Interview with Dr. Hilary Lithgow_mixdown_ edited
[00:00:00] Intro
Host: Samiha Bala: Hello, and welcome back to the PITCast. My name is Samiha Bala, and I'm your host for today. And joining us for the very first time on the PITCast is Dr. Hilary Lithgow. Dr. Lithgow is a teaching professor here at UNC, and is also the faculty advisor for the English and Comparative Literature major and also on a personal note, one of my favorite teachers that I've ever had. Dr. Lithgow, could you please introduce yourself for us? 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: You just did a great job. One of my favorite students I've ever had. So there you go. We're going to be plugging English 105 and 105i on this episode.
So I will say that's where you were my student. And I teach that course as well as an assortment of literature courses. I'd say my specialty is literature of war. And just giving a plug to my English Peace, War, and Defense 161 course, which gets offered mostly in the spring. I am a liaison between our department and the Office of Undergraduate Research.
So, that's part of what we're going to talk about today. 
[00:01:02] How long have you been teaching first-year students? Have you always taught with an emphasis on research?
Host: Samiha Bala: And that's kind of why I brought you here today. So, as someone who is experienced teaching specifically first year students, and speaking personally, when I took your class, you had a very heavy emphasis on trying to get us involved with research opportunities and trying to get us to understand that undergraduate research is something that any of us could pursue if it was something we were interested in.
It wasn't something scary or something to run away from. So, I was just wondering, one, how long have you been teaching first year students? And two, have you always had this sort of emphasis on research, do you think, or has that grown over time? 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: So I got to UNC in 2011, and before that I had been teaching in Florida at Florida Atlantic University, and I had never taught first year English.
So I was a little intimidated and learned a lot and did a really bad job at first. Sorry students, but I learned a lot and I think part of that learning was about undergraduate research and its power as a way I don't know like I'm really excited about what you just said helping people understand research is for everyone I think most of us don't really know what research is, most of us just regular people walking around in the world, and certainly a lot of undergraduates coming in, starting college, if they do have an association with it, it tends to be white coats and beakers and labs, and that gets reinforced, you know, by a lot of certainly subconscious messaging. 
When I was just looking today at the undergraduate ambassadors, the Office of Undergraduate Research, and I sort of joked with the student I was working with and I said, there's going to be a lot of, you know, STEM and I bet we'll see a lot of neuroscience and like literally, and I don't know why, neuroscience is just very trendy in the Office of Undergraduate Research. The first six or eight undergraduate ambassadors, it was like, neuroscience! And art, neuroscience, and history, but it was like boom, boom, boom, and lots of STEM. 
And so, yeah, I think partly I just was frustrated that the message seems still not to get out that anybody can do it, but also people don't know what it is, so how can they, how are they supposed to do it? So I'd love to say that like, all you need to do research is a question, an explanation of why it's worth trying to answer that question and a plan for doing it. That's it. And I just feel like there's gotta be a better way to say that than research. 
Host: Samiha Bala: I 100 percent agree.
I remember when I was in your class, I was kind of terrified at the idea of having to do the research proposal that we had to do for one of the assignments. And I, because I'm such a humanities girl, I think I was thinking like, oh, the only kind of research that exists in the humanities is the kind that happens in a big stuffy library with a bunch of books piled around you.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Not that there's anything wrong with that. 
Host: Samiha Bala: Not that there's anything wrong with that. I love all types of nerds. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: And all types. You love being in the library with books. I'm like, wait a second, but I get you. Other, yeah, like, what is this gonna look like? What am I signing up for? 
Host: Samiha Bala: Yeah, but just to give an example of, like, how different research can look, the research proposal that I pitched for the class that I never ended up submitting, which is sad. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Which is so awesome, and I hope you will sometime.
Host: Samiha Bala: Maybe next summer, but I wanted to go around Appalachia and interview emerging folk musicians of color about the intersection between the history of folk music and how it has historically treated marginalized identities and their experiences as either an immigrant or a person of color in America.
And it was going to be a very fun, it was honestly an excuse just to give myself fun road trips, but it was just this idea of like, oh, research can look like so many different things. It can be oral history. It can be honestly something close to creative nonfiction. It can be a lot of different things.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Absolutely. I just, I love what you just brought up about your research project and the idea that you can have all these different ways of sharing your research. Because I also, I, for me, I had a kind of a crisis, which I'm sure I told you guys about as a younger scholar and researcher when I felt like I'm doing all this work to figure out all this stuff and to kind of communicate it so beautifully and then I feel like four people maybe are gonna see it and that just felt wrong and really, and really made me not want to do it.
