitioners for everyone if we don't bother to see anything but the negatives in people who aren't straight, white, and male. I left psychology behind to pursue something more inclusive. Joke's on me, everything in academia is fucking racist, sexist, ableist, and queerphobic. So I've dedicated my graduate degree to applying concepts in HDFS (human development and family science) positively to marginalized groups, but my focus has been on queer and further marginalized queer youth. Every discussion, every paper, every project, every grant proposal for a program I build. All about queer/further marginalized queer youth.
So when I saw the internship, I was like, RIGHT. GOT IT. That's my lane. Here is the internship ad, I cannot believe it's still up on MAST's website.
Graduate Internship Program
DEADLINE EXTENDED –
APPLICATIONS DUE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2022 BY 5:00 PM ET
As part of our efforts to expand and
strengthen the field of researchers studying relationships and families, the
MAST Center’s Graduate Internship Program aims to connect emerging scholars to
our work as well as a broader network of researchers and practitioners
interested in relationships and families.
Our Graduate Internship Program is
open to graduate students in master’s or Ph.D. programs, as well as individuals
who completed a master’s program within the last year. The internship is a
six-month position from approximately January through June 2023. We seek
applicants who demonstrate a strong interest in further developing their
research expertise in 1) marriage, romantic relationships, and families; and 2)
HMRE program implementation and effectiveness for stepfamilies or LGBTQIA+
populations.
Our team values equity and
recognizes that systemic discrimination has negatively impacted the well-being
of individuals, families, and communities from groups who are also
underrepresented in the research field. As researchers, we aim to be
accountable for promoting equity by centering the lived experiences of
disabled, socioeconomically disadvantaged, LGBTQIA+, Black, Indigenous, and
people of color in our research. We also believe that people who have lived experience
in the criminal justice and foster care systems bring important perspectives
that are too often missing in research. Hence, we strongly encourage people
with these lived experiences and identities to apply.
Child Trends, where the MAST Center
is housed, is an Equal Opportunity and
Affirmative Action Employer, and protected veterans and individuals
with disabilities are encouraged to apply.
I hope this doesn't do the thing where like, there's a weird highlight on the text and it changes the entire formatting of my blog. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, I reached out to my advisor and I was like, hey, will you write me a letter of rec for this internship? And she said she would be delighted to, that it sounds perfect for me.
Here is the letter of rec my advisor wrote for me:
To the Members of the MAST Center Internship Selection Committee:
Ondrea (Drea) Tucci entered the Master of Arts program in Human Development and Family Science with an emphasis in Family and Community Services in Fall 2021. I have served as her advisor, course instructor (for two courses), and departmental Director of Graduate Studies. It is in these roles I have had the opportunity to interact with Drea and observe her work; thus, I feel confident in my assessment of her abilities. Given her work ethic, passion for serving sexual and gender minority families, and openness to learn more, I believe Drea is an ideal candidate for this prestigious internship.
Work ethic. Since first entering the Master's program, Drea has completed 8 of 12 courses, and has earned a cumulative GPA of 3.875. She is expected to graduate in May 2023. Because this program is entirely online, success requires strong organizational and time management skills. Students must be self-directed enough to complete the required readings, weekly discussions/activities, and larger writing assignments and projects. As her instructor for Foundations of Family and Community Services in Fall 2021 and Family Resilience in Spring 2022, I engaged with the course through discussion boards, individual feedback on assignments, announcements, and recorded lectures. After that, students must take initiative if they desire more interaction and engagement. And Drea took initiative! She was engaged, attended office hours, found other times to meet with me, and went above the minimum posting requirements to engage with the material and with her peers. Drea was punctual and thorough in her work, and she sought out additional resources to help her succeed. I feel confident she will apply this same drive and work ethic as an intern.
Passion. Drea is passionate and vocal about learning about, advocating for, and serving LGBTQIA+ families. In both courses she took with me, students were able to select a topic for their larger written assignments (including an integrative literature review, research executive summary, and program redesign using principles of family resilience) and for select readings. For all assignments, Drea selected a topic related to LGBTQIA+ families (specifically, the need for inclusive and comprehensive sex education for youth, and bullying prevention and resilience building programs for queer youth). She has maintained this focus in her other courses thus far (including Family Dynamics and Intervention, Family Crisis Intervention, and Interpersonal Relationships), so she should have a strong baseline knowledge of this population.
