Dear Bum Diary,
LAST UPDATED:
04.15.2025
By Leyna Nguyen
Science Rules. Learn a few fun facts every once in a while. Maybe share them with a friend. After all, This is all for You.
I am a fairly recent graduate, having received a bachelor’s of science in Molecular and Cell Biology. I have experience in animal husbandry with mosquitoes. I have conducted my own research on utilizing the maternal dependency on eggshell formation as a marker to differentiate genetic crossing directions in Aedes-aegypti mosquitoes. I am currently interning as a cell-culture specialist for the malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium Falciparum. I proficiently perform parasite extractions. And RNA. And protein. Oh, I do drug screenings too. That’s for any recruiters that are looking to hire a hard-working, strong-minded young woman. If not, whatever. I guess you can keep reading…
Here and now, I once again write with the heaviest heart to pronounce my everlasting love to you; To science. I have always been romantic with science. If I could, I’d treat it to an Italian Valentine’s dinner by the beach and give it roses from Whole Foods if it let me—best date I’ve ever been to by the way…Anyway, it’s been hard to put into words about how I feel about science, but the feelings continue their silent rampage on my heart and mind regardless. Classic Leyna.
There’s just so much to love about it—science—because it begins and ends with You and I. Identical in structure; network of neurons to cosmic webs of galaxies, your eye color to our planets, births of cells to deaths of stars, we are all connected to each other by the strings of science. This is how faith is restored. How love is grown. When you have life in your hands—which, in my case, were plastic cups full of mosquito pupa and dirty blood-filled cages, and recently, flasks you wouldn’t want to mistaken as fruit punch, full of parasitic blood and it’s own concoction of Galaxy Gas to which I feed them daily—time starts to move slower and you then start to see how similar we are to the universe. When you accidentally crush a mosquito and its fluorescent protein turns into a million stars. When you play them Cocteau Twins thinking they’re moved the same way you are. When you simply exist in halted time with both mosquitoes that think their world ends in the corner of a plastic container and parasites that I don’t believe think of anything else aside from the next time they get their feeding, it makes me grateful to sit on grass. Go to the beach. Tell someone I miss them. Be or do anything.
Albeit, I was never the best student. I hate studying, I understand things when it’s too late. I’m average, I hate physics, I never use the terminology correctly. I hate how fast everyone is going. Where else is there to go? Did I mention I hated physics yet? I think I can go on and on about it, but I nonetheless remain in the field. After everything, science still feels like a luxury to know and hold. Science keeps me curious. Forces me to think. Allows me to understand. And I am absolutely in love with that. The list of what I think about in the lab goes (but not limited to) as follows: Malaria, my old Aedes-aegypti mosquitoes, my pinstriped lab coat; full of mysterious stains at the sleeves, my dad’s favorite songs, the inside joke my friend Alex and I made many moons ago but still use, my crush(es), You, everything.
Earlier this month, I listened to Patti Smith’s“Dreams of Science” after a long day at the lab, on my pink yoga mat pretending that I can afford a Classpass. She had a “romantic idea” of being a geologist as a child. Often switching between her regular and reading glasses, she graciously went on a tangent on the discoveries made by the Father of Microbiology (Leeuwenhoek in not-so-short). I wondered, how could a legendary pioneer of a woman feel so romantic and enthusiastic about the cold, impersonal world of science, as she would in Just Kids? I found the answer quickly; it started with my list. Science made her own list. Leeuwenhoek’s single-lens microscope not only discovered the beauty of the microcosmic cells, but also led Patti to discover her favorite books, me to write this letter, and you to read it. Life starts with curiosity and ends with You and I. Though I am not as significant a figure as Patti, I can’t help but feel connected to her and the rest of everything by the infinitely stretching strings of science. Perhaps we’re all poetic scientists. Or scientific poets. Either way, we’re lucky that science allows us our own lists; what passes the time, what continues to grow and what gets us through.
What, again, makes You and I.
Post graduation, the world became larger than it already seemed in university life. I had no deadline, I could do anything as long as the sun and stars stayed to watch. I felt ready, it was Leyna v. The World!… until President Trump‘s Yes Men Posse’s fund freezing of the NIH began to unravel around the same time that my internship began. It felt like a stab to the heart. And to my bank account. With doctors laid off left and right, projects buried in the ground and left to rot, universities’ pockets wrung to dry, meetings and any sense of connection cancelled, I can’t help but be fearful for the future of young, romantic scientists as myself. Where will any of us go? It feels like we’re all part of a dying but fixed species in the hands of an orange baby with a Cuban link. I just can’t believe this is my life... I was so close to starting my life again, and now DOGE is back to haunt me, not as a spiffy Shiba Inu or a clear and obvious crypto-robbery, but manifested in Elon Musk, with a terrible Elden Ring build that perfectly matches his hoarding heart and mind, flailing that billion dollar(s) spending cut in front of my fresh-meat face and the nation’s other, best, hard-working, and beautiful scientists... Frustration! Anger! It’s everywhere! I just got here damn-it, let me atleast get comfortable!