Because it's like, why would I work so, why would I stop doing the things I love, hanging out with other people, talking with other people, to do this thing if it's not going to make it back into the world. And so I got really excited about non traditional research projects and products and ways of sharing what we do in the university and what we do in our research beyond just the obvious or old fashioned ways of doing it. Not that there's anything wrong with the old fashioned ones, and you know, I'm sure some people get more than four readers. But so like this last summer, I was, I am in the midst of a two year grant working on trying to find a way to share what I'm learning as I lead book groups at the Gefeller Institute at UNC, which is the concussion studies institute on campus.
They have this traumatic brain injury clinic, which is really traumatic brain injury and PTSD, and I get to lead these book groups pretty much once a month. Multiple times, we have a cohort that comes through, a new cohort every month, and then I get to meet with them and do a book group with them.
And yes, I could write a scholarly article about that, but I'd like to write a guidebook of like, here's what I've learned, here's how you can do this too, and to make it so that other people, like a how to guide. So that's just, and I love when I'm working with students to, and I remember this in your class, invite them to be selfish, and everybody's like, oh, that would be racy.
Imagine a scenario in which you're sharing some knowledge that you've gained that you're really excited about. What would that, like, what would your ideal scenario be? Would it have food? Would it have music? Would it have travel? Like what, you know, or, and also imagine how you'd like to spend a summer and nine weeks of a summer.
Would you like to be in a library? Would you like to be talking to people? Would you like to be moving your body? Would you like to be rowing a boat? And reverse engineer from there. Like, okay, this is what I want to do. Now, what might I find out? And I just think if you're actually excited to do it, that it can't hurt but be good.
And I'm working my way back to other things and I'll let you get a word in edgewise. I like to say that your research interest is like a disease that you have. It's in you. Students look horrified when I say it's like a disease and also horrified when I say pick a topic to do a research project on for the reasons you just said and it's, like, oh, but I don't know what I'm interested in.
It's, like, well, you know what you're not interested in and if I gave you a menu of a hundred things you could do a project on you could at least cross off like 80 of them as, like, nope. So I love that, like let's make a menu of things and see what we don't want to do and zero in like by reverse psychology and what you do want to do and then ask your friends like so many times people are like I don't know what I'm interested.
I'm like, I bet your friends do they're like you always talk about this, every single time in class you write the paper about this and you're like, oh, I do? I didn't know that. And I just love the like, collectiveness of that and the fact that other people know your passions sometimes better than you do because they're yours and it's very hard to be sort of self aware of them.
But it also takes the pressure off of students because it's not like you have to be smart and go find a research interest. It's like, no, whatever you do, you're going to bring your research interest with you. So might as well just explore it. 
Host: Samiha Bala: And I feel like that kind of speaks to the tendency I think that people have to like, they're like, okay, I am interested in that thing, but that couldn't be a research project.
Like, it's not, that's not important enough. That's not da ba da ba da enough. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That feeling that this couldn't possibly be research is part of why people don't want to do it because there's fun stuff and then there's research or there's interesting stuff that matters to human beings and then there's research.
And if you break down that wall, then suddenly everything's research. And I'm getting even more like, pushy about that, I'm just like, when you're at a holiday dinner with your family, when you're reading a website, when you come across the DTH, you know, while you're sitting outside Lenoir and somebody left a copy of it sitting there, notice what interests you.
Everything is researchable. And all you have to do is be interested. 
[00:09:20] What's the most common reaction you get from undergraduate students when you talk to them about research?
Host: Samiha Bala: Yeah. Kind of going back to what you were talking about with your students reactions to you being like, Hey, pick a topic that you are going to do research on. What do you think is kind of the most common reaction or reactions that you get from undergraduate students when you talk to them about the possibility of them doing research?
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: In class or just in advising? 
Host: Samiha Bala: I think in general. Either way. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Humanists are like, Oh, well, I'm not really interested in STEM. That's the most common one. 
Host: Samiha Bala: Like, why would you? You know that... 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah. Why would I do that STEM thing? So like this feeling that it's not for me, this feeling that it's something like making a LinkedIn profile that I ought to do, but feel intimidated about and will probably procrastinate about.