Openness. Her passion is strong, but not to the point of being closed to others' perspectives. In her discussions with others and in response to feedback, Drea displayed an openness to learning about other perspectives, even when they challenged her own. She would invite others to share different points of view, and she would take care to acknowledge that although her lived experience and passion led her to communicate strongly, she was curious about others.
Given the nature of the internship at your organization and Drea's work ethic, passion, and openness, I believe she could succeed at the MAST Center and further your mission. If you have any questions or require additional information about my experiences with Drea, please do reach out to me. Thank you for your consideration.
I teared up when I read that letter. I was fucking thrilled. I tried to push away the knowledge that LoRs are fluff, they all read like that, and I instead told myself that I'm a special little cookie monster that is a genius who thrives in her academic environment. I also felt seen and appreciated for the work I do, which isn't why I do it, but it's certainly a nice bonus.
For the internship, I had to submit a letter of rec, and a statement of interest. I had to submit a few other things, as well, mostly shit proving that I'm academically capable and can conduct myself in a professional capacity. It took my advisor awhile to get my LoR finished, she was really busy over the summer, but that gave me plenty of time to...procrastinate and not put my packet together. Honestly, I stalled on purpose. I talked myself into believing that I wasn't good enough for this internship. MAST is pretty prestigious in my field, and I figured that I had less than a good chance at being considered. So I just...kind of hoped my advisor would forget to do my letter of rec so I could blame my not applying on her instead of telling the truth and saying I do not see my worth.
Ashley submitted my letter of rec to me literally the night before the deadline to apply. September 29th. And I was like, well fuck. Now I've got to do this for real. I have no scapegoat.
So I got all of the things I needed to get together together. A resume, a letter of intent, my letter of rec, and a personal statement. My resume is always ready to go, I just had to do the letters.
My letter of interest took me a longer time to write than my personal statement. It is as follows:
To the 2023 Internship
Selection Committee:
It is with an exceptional
amount of enthusiasm that I write to you of my interest in the MAST Center’s
2023 Graduate Internship Program. My name is Ondrea Tucci, I am currently a
graduate student in the HDFS Program at the University of Missouri, and I am scheduled
to graduate in May of 2023.
Throughout my time as a
student at Mizzou, various internship and career opportunities that are
directly related to my field of study are sent out to myself and my fellow
students, and it is from one such email that I was made aware of this
internship.
At present, my GPA of
record is 3.85, and I am driven to exceed that by the time I graduate in May. While
the program itself focuses on Human Development and Family Science, I have
focused my graduate studies on the queer community, continuing the focus I had
during my pursuit of my BA in psychology.
Opportunities that
explicitly focus on the queer community are few and far between, and it is my
hope that, through this initial introduction and my following personal statement,
you feel as confident in me as the perfect candidate for this internship as I
did upon reading it.
That took me a couple of hours. I didn't know what I wanted to say. I had no idea how to be like, a pick me girl, but professional.
My personal statement, however, took me about fifteen minutes.
Hopefully this does not start me
off on the wrong foot, but I am an elder millennial. My formative years took
place in the late 90s and early 00s, and as anyone else from my era may recall,
we had an interesting collection of interests. Garbage Pail Kids, Gak, getting
slimed on You Can’t Say That on Television, all manner of wildness and often
gross topics were common on the playground. We talked about these things with
fervent delight, caring not one whit about how gross or weird adults thought
they, or indeed we, by extension, were. I have so many memories of being a
gunked up kid, giggling and crying out in feigned horror at the gross scenarios
kids on my playground would make up. And yet for all of the time we spent
imagining the most horrific of things to make each other squirm, some things
were quite taboo.
Gay was really the only word any of
us knew back then, and as the world was still pretty freshly involved in the
AIDS epidemic, gay was probably the dirtiest of the words anybody could say,
both on the playground, and in real life. Kids would call each other all manner
of cutting things. I was made fun of for my name quite a lot, hearing myself
being called “tooshie” and “TOUCAN” would upset me quite a bit. Other kids in
my class received similar nicknames, but every kid in my school, well into high
school, knew that if you really and truly meant to cut someone to their very
core, you only had to shout out one accusation their way: gay. “You’re GAY” was
such an immediate, soul crushing insult, and I don’t know that any of us ever
really understood why it was so effective.
