Silencing the Critics
/How one woman overcame her self-doubt on a geology field trip
Demetria Lynn and her niece Leila-Noor explore oceanography together. (Photo by Victoria Marin)
Season 6 | Episode 6
Demetria Lynn always wanted to be a scientist. But growing up, no one believed in her. The negative feedback was so overpowering that she stopped believing in herself.
In this episode, we follow Demetria from her elementary school classroom to a geology field trip in the desert, and explore what it took to rekindle faith in herself.
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Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.
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WILLOW BELDEN: Have you ever had an experience where you’re out in the backcountry and you see a mountain off in the distance, and you want to know what it is?
This happens to me a lot. I love knowing what I’m looking at.
If you do too, you might enjoy an app called PeakVisor. PeakVisor is our presenting sponsor this season. When you use their app, it shows you a panorama of everything you’re looking at, with all the mountains labeled.
If you’d like to be a superhero of outdoor navigation, check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.
Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.
This season is all about silence. Each episode, we’re exploring how we find stillness amidst the noise.
This episode is about silencing the critics.
We’ve all had to deal with criticism in our life. But what if that was ALL you heard, ever since childhood? What if the criticism was so persistent — so loud — that it kept you from doing the things you really loved? Could you bounce back from that?
Victoria Marin has the story.
VICTORIA MARIN: When I was a kid, I followed my big sister Demetria around everywhere and wanted to be just like her. She was 12 years older than me, and some of my earliest memories are about how much she loved Prince and the Brat Pack. So naturally, I told everyone in kindergarten that my favorite movies were Purple Rain and the Breakfast Club.
Demetria is also one of the smartest people I've ever known. She understands complicated math and science concepts and she can easily talk about a million different subjects at length.
But for as long as I can remember, she's struggled to create a meaningful life for herself.
One thing has always been true. Demetria has always had a passion for science. That started back when she was a little kid.
DEMETRIA LYNN: I was always in the dirt digging up — I used to love centipedes more than anything. The bigger and weirder the bug, the better. I also had this compulsion to take things apart and see how they worked and put them back together. And I had a deep curiosity about how things work.
VICTORIA: Then, in second grade, she had her first real science lesson, and it blew her mind.
DEMETRIA: I was taught that everything was made of atoms, and that floored me because I thought of everything as being made of just what it was. Like, my mother is made of my mother, you know, cereal is made of cereal, you know. And realizing that everything is made of the same things, only rearranged in different ways to manifest differently — I was shook.
VICTORIA: Demetria became obsessed with everything about science after that. She told anyone who would listen that she wanted to be a scientist when she grew up.
DEMETRIA: And I remember one day one of my mom's friends had come over. I was eight years old. And I was telling him how I wanted to be a scientist.
He was like, “Oh, you're a very smart little girl.” And he said, “Do me a favor, draw me a picture of a scientist.”
And my point of reference that popped up first in my head was Major Nelson, the lead male in a show called I Dream of Jeannie. He was in the Air Force and he had gone to space a couple times. And so I drew a picture of him, how I perceived how he looked, in a lab coat, when he told me to draw a scientist.
And he looks at it, and he looks at me, he goes, “Two things wrong. One, you forgot to give him ears. And two, you look nothing like him.”
And I was devastated.
VICTORIA: In retrospect, Demetria thinks our mom’s friend was probably just joking around with her. But at the time, she really took it to heart. It was the first time she remembers feeling actively discouraged from chasing her dreams. And it was also the first time she realized that the way she looked was at least part of the reason why.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the last time.
This was in the 1970s. Back then it was common for teachers to divide classes into three learning groups. Group one was reserved for the students considered to be the highest achievers. Up until fourth grade, Demetria had always been put in group one. But that year her teacher, Ms. Butcher, put all the Black kids into groups two and three.
DEMETRIA: It was unworldly to me that there were kids who struggled with long division and fractions. I was always helping them, the kids who were supposed to be the smartest. And yet Ms. Butcher would not validate me by putting me in group one.
Instead of me thinking, ‘I should be in group one, I belong there,’ I started believing that I must have lost my mojo.
All my life, everything had come so easily, in terms of academics, and then all of a sudden I'm not in group one, so I'm not as smart as I thought I was. And I just was suddenly just overcome with levels of anxiety that I had never experienced in my life. And the anxiety started to affect my academic performance.