Host: Samiha Bala: That's me currently, actually. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah, exactly. It's not so bad. Like, let me show you, let's go do a meeting. I was like, LinkedIn, because like research, once you realize that networking is just, you know, talking to people who are excited about the same things you are, it actually becomes like a positive experience.
And the sooner you do it, the more you can discover. But yeah, I encounter intimidation, fear, and a sense that somehow I'm not worthy of it. Or it's not for me as a humanist or as a humble person or as a younger student. And so, yeah, trying to kind of redefine research as just curiosity, things humans do.
And like, it's what you do if you want to know more about something that you think is important or that you care about or that you're curious about. 
[00:10:51] Do you have any examples of projects done by past students?
Host: Samiha Bala: I think that's amazing. Do you have any examples of maybe past students who have worked on really cool projects or things like that? I just love hearing about that stuff.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Absolutely. You know, so many. One's jumping to mind from a couple of years ago, a student who, as you remember, I have students fill out a kind of wacky survey of like trying to kind of, because I think one thing that when you do ask people for, to come up with a research project, the tendency is to panic and like do something you've done before or do something that sounds researchy and like, top 10 research topics, you know, that like everybody's researched controversies and, you know, climate change or just a very big picture, very general and sort of in the news or hot topics. And so to nudge people out of that, you know, I give them this weird questionnaire, like hobbies, TV shows, best conversation you had recently with somebody and what was it about?
Uh, and that one, I- 
Host: Samiha Bala: I remember that question. That was a good question. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: I love that question. And I can't remember, I think it was a combination of the student's answer to that question and something else that they wrote on that questionnaire where they realized they were really interested in talking to strangers.
And their friends thought that was very strange and dangerous. And they had found it to be deeply rewarding, you know, in a public place, just sit out in public. And if somebody sits down next to you, or if you're on a bus, or just see if they want to have a conversation. And she had really learned a lot, not just about these people, but about kind of human interactions and getting out of your like... She was one of those students who's just haunted by how we walk around this campus with our noses in our phones and don't make eye contact and don't- miss these opportunities to connect. I think about her project a lot as I walk around campus and see that, so that is just an example.
So many. I mean your project was, I love it when people bring artifacts related to their interests that just blow your mind. And you made a playlist? 
Host: Samiha Bala: Yes. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: For us? 
Host: Samiha Bala: I did. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: For the whole class I think that went along with your presentation? 
Host: Samiha Bala: What you said about research being like a disease is so true because it was this thing that was like, okay this is a class assignment and then I got so obsessed and I just.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: And it was so cool and it was like, I love to, I don't even know who I'm quoting here, but somebody has said, you know. What you have loved, others will love also. And that is a kind of a description of a sometimes problematic model for teaching English, you know, where it's just like book club basically like, I love this book, let me tell you why.
But I think there's something to that, because when people love something, they connect with it deeply. And when they share that love you can learn things about that thing that you couldn't learn from somebody who didn't love it. And so you loved that music. And it was not only... obviously, you cared about it, it was that you brought it to us, and then we also got super interested in it.
You know, partly because you were interested in it, partly because it was fascinating in its own right. Whatever had caught your attention about it, you highlighted that, you made a collection of things that highlighted that, and just blew our minds. And then we all wanted to learn about it, so I just, I love that community building aspect of research.
That's just two examples. There are so many. I mean, that's why I love teaching English 105. It's a different course every single time. I, I like to say, and you've heard me say it, everything I know, I've learned from my English 105 students, and it's kind of true. Like, I just walk through the world like, Oh yeah, I have a student who did.
Like, I'm, my, a lot of my student veterans are interested in psychedelics and a lot of my 105 students probably about five years ago were doing a lot of stuff with LSD. Not like doing stuff with LSD, but writing about hallucinogens and their potential for treating depression, et cetera. And so, yeah, I learn a lot from you all and it makes the class just so awesome to teach.
Host: Samiha Bala: Our class really did feel like a community just because everyone was so encouraged to go out and explore their own interests. So everyone was just talking about stuff that they were really passionate about. And it's like what you were saying. It's really, it's hard to not get excited when someone else is excited.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: And like, right. By the end of the semester to be excited about anything is amazing, but yeah, I don't always remember people's names, but I always remember their projects. Like I can't remember. The student in your class who did public messaging at the university about controversial political events. I remember talking with that student about that project.