When I was 13, a friend of mine
confided in me that she was a lesbian, and she was afraid to tell her mother.
What if she got kicked out? I assured my friend it would be fine, and I would
do a test run on my mom to feel out how moms would react. I had no idea how to
run a reputable study at 13, but I was certainly trying! I came home and asked
my mother what she would say if I told her I was gay, and I won’t ever forget
the look of dismay that flashed across her face before settling into concern.
She asked me if I was, and I said no, I was just asking for my friend. In
hindsight, this seems like exactly the thing a young queer person would say
when they sense displeasure at calling in people to who they are. My mother’s
body showed obvious signs of relief, and she assured me that nothing could make
her love me less. Which is not quite an answer to the question, really. I went
back to Krista, armed with the information that my mother said it was alright,
but not having quite the assurance that being gay actually WAS alright to my
mom.
I am positive this is what kept me
closeted until I was in my twenties. My identities are numerous, but of the
ones I proudly rattle off, queer is one of the first. It took me decades to
reach a point where I could both acknowledge and love my queerness, and it is
with a lifetime of experiences as a queer woman that I have dedicated my
academic work to the queer community. I am in a straight passing marriage with
a cisgender, heterosexual man, and I am a fiercely proud mother to three
children who are also in the queer community: my oldest is 19, bisexual and
non-binary, my step-daughter is 19 and pansexual, and my youngest is 15 and
transgender. My life is very literally LGBTQIA+ families and family dynamics.
My interest in love, relationships,
and marriage stems from a life filled with the social consequences of these
things being heteronormative, and an academic history that is consistently
frustrated by the lack of inclusion of queerness and its many, many
intersections. Queer love, queer relationships, and queer families need and
deserve to be the focus of study where the point is not to highlight their
deficits, but rather to show the world how strong, caring, nurturing, and
normal we are. Having the opportunity to work directly with others to ensure
the inclusion of queer relationships in any arena that focuses on outcomes, or
strengths, or pitfalls, or all of the above, would truly be the highlight of my
academic career.
Additionally, I would bring with me
a great deal of insight into step-families, as well. I have had two
step-mothers and two step-fathers, and my kids have varying experiences with
step-family. There are a lot of tricky dynamics to navigate, but bringing this
experience with me also stokes my interest in studying
the dynamics of step-families. Of course, my focus immediately goes to how
queerness impacts step-families, because divorce and child outcomes are quite
different for couples who are not, at best, straight passing. I would jump at
the chance to ensure that queer families are not their own subject, but are
incorporated into every facet of study this internship is focusing on.
I spoke earlier of queerness and
its many intersections, and this is also of the utmost importance to me. With
all due respect and reverence for the academic work done by all institutions,
academia has a whiteness problem. Too many of our fields draw from largely
white samples and focus on largely white reactions and responses. I have pushed
myself, and my fellow students and professors, to include more research that
focuses on diverse populations so we can more clearly see the full picture of
what we’re trying to understand, especially when it comes to queerness. Which
also has a whiteness problem. Equity and awareness of bias are two things I
strive to include in any endeavor I undertake: academic, professional, or
social. This internship would be no different.
I have spent the last five years
dedicating every single aspect of my education to intersectional queerness and
the impact it has on childhood outcomes, on family dynamics, on school
performance, on survival rates, and on normalizing these topics to my peers. Every
opportunity to write a paper, to do an academic review, to present information
to my classmates, has been dedicated to showcasing that queerness is
everywhere, we just need to include it in what we teach, and what we study. It
is with a mix of dismay and joy that I find myself teaching my fellow students
every semester about queerness, because queerness is just not represented in
academia. LGBTQIA+ is my focus, because I am a member of the community, my kids
are in the community, my friends are in the community. It is a community that I
needed to see as more than a taboo slur when I was on the playground, and it is
a community that I need to see in academia now.
Every facet of this internship
touches on a faction of queer life that is often ignored by studies and
research centers. Marriage, love, relationships. Step-families. Program
building to strengthen relationships. I am not so bold as to assume I would be the
only person at MAST with such an agenda, and one of the things I am most eager
to gain from this internship is being mentored by someone with practical, real
world experience in ensuring that queerness is always included in the research
to strengthen relationships and understand them better.
This internship at MAST jumped out
at me the moment I saw it. It is the opportunity I have been waiting for, and
it is my hope that you see me as worthy of it.