VICTORIA: That same year, Demetria also finally became a Girl Scout, after years of begging our mom to let her join.
DEMETRIA: And I'm so excited. You had Brownies, Girl Scouts, the Juniors that I was in, you had Cadets, Seniors. And I just couldn't wait to be a Cadet, you know, I couldn't wait to be a Senior. And ‘Oh, I'm going to wear my little uniform like this, and I'm going to get the beret, and I'm going to have the vest,’ and oh, it was such an obsession.
VICTORIA: At one point, there was a big career day event, where every scout was supposed to create a presentation about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Demetria was excited to share her dreams about becoming a scientist.
DEMETRIA: And I was tingling with anticipation. I just felt like I was going to soar from there. Like, ‘Oh, this is my crowning glory here.’
VICTORIA: But that didn’t happen. In fact, she didn’t even complete the assignment. The ideas were there in her brain, but putting everything together was hard for her. She needed all sorts of supplies — a project board, markers and scissors, books and magazines — and she didn’t have any of those at home. She felt completely scattered and overwhelmed trying to get organized, and by the time she tried to ask for help, it was too late. None of the adults in her life had time to guide her.
DEMETRIA: I needed help with being guided in that direction. And I had no gas in the tank. There was nothing. I was just pushing a boulder uphill by myself.
VICTORIA: Demetria felt like if she wasn’t able to even complete a project about becoming a scientist, she'd never be able to actually become one. She felt like this was all her fault. Like if she hadn’t been so scatterbrained and lazy, she wouldn’t be in this situation. She was so embarrassed about the whole thing that she dropped out of Girl Scouts altogether.
A few years later, she decided to enter the school science fair. Her project was about comparing the tidal lung volume of smokers versus nonsmokers, and she was really proud of her research. But once again she struggled with the presentation component. Again, she asked for help. But just like with the Girl Scout project, none of the adults in her life made time for her. She did the best she could on her own. But it wasn't good enough. She didn't get a ribbon. She was crushed.
DEMETRIA: The feedback that I was getting from the world was that I wasn't worth the investment. And as that inner dialogue started to seep in, you lose track of what you're supposed to be doing. So I didn't have a roadmap on how to get to where I was going. I was just lost.
VICTORIA: Demetria didn’t feel like she had anyone cheering her on. And as a result, the hum of self doubt was ever present. If no one believed in her, how could she believe in herself?
By the time she was in high school, it seemed like the days of nerding out about science were long behind her. Her grades started slipping. She was struggling to find where she belonged. She even started turning her back on the people who had always been her friends.
DEMETRIA: Once I started existing in my head as somebody who didn't feel like I measured up and, you know, started to get really insecure about feeling accepted and wanting to be liked, the last thing I wanted to be was a nerd.
I will never forget this one particular person. Her name is Vicky Flier. And what was so cool about that is her name was Flier and she got her pilot's license when she was like 16 years old.
We were in physics together, and we just really hit it off. She was one of those very few people that I can nerd out and have the kinds of conversations that I really was screaming to have, but couldn't have with the people I surrounded myself with.
The problem was that I didn't want to be seen with her out there. So when the bell rang and we're going off to lunch, “I'm not sitting with you.”
And I just, I look back at that with so much regret.
VICTORIA: Most of us can relate to this feeling of wanting to find your place and trying to figure out how to fit in. The problem is that ditching the people you really click with doesn’t actually solve that problem. And in Demetria's case, it really just made things worse.
DEMETRIA: It’s just been this constant confusion about my identity, and who I was and my value and my purpose.
VICTORIA: For years, that negative feedback had slowly been getting louder in her mind. And by now, the volume was so high that it had become her inner monologue. So when it came to choosing a career path, all she could hear was, ‘You’re not cut out to be a scientist.’ And by this point, she believed that was true.
Demetria went into her early adulthood with all of that noise ringing in her ears. She enrolled in college, dropped out, enrolled again a few years later, dropped out again. This went on for years.
She did a lot of different things for work during that time, but she wasn't excited about any of it. She was moving through life lost, without passion and feeling alone and angry at herself and the world.