I remember the presentation. I mean, it was an awesome project and it was just like looking at the weird jargon of whatever, bureaucracy speak, I don't know, legalese, whatever, about the non speech that that was, was so cool and interesting. 
Host: Samiha Bala: Stuff that's so specific that you would never think, oh, this is researchable, or I could write a whole paper about this, or I could do a whole project about it, but it's just so fascinating.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah, and, you know, it's fun to do it because you actually are interested, and also sometimes the smaller it is, the better. Because starting with climate change, you got a lot of narrowing down to do before you get to something you care about, let alone something that is manageable enough to research in a year or six months.
[00:15:49] What value do you think undergraduate research has to students, UNC, and the world?
Host: Samiha Bala: Well, to sort of go a little bit more big picture for a second, what do you believe, I guess this question kind of has two parts. What do you think the value of undergraduate research is to undergraduates? But also what do you think the value of undergraduate research is to the world? Or maybe just to UNC Chapel Hill, whichever you feel like answering.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Oh, I'll do all three if I can. I'm writing it down. Well, so earlier you said at the beginning of this conversation that you appreciate our class because it made it clear that research wasn't scary. And I've been thinking about that ever since you said it because I don't want people to think it's scary.
I want them to be invited into it because for reasons I'll say, yes, I think it makes, it has huge value to at all the levels you just mentioned. But I think part of its value is that it is scary. That unlike a kind of artificial exercise or pre planned assignment, it's gonna blow up in your face. A lot.
And that's why, I mean, that's why we call it in education speak a high impact experience, right? Is that you will be impacted like a crash test dummy is impacted because it's not sterile. It's like, all those metaphors we use in class. It's like surfing. You're like, I got this. I don't got this. I got this. I don't got this. 
This recursive process of making a plan and then that plan makes contact with the enemy and it gets blown to smithereens, but then you have a new plan that was forged and experienced. Like, no, now, now I know what I'm doing. It's great. Wait, hang on, there's 700 other things I didn't realize, and also I'm actually interested in this other thing, and I didn't even know. Oh, ah! So it's just chaos and order, chaos and order. Yeah. Which is how we grow. You know, as human beings, like, and I just feel like high school, for all kinds of reasons, has insulated people, especially during COVID, but even in general, it's like, we need to make an education that's testable and quantifiable.
And so everything's gotta be like utterly, repeatable and that idea that you're encountering the unknown and struggling with it very hard to get in high school and hard to get in life as we live in our silos and only talk to people who agree with us and never have to encounter things that just blow our preconceptions out of the water.
So this experience of bumping up against something, bigger than you and that you're interested in engaging with and that you try to engage with and then realize you're engaging the wrong way and have to go back and modify your plan and then try again and then it's something else and... I don't even know how to describe that process but I think it's most important for humans to do it.
It's just a form of- It's just how we learn and grow. 
Host: Samiha Bala: I think as, as someone who is interested in writing, I think the hardest thing for me to grapple with when it came to research was that I can't decide what the answers are. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah. Yeah. 
Host: Samiha Bala: And it's like just truly exactly what you said, coming up against something so much bigger than yourself that will exist after you're gone and has existed before you got here is kind of amazing. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I love that that quote and it's in the opening introductory chapter of They Say, I Say, where he says research is like a party. It's been going on for a long time and you get there and you're late and you're sort of like off, balance and you come in and you're like, oh my gosh, look at all this that's happening and you listen and everything's exciting and you figure out like which conversations you want to try to join and then you listen and listen until you finally catch the tenor of the conversation and then you put your oar in and you know join that conversation and for a brief exciting moment of your life you get to do that and then as it was for him at the moment when he wrote this it's like and then you know you retire and other people continue the conversation long after you're gone. And you have entered it and left it, but it outlives us.
I love that. 
Host: Samiha Bala: That's just such a good metaphor. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: It is. And just the idea that research is a conversation. 
I think that's another thing going back to our earlier conversation that people don't understand. They think- and again, these are all my hobby horses from class. So you remember this, but you think research and, and we play into it in the university, it must be original, unique, never before discovered information. And you're like, ah, like that's terrifying. How am I going to do that? It's a lot of pressure. And like, what, how, I feel like it's some strange contamination of some other world's language, marketing language coming in to research because in fact what 99.9 percent of research does is not discover a new color, you know, in the rainbow, but enter into this conversation and stake out new territory in an existing conversation. That's what, and if you, if you did discover a new color, nobody could see it, right? We don't have the right rods and cones anyway. Like you can't invent stuff in a vacuum without risking reinventing the wheel.