I put my packet together, plugged them into the application site, and after about five minutes of hesitating while I questioned my worth and worthiness, I hit send. No going back now!
The website said that by October 7th, decisions would be made on the applicants that would be moving forward with interviews, and that no rejection emails would be sent out. If you didn't get an email by October 7th, you didn't get the internship. I was painting my oldest's room on October 7th. All day. I busied myself with creating something to keep my mind off of checking my inbox a thousand times.
At about 9pm, I checked my email for the first time that day. No email from MAST or Child Trends. Well there it was. I was disappointed, but not surprised. I told Derek, "well, I didn't get that internship opportunity" and he consoled me, but I honestly just felt kind of...ambivalent about being rejected. I knew I wanted it, but I hadn't invested myself in the idea of having it, because not so deep down, I didn't think I deserved it. a 3.8 GPA is fine, but it isn't the best. Graduating top 10% of my class is fine, but it isn't the best. I probably made my personal statement too personal. I should have fawned over MAST and Child Trends more. They see that I'm just...average. Being honest with myself, I was positive from the time I applied that I was below the standard they wanted to set for themselves as a research center, and applying was only ever really meant to solidify my hunch that I'm just not good enough for anything but a run of the mill MS. Dreaming big is all well and good, unless you start to believe you're capable of great things, and then it all falls down because you're lacking in every aspect that others shine in. You're just...average. These are the things I was telling myself that entire day. The entire weekend. I was bummed, sure, but bummed in a way that felt validating to my ordinary accomplishments, which weren't accomplishments, they were just...things I did.
On Monday, I was still licking my wounds a bit. Secretly. I didn't want anybody to know how much it still stung to have someone else say, "sorry, you're not good enough" on top of hearing that in my own voice. I didn't do anything for my classes, I just had some tea and indulged in doing nothing. Tuesday, I logged in to school, and checked my email. At the bottom of my unreads, from Monday morning, was a congratulations, you're one of our final candidates! email from MAST. It was late. They had been swarmed with applicants after extending the deadline, and they ran behind schedule finding their final applicants. Of which I was one.
I definitely cried a little bit when I read that they wanted to interview me. I felt kind of overwhelmed. Everybody I told was beyond thrilled for me, and told me they knew that me not being chosen had to have been a mistake. That I was perfect for this position, and I'm a good and engaging writer, they would be nuts to ignore my application.
I set up a time for the interview. October 18th, I believe. In the afternoon. And then I went about researching MAST and Child Trends. Let's be honest, I should have done that first. Due diligence and all. But I read their studies. I read their class lectures from fellows at the institute. I read everything that was available to me to read, and I wrote up a bunch of questions for the interviewers. Having never done an interview for an internship...I've always been too rattled by self-doubt to see myself as a worthy applicant...I fussed to Kati that I didn't know what to do. How much history of the institute should I memorize? She assured me that they would more than likely just want to inform me of the internship, ask me questions to see how I would fit in with the research, and give me a bit of room to ask my own questions.
She was 100% correct.
The interview day came, I was super duper nervous. I started out by introducing myself, and saying, "hey, I have ADD and autism, please don't hold it against me if I fidget, or don't maintain eye contact, or lose track of something I say or you say. I am here, I am present." They thanked me for the heads up, but part of me does wonder if that's a bit of what ultimately cost me the internship.
We spoke for an hour and a half, closer to two hours, I think. They asked me a lot of questions about where my interests lie, how I would incorporate diversity, things like that, and I countered with, "how do YOU incorporate diversity, because I read all of your available research, and I see so many of the problems I am actively frustrated at in academia". They said that's just the stuff on the website, they are currently working on other projects that are more diverse, and projects that are written without a deficit perspective about marginalized groups. It is worth noting they have since updated the available research on their site, and it does reflect a bit more diversity and positive framing. So they weren't full of shit or anything, and I think, in retrospect, calling that out might have cost me the internship a little, as well.
At the end of the interview, I thanked them for their time, assured them this was exactly the internship I needed, and that above that, the internship needed ME. A bold closing note, but I thought to myself, what would a cis man say? And that was what came to mind. They told me decisions would be made in the next two weeks, they had several other applications to get through, and if I didn't hear from them by November 1st, I shouldn't be assuming the worst, that their last interview was on October 31st. That they would be in touch regardless of the outcome.
