Interviewers: Lux Darkbloom and Jimena Prieto Andrew
Interview Subject: “Nasim” Attefeh Dorostkar 

Lux: Alright, so let’s start out with the basics. Would you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background, things like your hobbies or your personal interests, your family life, stuff like that? 

Nasim: Yeah, well, I’m 35-years-old, and I have a master’s in architecture, and I have studied in Iran. I’m originally from Iran, and it’s just eight or seven months I’m in the United States for a PhD program, which is Parks, Tourism, and Recreation, and the focus of my research is on homelessness issues. And actually I’m here with my architecture background because of shelters and something like that–we are working on them. And my hobbies are activities, old activities, I don’t know, climbing, mountain climbing, sports, workout, yoga, all of them, and reading books. Yeah, I’m first-generation as you know. I have an older sister actually, but my parents didn’t have academic knowledge. They have never gone to university or [have a] high school degree. And anything else about me…nothing special. This is all I can…I don’t know…anything you want to know.

Lux:  Oh, that sounds great, that’s perfect. So you’re a PhD candidate. What year are you in your program? 

Nasim: Officially, it’s first semester. 

Lux: Oh, great! 

Nasim: But actually it’s the second semester because of visa problems with Iran. I got my visa just a few days before spring semester. But our university, our department–we don’t have spring semester. But because of my visa, they said that if we postpone it to the next fall you may lose your visa. So they helped me to enter the university for spring semester, but it was not the official first semester. Actually we just used it so that I can enter the country, do not wait for this. And I’m happy that I didn’t wait for this travel ban and these things for Iran. Because of that, actually it’s my second semester, but officially it’s my first semester. 

Lux: Yeah, there’s always just endless bureaucracies to contend with, whether it’s the national government or university bureaucracies, there’s always something, isn’t there? Let’s see…so I kind of want to go a little…looking backward to talk about what initially motivated you to pursue higher ed. 

Nasim: You know, after my master degree, I was working in industry, and I think, I believe that I was good in my job. I was the manager of an architecture studio, but I noticed that during all the works what is more interesting for me is the research part of the project, when I’m investigating something, I’m trying to find out something, and that study phase of the project is more interesting for me, and industry is becoming a kind of repetitively doing something. As a project starts, you are designing a house, I don’t know, you are designing a big project, and at the end again it doesn’t have any added value for you. I think I was enough experienced, and it was going to be kind of boring. So I felt that I need to go back to the academic environment, and I like researching. I started negotiating with different universities, sending emails, and finding an advisor, and finally I was able to find this advisor I have here in the University of Utah. We had lots of similarities in our research, and I came here. I think the basic of the motivation was always I like to help marginalized people. In industry experience, you are not doing something like that. You’re just giving a kind of service to people that have money for that service. But I think that in this research I have that room. I have that option to help marginalized people, and I like it. 

Lux: What do you plan to do with your PhD once you finish? 

Nasim: I’m open to any options that I will have. For now it’s a bit still weird. I’m not so aware of what I am doing exactly here. There are lots of different paths, different areas that I can focus on. But for now I think I would like to stay in the academic environment. And maybe if I was able to do this, I would like to be a professor in the university and maybe having a small lab, having a studio beside it that I can have practical works beside that research. I don’t want just to have research. I think that I should kind of connect them to the real world, practical works. 

Lux: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That’s so cool. I do hope you go on to become a professor. 

Nasim: Thank you so much. 

Lux: We would love to have you as part of our faculty. What kind of schedule are you on right now? Are you doing a full-time grad school, or are you doing part-time and work? 

Nasim: I’m actually fully funded. I’m a full-time student, PhD student. For the previous semester, I was just an RA, a research assistant for my advisor. But this semester, because of the funding problems in the department, they assigned me for teaching assistant. But besides that I’m still working on that project with my advisor. Actually I can say it’s a combination of TA and RA, not just focused on TA, or not just focused on RA. Now I’m 10 hours working as a teaching assistant, and for 10 hours I’m an instructor in financial management in part two of my education course. 

Lux: Wow, that is a very busy schedule. 

Nasim: Already I’m working on three different projects, research projects. In one of them, I’m leading the students to do jobs. And the other one is my advisors, and I’m just part of the research team. Three researches are ongoing research and besides all of them. That’s why I forgot about our meeting, our last meeting and I’m so sorry about it.

Lux: No worries at all, no worries. I totally understand how busy a PhD schedule can be. It’s a lot of work, tremendous amount of work. So can I ask, going back even a little further, how did you determine what field or discipline you wanted to go into initially before you started your path to higher ed? 