Like you got to know what other people are talking about, so you can join them. It's not, research is not this antisocial, I'm going to go by myself, think really hard, invent something spectacular and drop it on the world like a bomb. Like, no, no. 
Host: Samiha Bala: And I think that's also just like a false narrative about how like specifically scientific discoveries and inventions happen.
It's like, no, Alexander Graham Bell didn't just like... it wasn't like the Stone Age and then he realized that, Oh, what if I made a telephone? It's like a slow building up, and him leaning on people who had just discovered things the year before.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yes, leaning on people who often don't get any credit. Right. And so as we start to try to rethink who gets stories told about them, I think better describing what research is has a role to play in that, of, like, if it is a conversation, let's talk about who is in the conversation. 
Host: Samiha Bala: Yes. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: And not create this myth, I think the Romantics, frankly, are partly to blame for it, of this myth of the artist standing on a mountaintop. 
Host: Samiha Bala: The one guy. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Always a freaking guy. 
Host: Samiha Bala: Always a freaking guy.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Standing on a mountain like a giant phallus. Not what we're doing here. 
Host: Samiha Bala: Not what we're doing. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: No. And I think for most people that's good news. Yeah. Because being alone by yourself on a mountaintop? Scary. Joining a conversation and listening really carefully to other people before you join that conversation? Way less scary. And way more fun. And human. 
So, and in terms of benefits to undergraduates, to UNC, and to the world? I mean, in addition to what we just said of like being more human, which is obviously fantastic and just sort of learning to be resilient, intellectually and spiritually, and you know, it is, it's an, it's a full contact sport, research, right?
So it's not just as an intellectual, but it feels very personal when your research idea blows up in your face or when you realize you're actually doing 10 research projects. Right, all these things, but that feeling of being modified by something outside yourself. 
I'm teaching Wordsworth right now and like, Wordsworth loves it. He's like, Oh, and then I felt like a big scary monster came out of the mountain and yelled at me and it was awesome because I was not alone. 
Host: Samiha Bala: I love Wordsworth. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: I do too. I was not alone and I felt like there was a moral universe out there limiting me.
And so, as opposed to being a paranoid maniac where everything I say is true and nothing can ever prove me wrong because I know it and everything else I'll just deny. Like, you know, when you're really in a paranoid state, which most of us are these days, then it's actually, I think that's the scary thing. 
Anyway, that's my rant about... you've heard all this. So if we want to interact with other humans, learning to be limited by forces outside ourselves is healthy. For students at a more basic level, yeah, it's just gonna, it helps you get the most out of your college experience. That's just, that's just rude, crude fact. Like it's been people have written papers about this. Like, I don't know how they measured it, but it's an agreed upon fact that, yeah, if the people who get the most experience, most benefit out of their college experience go beyond the standard things and put themselves in these high impact situations, study abroad, or research, internships, you know, things beyond the controlled environment. 
So that's, that's one stick. And then for UNC, you know, it sort of makes us look good when all the undergraduates, as a university, when our undergraduates do research. But, you know, if we take seriously, which I would like to, this rhetoric about we serve the state and we're trying to make good citizens, citizens who do research are going to be a lot, or people who do research are going to be better citizens than people who don't do research.
Because again, another of my rants from class, high school teaches you to have an opinion and cherry pick evidence to support it because that's what's on the AP Lang test, at least. Yeah, this idea that we just assert a claim and support it for no reason. And that's what we're trained to do as our major educational experience is horrible.
And I think it makes for bad citizens because people just march around asserting things and only selecting the evidence that fits what they've already asserted. And so I'd like to say when you get to college, we're going to learn a more grown up mode of research, where you start with not an answer, but a question.
Let's start with a question, and then what do we do when we have a question? Do we just pick the first answer we can find and immediately support it? No, we look at other people's answers, we enter community. So it's good for citizens and good for humans and, and good for correcting some of the limits of high school education.
And, yeah, and to the world, yeah, not just better citizens, but better humans who can listen to other people and not just talk. 
I do think it's a very particular, potentially gendered narrative about aloneness and the value of aloneness and the lone genius and this fantasy of laborless creativity and of partnerless invention. And none of that is usually the case. Most inventions and discoveries happen with a team. And then we create retrospectively, you know, the Alexander Graham Bell or whoever, you know, Oh, it was this man by himself. You know, and I'm sure there have been some men who- 
Host: Samiha Bala: Don't look into it, don't look into it. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: I'm sure there's people who have discovered things by themselves, but... 