I've obviously heard that before, a lifetime of jumping from job to job and doing interview after interview understand that the "we'll follow up no matter what!" lie is only true maybe...5% of the time. But I actually felt really fucking good about the interview. Really good. I recorded it, and I listened to it a few times (I will not upload it here, don't worry), and I sounded professional, personable, and most importantly, KNOWLEDGEABLE. I fucking know my shit. I really do. I was impressed by my performance, and I rarely, if ever, give myself any kind of idea that I am capable of greatness.
I followed up a couple hours later with a thank you email, of course. I didn't apologize for harping on their current research library being woefully bereft of the inclusion they so desire, even though I kind of felt like I should. Chastising your interviewer is probably not a good call. I know this from experience...I wanted a job as an editor's assistant at a local paper about 15 years ago, and I thought it would be a good idea to edit the latest edition and submit it with my resume and a cover letter expressing my interest. Turns out, nobody likes to be shown how hard they fuck up.
I got my rejection letter the first week of November. I had not been chosen, they went with another candidate.
Well.
I wasn't expecting that, actually. I kind of thought I nailed it. I assumed I had it in the bag. And I will not begrudge myself being wrong about that, I love that I was so proud of myself and thought I handled the interview well enough to think I had gotten something prestigious that I really, really wanted. I let myself understand that not only did I deserve such a thing, I had done enough to earn it.
I was obviously sad that I didn't get it, but...here's what kept me from being super duper sad:
I got consolation prizes. Really, really good ones.
They praised me for my work, dedication, and passion for queer/further marginalized queer youth and families, and offered me a stipend for the commitment I've shown and the work I've already done to advance my community in academic spaces. A stipend of no small amount. It isn't the full stipend I would have received as an intern at MAST, but it's a sizeable fraction of it.
They offered me mentorship. Not only would the two women...both prestigious doctors...offer me their services as editors of my thesis, but they wanted to set me up to meet with the two researchers at MAST that deal almost exclusively with queerness so I could discuss further mentoring from one or both of them, AND to discuss career growth and opportunities in the field of 2SLGBTQIA+ research for youth and families. Also, one of the people at MAST they are putting me in contact with has written a few papers that I have definitely quoted in my research. Which is just fucking wild to me.
They offered me a pipeline into networking with other research institutions that focus on 2SLGBTQIA+ communities so I can advance my career in spaces that are designed around positive queer representation in academia.
These were all the things I was most excited about for the internship. I wanted the mentorship. I wanted the opportunities. I wanted to rub elbows with people who could help me find my way after I'm finished with my graduate degree, because as of right now, I don't know quite what I want to do with my degree. I know I want to parlay it into helping the queer community, I just don't know where or how. I wanted to be a part of research that focused on ignored family dynamics in a positive way. I wanted to earn money doing such a thing. And like...I am still getting all of those things, even though I didn't get the internship. So in reality, I still gain something from this. I am still being recognized as capable, as providing something worthy to a larger conversation. As intelligent and driven.
They made it pretty clear that I wasn't chosen because I am hyper-focused on queerness, and that their research space is not a research space that I would thrive in. Which is a very nice way of saying, "we don't focus on queerness enough for your focus to be necessary to us". And I'm ok with that. Not like I have a say in it, or that if I hadn't been ok with it, I could have fought my way into the internship, anyway. I think that ultimately, I want to be doing research that benefits my community as more than an afterthought, and I think that's what would be going on here.
So...I am still walking away from the experience as a winner. I told my advisor that I had no idea that internships offered runner up prizes. She said she didn't, either, and I should understand what a testament it is to my accomplishments and passion that they are still rewarding me with exactly the things I wanted in the first place.
She's right. I definitely see it that way. I am really proud of everything I've done, of the things I've stood for and stand for. Derek is so after me to get my PhD so I can contribute in an even more meaningful way to the things I value. He says that I should think about other little girls out there, telling their moms in roundabout ways that they're queer, and being able to see themselves as valid in that queerness because I've helped normalize it for prospective parents and people who are parents already. It's so funny that he sees that level of greatness in me, because I tell him all the time that I don't think I'd even make a ripple in academia, and that's where the changes are needed most. I love that he sees more to my contributions than I think I ever could.
But maybe now I'll see things from his perspective a bit easier. Maybe I can make a difference like the one he sees. Maybe. I suppose we'll see.
