gender, identity, and physics - by April Qiu Cheng

oh, identity. identity identity identity. the age-old question of who am i? that every adolescent (or person, rather) has an existential crisis about at some point in their lives. i think i have a decent grasp on it now, as a college sophomore: i am chinese-american, queer, a woman (loosely), a physicist(-in-training), and a lot of other things, too. i also know who i’d like to be, such as a writer, a good person, an idealist, etc. sometimes i realize that i often take knowing these things for granted. because there was a time in which i didn’t know any of these things, and that time was not so long ago. back in high school, not only was i deep in the closet, i also couldn’t see myself as a physicist, or physicist-in-training, or even any kind of physics or math person, because i couldn’t see see myself in anyone else. all of my spaces were male-dominated. at the physics club at school, at the after school math circle, and even in the online video game spaces that i logged into late at

oh, identity. identity identity identity. the age-old question of who am i? that every adolescent (or person, rather) has an existential crisis about at some point in their lives. i think i have a decent grasp on it now, as a college sophomore: i am chinese-american, queer, a woman (loosely), a physicist(-in-training), and a lot of other things, too. i also know who i’d like to be, such as a writer, a good person, an idealist, etc. sometimes i realize that i often take knowing these things for granted. because there was a time in which i didn’t know any of these things, and that time was not s