Nasim: I was a clever student I can say, and in my country it’s a kind of, you know, a kind of cliche I can say. A kind of, I don’t know, rule in the society that when you are a smart student, when your grades are good, they force you to study mathematics and then start fields that are related to engineering. Then my parents, everyone around me wanted me to start absolutely engineering course but I felt that something related to art is more, you know, inside me. I want something that is related to the art, not just mathematics, not just engineering. I’m not that person. And then architecture was the only thing that had lots of intersections between mathematics, engineering, I don’t know, geometries and also kind of art, social science, something that you can understand about people. I love these things. So I chose architecture, and I believe that I was successful during my bachelor degree and master degree. I always had good grades in practical courses. And then what was the most interesting part of my field was that how people feel when they are in a place. And even for my master program I was working on sustainable interactions among people who are, among the people that are using houses for the low-income group of the society, and how they would feel they are, they belong to the place they are living. Then that motivated me, that interest of…being interested in art and mathematics together motivated me to start architecture. And during the architecture field, the sense of people, social science, and studying about them led me to something that is related to people and how they feel and how I can help them. And then it led me to a program that is, again, an intersection of architecture and social science. 

Lux: Yeah. Did you do your master’s at the U as well? 

Nasim: No, I have done my master’s in Iran. 

Lux: Oh, nice. So, as far as balancing all of these different priorities, do you have any guidance for other first-gen students, especially for those who are in grad school? How do you sort all of that out and prioritize? 

Nasim: I think one thing was always helping me to manage everything. I have a rule that I shared with all the students–and even now my students and my friends–that I say, when you are sleeping, you should have a checklist of three things that you have done during the day. One must be about your mental health, one must be about your physical health, and the other one that must be about your social progress. I don’t know, your academic work, your work, everything. Every day when you are sleeping, you should check. For example, I read a book today. I did yoga today. I did meditation today. I don’t know, something that I cooked for myself today. It was for my, I don’t know, my physical health. I cooked something good. I think if they keep balance between them, they would never be a kind of burnout of being, or I don’t know, they feel that “I am not good because I’m just entertaining myself, just going hiking. I’m not doing anything for my future.” In this position,you have a balance in all of them, and you are doing all of them together. I think the best feeling you should have when you are closing your day is to be satisfied by yourself, and it motivates you to start a better day the next day, I think.

Lux: I think that’s great advice. 

Nasim: Thank you. 

Lux: So a little bit of another shift into a slightly different direction, but I was wondering how being first-gen, or any other factors, how they have influenced your experience with tuition and financial aid?

Nasim: Financial aid. Well, it was challenging, not only for the education, even for the entertainment, even for any side classes that I wanted. For example, I remember I loved to learn music. I am still working on music, but I never was supported by my family to do all of them because they think that it’s something extra, and I had to manage them on myself. I used to, I don’t know, work on summer as a student, for example, teaching English language to Iranian students, elementary students, and gather the money for a class or for my university class in architecture. I know it’s the same here, too. Architecture is a really expensive major to study in the university. You have to pay for lots of things for your projects, and not having funds is really challenging, and I think as my parents didn’t have that academic experience, it was always for them questioned, “Why you are doing all of them? Why you are studying? Why you are spending on your studies? What kind of study is that? You should just study books.” And I think it was really challenging for me. In most of the times, I had to manage the money I used to get from my father for all the months for everything I had to do in the month. And for my own costs, for my own, you know, everything that is related to my social life and everything that is related to my educational life, and it was not that much easy, and it was not easy to convince them that I needed extra money, and I’m not, you know, spending it for something bad. It’s for education. 

Lux: Yeah, that’s a pretty common experience. It seems like a lot of folks are…I mean, I remember my mother just being like, “What are you doing at school all day? Like, do you need to be there that long, or what do you need to pay for for this?” And yeah, just lots of explanations were required for sure. 

Nasim: And building markets for architecture students, I was always questioned that, “Are these really artificial things that needed to be put in to work on them for the university? What kind of studying is this? Why are you always making something when you are going to study?” 

Lux: Yeah, that is challenging. 

Nasim: Even now, for my PhD, when I’m calling my mom, or when I’m talking to my parents, and they are questioning me that, “Until when you will study?” I’m 35. “How much to study? When will this study finish?” 

Lux: You’re like, “As long as it takes, that’s when it will get done.” [Laughs] That’s a lot of family pressure too, to like, hurry up and finish. Yeah, that can be really challenging as well. Has that had any kind of impact on your emotional health or well-being? 

Nasim: Sorry, sorry, I didn’t have your voice. 

Lux: Oh, just as far as, like, familial pressures go, do you feel like that’s had an impact on your emotional well-being? Or even like outside pressures, social pressures around school? 