It wasn't until her late thirties that something finally changed.
WILLOW: Hey, it’s Willow. We’ll hear the rest of the story in a moment. But first, I want to tell you about a new environmental podcast from KCUR Studios. It’s called Up From Dust.
Every episode digs into a problem plaguing the Great Plains and Midwest. Like, did you know that trees are taking over prairies and it’s bad for the environment? The podcast introduces you to real people who are rolling up their sleeves to build a more sustainable future: hard-working cattle ranchers, savvy soil scientists. The point of the show is to find ways to be hopeful when there is a lot to be stressed about. Listen to Up From Dust wherever you get your podcasts.
And now, back to the story.
VICTORIA: Thirty-two years after she drew her first picture of a scientist, Demetria started going to therapy. Not long after that, she was diagnosed with ADHD and autism.
The impact of those diagnoses was huge. So much suddenly made sense. The criticism and discouragement she’d gotten throughout her life didn’t account for the learning disabilities she’d been unknowingly juggling. Of course she struggled academically without the right support. But that didn’t mean that she wasn't smart enough.
As she unpacked all of this, she was struck by how much she really just wanted to learn — to lean into her curiosities and make a life for herself out of them.
DEMETRIA: The sequence of events that had been unfolding in my life at that time felt almost kismet. So I thought, ‘Okay. I mean it. I'm going after my degree.’
VICTORIA: It wasn’t easy. All those years of starting and dropping out of school still haunted her, literally. Her transcripts were full of withdrawals and Fs. And before she could even enroll in community college again, she needed to spend two years catching up on delayed student loan repayments, then go through a process called academic renewal. She would have to gather all of her old transcripts and present her case in person to a counselor, who would then review the transcripts line by line and decide how much of her record could be expunged.
At this point, she had no idea what she wanted to study or do with her degree. She just knew that she needed to reignite her love of learning. But when she arrived on campus for that meeting, something happened that would set the stage for her entire professional career.
DEMETRIA: There was this group of people standing in the parking lot. And I go up to one of the girls that were standing there and I said, “Hey, what's this group all about? You guys look like a lot of fun.”
And she starts laughing, she goes, “Oh, we're going on a geology field trip.”
I said, “Oh, I want to go with you guys! Do you have to be a student?” And I was being silly. But I just — just seeing this group of people, just random people standing there — there was something about their vibe and their energy and their laughter, their conversation, I was like, ‘Those look like my kind of people. I want to do what they're doing.’
So once I got the academic renewal going, I went to my counselor at West LA College. Told them, “I want to start on a track of being a geology major.”
There was nothing stopping me. Like, ‘I don't care how hard it is. Don't talk yourself out of it. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.’ And I did.
VICTORIA: As soon as she enrolled this time, everything felt right in a way that it never had before. She loved what she was learning and felt more comfortable being herself. But a lot of her old self doubt lingered. The moment she started to struggle with a class or a concept, her inner critic would start shouting at her.
DEMETRIA: If I was weak in something, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here? I suck, I'm awful, I'm terrible, I'm not cut out for this. God, I don't want to sound like an idiot. I'm clearly not a genius. I got a D in physics.’
VICTORIA: Not too long after Demetria started the program, she went on her first overnight geology field trip. They were going to a place called Rainbow Basin, in California's Mojave Desert.
She was excited for the trip, and desperately wanted to prove herself to her professor and peers. But she still wasn't sure she was cut out for this line of work.
It wasn't just the science part that she was worried about. This was a multi-day trip, which meant they had to camp outside.
Demetria wasn't outdoorsy, and she was anxious about all the logistics. She’d only been camping once in her life before this, and that was decades ago. She had never pitched a tent before, so she bought one weeks early and practiced setting it up in her front yard before the trip.
But when she got to the field site, she realized that she’d forgotten to get a camping mattress, and the sleeping bag she bought wasn’t warm enough.
DEMETRIA: You know, it's the desert, so you're not too far from Death Valley. And the daytime temperatures are fairly nice in January, but in sleeping at night, it got down to 29, 30 degrees in the tent.
VICTORIA: Demetria tossed and turned all night, kept up by the cold and hard ground underneath her. In the morning, she was stiff and sore. Meanwhile, the other students all seemed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It seemed like camping was the easiest thing on earth for everyone but her.
