During counseling hour in my first year of 7th grade, we were asked to think about our future selves. The practice included drawing different aspects of what the future would look like for us after high school. My drawings included Erlenmeyer flasks, happy faces, and a polar bear. I knew I wanted to work in a laboratory, I knew it would make me happy to do science, and for some reason, I knew I would be able to learn about polar bears and their environment. Little did I know that after 10 years I would be embarking on a journey to the North Pole. My name is Maria Cristina Alvarez Rodriguez. According to my friend, my name is obnoxiously long, but that is how we name people in Latinoamerica. To make it shorter, you can call me Maria Cristina, my family calls me Maria-Cris, if you need to get hold of me quickly, the usual is just Maria(although not my favorite). There is no “h” in my Cristina, the sound is sharp and is not smooth out with an intermediate letter. People say I can be sharp in my personality. They say, “strong personality”, I don’t know what they mean by that, but I know there are times I’m asked to lower my voice when talking and sometimes I say things I’m not supposed to say. My country, Panama, allowed me to come to Oregon State University with a full tuition scholarship that I won through a national contest designed to educate Panamanians in the Hydric Resources sciences. Since Panama is surrounded by two oceans, it just felt right to study in a college close to the ocean, I didn’t want it to be another way. Once I started studying here, I came across the hundreds of opportunities that OSU could give me to become a professional. My dream to be a scientist was possible, I was in the right place. When I finished my undergrad level, I got an internship with my Chemical Oceanography professor, which taught me how research works and how to get involved. After learning how to work in a biogeochem lab for oceanographic research, I got accepted into the College of Ocean, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences to get my master’s degree under the supervision of Laurie Juranek, a badass chemical oceanographer. When I met her, she told me oxygen was her baby, she dedicated her life to studying oxygen and how it influences different physical, biological, and chemical processes in the ocean. She took me under her wings so I could learn how to fly. But I am still a baby oceanographer.
For those who know me, you understand how much I enjoy learning new things, l get thirsty for more. The thoughts of existence in this world have never left my mind, but the reality is that I will never have a grasp of all knowledge there is. Like Socrates, in his realization that he didn’t know anything, I realized that we can only focus a time of our short life on one specific topic. Mine is to learn about the changes in oxygen concentration in the Arctic basin. I will try to figure out what factors are influencing deoxygenation in this environment. As a baby chick, I’m learning to take my first steps, learning to become a badass scientist like my advisor and other peers around me. This means I am making mistakes and learning from them, learning to troubleshoot, to find answers by myself, and to feel confident that I can do this, that I can learn what it needs to do the work. This is a place in where I want to show the science behind the scenes, from the perspective of a young woman who came from another country alone at 19 years old and that found her way into the science community. Accompany me in my journey to becoming the person that I dreamt to be 10 years ago.