Host: Samiha Bala: Still, it's…people don't live in a vacuum, so how could you ever discover something in a vacuum? 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's it. And, and there may be some academics who live in a vacuum and want to, too. And you know what? That's fine. 
Host: Samiha Bala: And that's their life. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Exactly. So I, I'm not going to say you can't do it that way, but you don't have to do it that way. 
Host: Samiha Bala: Yes. The community aspect is like, you just said it was a gendered sort of thing. And I think that's absolutely correct. But I also see kind of the cultural side of it, like individualist versus community.
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah, yeah, I like that way of putting it better. And again, America, very much in love with the individualist notion while in fact, living a very community-based ideal and having all these struggles of like, we want to describe things as individual, but we want to live them as communal and... yeah, so happier people, healthier people, healthier democracies, healthier relationships, all good things, you know.
Nothing, no big deal, just research, solving all the problems of the world. 
[00:26:54] Do you have any advice for undergraduates interested in pursuing research?
Host: Samiha Bala: I agree. Oh, just to kind of close us out as we're wrapping up, do you have any final bits of advice or encouragement that you would want to give to an undergraduate who's interested in pursuing research but is maybe hesitant a little bit?
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah. Well, one is, if you're an analog person or a digital person, you'll do this in a different medium. But have some sort of version of a manila envelope that you just keep handy, whether it's a file on your phone or literally a manila envelope, that you stick things into when they catch your attention.
You know, write them down, like if it's a song lyric, if it's a moment of conversation, something where you're like, Oh, that's really interesting. And don't worry about what it is or what you're going to do with it. Just throw it in the dang envelope. Because after a year, you can look at that envelope, and you have a bunch of things that sparked you, you know.
And they are probably gonna be all over the place, but you could give them to a friend, and they'll be like, Oh, yeah, let's see here. Here, I'm seeing all your interests in kittens. See, there's kitten, kitten, kitten, kitten, and so, you know, and there's your thing about gender, and there's your- so, moments of insight into your, your own research disease.
Don't miss that opportunity. So many times you're like, ooh, that's interesting, and it flits by, and it's gone. And just grab it, snap it, screenshot it, throw it in the box. And then, once you have some things you're interested about don't be... embarrassed about them. You know like lean into them, the weirder the better, like, it's not high school anymore. And when I do summer orientation, students sometimes give advice to other- like, current students give advice to incoming first years and they'll say no, but in the best way in the world, one of the OL's I was working with used to say, "In the best way in the world when you come to UNC, nobody cares about you." Not in a bad way, but like it's not high school.
They're not going to judge. Nobody's going to notice. If you fly your freak flag, like, other freaks will also come join you and you will have your own freak team. But it's not like anybody's gonna, it's not, it's not junior high, nobody needs to, like, make fun of you for that. And moreover, like, why would you deny yourself the pleasure of leaning into it?
Like, Why? To pretend to be somebody else because we're going to live in junior high forever or not? No. 
Host: Samiha Bala: Horrible. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Embrace what you're interested in so that, and, and fly the flag high so you can find other people interested in it, too. And, and ask your teachers. Ask everybody you can. Like, I'm interested in this. Do you have any ideas about how I might pursue some further exploration in this area? Whether it's- not just research, but careers, like what do people who like this do after college? Is there a way to do anything that will get me health insurance and a job? 
Host: Samiha Bala: Those are great. Those are great pluses. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah. Yeah. And just yeah, talking with people. People are our superpower. 
Host: Samiha Bala: I think that's really true. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: Yeah, yeah, and I, so many times with the best of intentions, students will be like, well, I'm not important, and my ideas aren't important, and you are important, teacher or mentor person, so I don't want to bother you, and so I'll just sit here with my manila envelope full of ideas, and then I'll graduate and leave.
And you're just like, no, don't do it. Just share it and like, let us get excited with you and help connect you with the people who share your passions. 
Host: Samiha Bala: Yeah, 100%. Well, that concludes this episode of the PITCast. Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you so much, Dr. Lithgow, for joining me today and taking time out of your busy schedule. I really appreciate it. 
Guest: Dr. Hilary Lithgow: A pleasure to talk with you. So awesome. Thanks for inviting me.