The big assignment for the trip was to draw out the geologic features of the landscape in front of them, which is a process called mapping. And mapping was not one of Demetria’s strong points.
DEMETRIA: Rainbow Basin is this giant syncline, meaning that it's a geologic feature where the land is folded a certain way. It crumples like, just imagine how paper crumples, the ground actually does that. And mapping it is really important.
So really trying to examine what you're seeing and match it up with some known phenomenon that you read in your textbook is a challenge. And I just had such a hard time with that.
VICTORIA: Demetria was feeling a lot of pressure to draw a perfect map during that field trip, especially because the professor leading the assignment was known for doing random spot checks of students' work in real time.
DEMETRIA: In other classes, the teacher will let you work on your map and then turn in a nice, pretty, sparkly, version of the final draft. You know, a lot of times I need to if I don't put enough features on my map, I'll go to somebody else and start filling mine in so that I could turn in a nice one. That's what everybody does. But this particular professor knows that trick, and he doesn't allow you to do that. He'll just come around everybody and just grab their map.
VICTORIA: So on this field trip, the professor was doing those random real time spot checks. And when it was her turn, Demetria was terrified. She felt sure that her map wouldn’t measure up.
DEMETRIA: This guy who wins awards for all of his geology, he's always on TV talking, you know, he's just Mr. Geology, and I just really felt like I had to live up to his expectations.
And I remember him looking at my map, and I'm thinking he's gonna say, “Look, you're just not cut out for this.” And I was really waiting for him to say that.
And he looks at me and he goes, “Why are you using a blue pencil for this?”
I said, “Oh, cause I can't find my real pencil.”
And he just reaches into his bag and gives me a couple of pencils. He's like, “You're doing a good job. Keep going.”
VICTORIA: Demetria was floored. For what felt like the first time in her life, she was receiving positive encouragement and support, and from someone she really looked up to, no less.
DEMETRIA: I said, “Oh my God.”
He's like, “What?” He’s like, “You look shocked.”
And I said, “Because everybody else's map looks so much better than mine.”
He goes, “Yeah, that was always the case for me too.” And then he was just, he goes, “Yeah, I was the worst mapper when I was in school.”
And just to hear him say that, I was like, ‘Dr. Onderdonk was the worst mapper?!’ Like my eyes were darting back and forth.
And he's like, “You don't just wake up good at this, Demetria. Don't worry. You know, you just gotta keep coming out here and doing it and eventually you get good.” And he's like, “I know it doesn't seem like it, but you're, you're ahead of where I was at your point.”
VICTORIA: For the first time ever, Demetria felt like someone was telling her that she was good enough. It was such a relief.
DEMETRIA: It was just a moment that I'll never forget.
VICTORIA: It was like that little bit of external validation flipped a switch. Up until now, she’d always put other scientists on a pedestal she couldn’t reach herself.
DEMETRIA: All these people that you think of them as brilliant, and ‘I can't be part of that, they're brilliant.’ And I was able to suspend that and just be in the moment.
VICTORIA: For the first time in decades, the noise of her inner critic was getting quieter.
A few months later, Demetria was in Santa Barbara, on another field trip. And right from the get-go, the tone was different. The weight of decades of criticism wasn’t running through her mind anymore.
DEMETRIA: You get kind of an endorphin rush. It’s like a dopamine hit. And then I'm thinking, ‘Okay, now I can just kind of look out at this beautiful landscape.’ I mean, it is a privilege to even have that sort of a vantage point. It’s something that a lot of geologists might even take for granted, to be able to hike way up to a high place. And you can see desert into the distance. You can see forest, snow capped mountains, the ocean right there.
And I can now appreciate that.
To be able to sit in that moment and actually experience what it feels like to just let it all go and just enjoy the moment you’re in. I want to have those more. I want that to be my default setting.
VICTORIA: It was starting to feel like maybe she really did belong there, with all those brilliant people. And that maybe she was one of those brilliant people, too.
Since then, she has truly blossomed. She finished college. She got her bachelor’s degree in geology. And next year, she's starting a masters program in geophysics. After that, she’s planning to get a PhD, in either planetary science or paleoclimatology.