Research grants with terms of LGBTQ+, Transgender, Climate, Vaccine, HIV, or AIDS. Institutes of minority health, allergy, infectious disease, and child health. You know, all key spotlights of science that keeps us healthy and saying the I Love You’s and I Miss You’s easier, are being cooked way past medium-well under fascist-fueled fire. With AI already dominating the laboratory spaces and our homework assignments, this fund freeze leaves both aspiring and well-established scientists in a land full of nothing. No cure for cancer or secure gender-affirming care but hey, at least we’re getting off-brand, genetically modified Dire wolves and mice with woolly mammoth genes. It can only be one or the other now! It’s almost funny, you’d think how fast everything is growing, that perhaps humans would be at an even faster speed. Super-humans? Disease eradication? World peace? Nope, just DOGE’s determination to write this freeze off as a screening/prevention of fraud, but I’d ask your work-husband about fraud instead. However, malaria research grants remain somewhat untouched… For now. Not yet at least? Maybe soon? I’m not sure, I’m just sitting here and waiting.
God, it’s all we’ve done. Play the waiting game with no shortcuts and wonder, when does purgatory actually end? Science continues to be passed around like a pressureless spliff, that those who risk taking a hit may be written off either as a brave warrior or a foolish jester. As my internship will soon come to an end with no secure position in my hands, I somehow remain a fool for being hopeful for the future of You and I. It’s not the end yet. I can’t describe it in words, but it’s a mere feeling in me that takes the shape of your face, or the structure of a home, perhaps both are the same. What is this mysterious sentiment that has me both enamoured, but a bit queasy too? Why do I feel connected to everyone I meet, why do I do it for them?
I can’t find a science-related example to explain this thought. I know, how qualified of a scientist am I? What can I do is use those who you know and love, oh so dearly; The Bum Diary! A few weeks ago, I attended a gracious night of Jazz and wearing the wrong clothes for New York nights with some of the sweet sailors that run this Bum Diary ship. It was the first time I got to experience those intimate Jazz nights. The man on double bass looked into the deep abyss like he lost his parlay and wife at the same time. Guy on the piano asking the crowd if anyone else knew how to play, hands and heart worn. Drums almost ablaze, I couldn’t help but simply feel the music. I smiled when the trumpeter's pursed lips looked like he was giggling while trying to keep up with the cats cooking. My eyes quietly welling up at the singer describing a single Hello from You as a thousand violins playing. Dalton, who felt safe enough to sleep after a long flight, and Johnathan, who felt like the performers didn’t know how talented they were, I couldn’t help but look around and try to decipher what was inside of everyone else’s bopping heads. Were they thinking about their partners? More cocktails? Perhaps the future of science, too? Though I would prefer not to share exactly who/what I was thinking about because it might have been the Blue Raspberry Beatbox and weed in my system talking anyway, this night regardless and surely takes the cake! It just felt perfect. The dark room felt like a snow globe with the universe inside it, perhaps with a few ice skaters and a banner saying,
“This is Your Home!” Full of personal lists of topics to think about that never seems to end, first time dates or friend hangouts with people from different parts of your life, and all of the talents, I’m reminded of how far we’ve come with no one else to thank but ourselves for caring about each other enough understand the morphology of our bodies and its reaction to our grounds, to want to make our life spans longer, to spend more time together. I want to keep doing that.
Both music and medicine are similar, we continue to move. On an earlier September day, my father and I listened to Tchaikovsky.
"Classical music can only be shared with 2 people, 4 người là ồn rồi", he yells above the music. ...With 4 it gets loud. I have not heard I Love Yous in almost 2 decades, but that was how I knew. Genetic makeup and music taste nearly replicated, we both are moved by music, our hums similar in tune, our innate and shared anger, from then I knew I was my father's daughter. We are moved by music because we feel.
Staff VOLUNTEER continues to be plastered on my university account, as some days feel like it's the last. Actually, sometimes it feels like the past Monday was the last. Writing pieces like this never feels right. To try to document such harsh, trying times and not have a good note to end it off on feels criminal and wrong. To sugarcoat anything feels wrong too. I don’t want to be like Them! But to distinguish myself from Them, I will try to lead the both of us into good faith. I think to not jump ship and pursue my secret half-dreams of being a part time bottle girl and full time influencer, represents my dedication and passion to Science because I simply refuse to believe that there’s an end. Though this “freeze” will cause more harm than the Yes Men entail; cures unsolved, medicine not concocted, attempted divisions between You and I, I nonetheless enjoy seeing your eyes being similar to the hues of planet Earth. I enjoy that I love both. I will end off with telling a tale that’s actually a many-time occurrence of Leyna not being able to explain the science of anything. My lab mentor, whom I view as the smartest man on planet Earth, and am about to replace his position as he retires, asks me if I understood how Malaria at a young stage could survive the disturbance I cause in the culture it’s in. Replying back with a bland and monotonous answer, he then reminds me to understand the science of things every once in a while.
“It keeps things interesting, keeps us different from Them.”
“I’m scared, ” I usually respond before I attempt anything.
“Embrace it.”
Embrace, we shall.
With Love,
Leyna Nguyen