Nasim: You know, it’s about three months that I’m working with a therapist. Prior to this, I used to think that my parents are good. I didn’t have any pressure in my life. But passing the time, I noticed that some disorders that you know how is because of the pressure they had on you. For example, when I had to do everything on my own. I never had a parent that knows more than me, that how I should study this chapter, how I should do this homework. I should ask my friends, I should ask somebody…you know, always you are in a stress, anxiety. And now I have still that anxiety when it’s close to my presentation days, when it’s close to, you know, a day that I should stop with the project. I still have that. And I am confused that why I’m now in stress, I’m doing everything okay, why I’m still experiencing that, you know, pressure? And I noticed that it goes back to my childhood when I was…I had to do all of them on my own. And now sometimes I have problem with teamwork. I’m good in understanding people, but I have become a kind of…I noticed in myself, sometimes, I’m doing kind of micromanagement on people because I think I should, you know, I should be aware of everything, that I should control everything. Everything should be under my control. And as I was always doing everything on my own, I cannot kind of–I don’t know the English word when you assign something to someone else–I cannot do this. I should do everything on my own. If someone else do it, absolutely there’s a problem with that work. I should double-, triple-check people if I’m assigning something to them. And another thing is that–and maybe it’s because I don’t know, it’s exactly related to being first-generation or not–but during the school days, I was always questioned about my grades, that are they good, but they didn’t have any sense about it. It was a good grade actually. And it had made me a kind of idealist person. I don’t know the English name exactly. 

Lux: Yeah, like idealistic. 

Nasim: Perfectionist. 

Jimena: Oh, perfectionist. 

Nasim: You want to do everything in a perfect way. And you think that I should be that good student. I should be that perfect one. I always should be that. Sometimes it’s not even needed to be that much perfect. 

Lux: Yeah. 

Nasim: Yeah. And nobody cares and it doesn’t change the result. You are not forced to put all your effort for something, but always you are struggling with that, that no, “I should do everything perfect because I will be compared to others. My outcome will be evaluated absolutely.” 

Lux: Yeah, that really…those sorts of experiences kind of put you into this headspace where, for me at least, it kind of made me really hyper-independent where I felt like, “I can’t ask other people to do this for me.” Like delegating, I don’t know how to do that. It’s challenging. 

Nasim: Exactly. I have the same problem. And then sometimes at the end of the day, I notice that, “Oh, help me. Oh, I have walked 70,000 steps. I have done this. I have done that. But I shouldn’t be like this about myself.” But I think, “No, I can. I should do everything on my own, and I should do absolutely…do everything, all of them, everything that is on my schedule. And I should do all of them perfect.” Not just a normal thing. 

Lux: Oh yeah. No major pressure, right? Just do everything perfect. All of it, always. Yeah. That is pretty hard. Feeling that way is, for me, that is just like the path to burnout for sure. So it’s very challenging to, I mean, just to self-reflect and even identify those kinds of characteristics about yourself and where they come from. Like how did this characteristic even originate in me, right? So looking at your support networks, we’re going to kind of focus the next questions on those kinds of topics. What do you think has had the biggest impact on your academic success? 

Nasim: I think my teachers. I always had a good interaction with my teachers, and all of them…I love all of them. I didn’t have any teachers that I remember them badly or I remember some bad memory. I think they were encouraging me in a good manner. And I think the most part was the interactions I had with them. 

Lux: Yeah. Do you feel like your…like the faculty that you’ve worked with, have you, especially at the U, do you feel like you have a mentor on campus or even unofficially, just somebody who is your go-to support person? 

Nasim: Yes. My advisor is exactly like that. And I remember I had a problem with one of the professors here and…about this language barriers and something like that. We had a problem of miscommunication, and he behaved kind of straight and harsh with me. And when I was talking about it to my advisor, he was like, he said a sentence to me that whenever I’m sad, I remember that. And it makes me feel better. And he said that “I want to teach you something in English that no one is more scary than a mama bear that is caring of her baby bears. I have a mama bear inside me and no one has to do anything bad with you, to talk bad with you. I’m here to support you in any situation.” And, you know, that moment I was thinking that “I’m not alone in this country and anything happens, I can count on him and he will help me.” I think in any situation, in any situation, I had an accident that he came to the hospital and he’s not just my advisor in academic environment. He’s even my advisor in some…for example, when I’m somewhere talking about something about me and later in a private conversation, he corrects me that “Don’t do this about yourself. You should be, I don’t know, proud of these things. Don’t talk like this about it.” He’s covering me and teaching me something that is improving me every day. Yes, now I have it. I don’t know if you have seen, it was a cartoon. It was when we were child, Judy Abbott, a girl with orange hair that he, she had a…she was studying in a…she was, she was an orphan, but she had a person from also the university school was helping her, Daddy Longlegs. And sometimes I call him Daddy Longlegs. “You are same as Daddy Longlegs supporting me as he was supporting Judy Abbott.” 

Lux: That’s so great. I love to hear that. Have you ever had an experience where a faculty member has also said like, “Hey, I’m first-gen too.” 

Nasim: No, here in Utah I haven’t heard it. No. 

Lux: I think that’s pretty common, right, Jimena? 