She's also written a book about her experience living at the intersection of race and neurodivergence, and recently started a podcast called The Dirt on Earth, which aims to inspire enthusiasm about earth science research.
And did I mention she’s doing all of this in her fifties? I know I’m biased as her sister, but that’s really impressive, right?
That old inner critic hasn’t been completely silenced though. She says it's still a work in progress. But now, she knows how to recognize the self-doubt for what it is, and she’s able to shut it down before it overtakes her mind.
DEMETRIA: There was once a time where I would get real angry with myself. Like, ‘Oh inner peace, where are you?’ You know.
And now, I sort of handle it with some levity, where it's like, ‘Oh, there I go again,’ you know.
And the more that happens, the more your confidence comes up, and it gets easier over time.
VICTORIA: The noise from the critics that haunt us can be deafening. It can hold us back from so much. Our dreams. The things we love. Our ability to create the life we want for ourselves.
So often, we get the advice, “Just believe in yourself and you can do anything.” But it’s not always that simple. External support and encouragement is actually really important. I just wish my sister could have gotten that as a kid. I think a lot about how differently her life would’ve panned out if that had happened.
But even if you don’t get that validation until you’re an adult, it can still make a difference. Because when we find the right encouragement and support, the critical voices start to become quieter. And eventually, they lose their power.
WILLOW: That was Victoria Marin. She’s a journalist and doula living in Brooklyn, New York. You can see more of her work at victoriamarindigital.com.
As for Demetria, we have links to her podcast and her book at our website, outtherepodcast.com.
Coming up next time on Out There, when Shannon Tyo went to Korea, a lot was riding on the trip.
SHANNON TYO: I haven’t had a wedding, but I would assume it’s something like that, where it’s like this is such an important day, so every single thing is a blur and also the most important thing that’s ever happened.
WILLOW: Tune in on June 27 for a story about overcoming imposter syndrome, at a national park near Seoul.
Two things I want to mention before you go.
First, if you’d like to do something generous today, consider supporting Out There on Patreon. Patreon is a crowd-funding platform for creative endeavors. It lets you make monthly contributions to projects you care about. Like this podcast.
To become a patron today, click the link in the episode description, or go to patreon.com/outtherepodcast. Your dollars will go directly toward paying for the stories you hear on the show. Again, that’s patreon.com/outtherepodcast. Thank you so much!
The second thing I want to mention is that our Campfire Stories event has been canceled. This was supposed to be a live event here in southeast Wyoming later this month, but unfortunately we didn’t get enough story pitches to make it work. Thank you so much to those of you who did submit story ideas. I very much hope we can try again in the future.
When I was little, and my mom and I would go on road trips, I was always in charge of navigation. Like, at age eight.
Of course, this was long before smartphones, so my mom would hand me an atlas, and I would have to figure out where we needed to go.
As a result, I fell in love with maps. Like, head over heels in love. I’m the kind of person who spends hours looking at maps — for fun.
But even I have to admit, maps have their limitations.
For example, let’s say you’re out on a hike, and you see a mountain off in the distance, and you want to know what it is. Chances are, that mountain is far enough away that it’s off the edge of your map.
So what do you do?
One solution is to use an app called PeakVisor. PeakVisor is our presenting sponsor this season. When you open up their app, it’ll show you a panorama of everything you’re looking at, with all the peaks labeled.
If you’d like to be a superhero of outdoor navigation, check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.
Today’s story was reported, written and narrated by Victoria Marin. Story editing and sound design by me, Willow Belden.
Out There’s audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. And our theme music was written by Jared Arnold.
Special thanks to all our listeners who are supporting Out There with financial contributions, including Theresa Steffen, Eric Biederman, Doug Frick, Tara Joslin, Sue and Gary Peters, and Deb and Vince Garcia. We couldn’t do this without you.
We’ll see you in two weeks. And in the meantime, have a beautiful day, be bold, go outside, and find your dreams.
Credits
Story by Victoria Marin
Story editing and sound design by Willow Belden
Music includes works from Blue Dot Sessions
Links
Demetria Lynn’s podcast is called The Dirt on Earth and her book is Undiagnosed: The Autistic Black Girl's Map to the Stars
Support Out There on Patreon
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This episode sponsored by PeakVisor