Jimena: Yeah, I would say so. Even during…like for undergrad students, there’s not really a lot of first-gen professors that a lot of students that are first-gen can relate to. Throughout my undergrad career, personally, I never came across a first-gen professor. So I would agree. It’s pretty common. I feel like it’s really rare to find a professor or like a faculty member that’s first-gen. 

Nasim: Yes.

Lux: Yeah. And if they are, if they’re willing to talk about those experiences and like… 

Jimena: Yes

Lux: out themselves as first-gen too. Because that’s a real, that’s a really vulnerable position to be in, you know? Like, “Hey, I’m the first in my family…”Do you feel that in any way being first-gen has had an impact on your academic success? 

Nasim: The only impact could be that I had less challenges if I was not first-generation. 

Lux: Yeah. 

Nasim: I had to work double other students, more than other students always. And maybe I had less pressure on me if I was not first-generation. 

Lux: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 

Jimena: Yeah. 

Lux: Especially like familial pressures. Like, yeah, that just has such a huge, huge impact. 

Nasim: Yeah. 

Lux: How would you describe your experience with just faculty generally, like connecting with them? 

Nasim: Here in Utah, I think I’m okay with all of them. They’re supporting and supportive and they are patient with me. They help me. And even sometimes when they think that I’m not comfortable with asking something, I’m shy, I’m embarrassed. They help me. They, you know, they detect that problem and they talk about it. I’m okay. They’re pretty good.

Lux: Good! Do you find that they are pretty reliable about recommending any resources or services that you might need? 

Nasim: Yes. Yes. Even today, again, I had a problem, and I just stopped by one of the faculties that I didn’t even know who is she. And I talked about my problem and she started helping me and said that, where should I go and how should I ask for help in the department. 

Jimena: Oh, that’s good. 

Lux: Yeah. That’s really great. 

Nasim: I love this department. I should say I love this department. 

Lux: Oh, that makes me so happy to hear. 

Nasim: Maybe because everyone is involved with social science, social interactions, because of that, they are professional in interaction. I don’t have any problems with them here at all. 

Lux: So moving into questions that are more focused on things like your well-being. So you might have noticed on campus, there’s this campaign called U Belong, where the university administration is really hoping to create a value of, like, a sense of belonging among all of the students. Considering that about 25% of undergrads alone–I’m not sure what the percentage is for graduate students–but about 25% are first-generation undergrads. And there’s this significant difference in the racial and ethnic identities between students and faculty. Do you feel like that affects your feelings of belonging at the U?

Nasim: No, I don’t think that it’s affecting negatively my feelings. I actually feel that I belong to U. And even when the semester was starting, I was like that, “Oh, I’m seeing again, lots of familiar faces. It feels like we are back home. We are back to family again.” I like it. I like the environment. And I really feel that I belong to this university, to my department. 

Lux: Yeah, I think that’s so important for successfully completing a program too, right? It gives you that courage to ask questions to folks that maybe you have had very little one-on-one experience with. So yeah, all of that is so positive. So looking future-wise, what kind of program or resource or service would you create to help students with their needs just based on your own experiences? So you can kind of think of it as like, what kind of support do you wish that you had had so far as a student?

Nasim: One of the problems I had in my own department is that you asked me, what’s your future plan? And I think there–at least my department–I don’t know about other departments. I think there are not enough information about the job prospects for the students. And for me, I’m now working for different researchers, but I don’t know which one I should be focused on because I don’t have enough information that, what will happen at the end for these different fields? What will be the sector I can go and work in that area in the future? And when I’m asking about it, I asked about department, from department chair and coordinator, they were saying that “You should go to the faculty and talk one by one to them, get their information. I don’t know, ask about their experience and see which one is good for you.” But I think we could have some, maybe some weekly appointments or some kind of workshops for students that they understand what they are going to do in the future, what possibilities they have in the future. It’s still confusing for me that if, for example, I finish this program, I can go to work in government, industry, in university–which one has the better future for me? I know my interests, okay, but I need some more information about the environment, about the community, that what is going on in the society. Okay, I like to work on homelessness issues, but maybe I should focus on something, for example, policy making for parks for homeless people. But I may go a wrong way for two semesters. They were thinking that I should work on this issue, but the problem was that I should have worked on something greater, something, I can’t say, something not this much detailed. 

Lux: Broader?

Nasim: Yeah, a broader thing. I don’t have to be, for example, in this way, I’m going to be just a researcher. I cannot, you know, use this knowledge anywhere. I think one thing it’s needed is to inform students about what is going to happen in the future. 

Lux: Yeah, that’s a really major issue. I talked with another student who’s beginning her master’s, and she said that it wasn’t until the final semester of her bachelor’s degree that she had a really meaningful conversation about what her job prospects would look like, and whether that meant that she needed to go to grad school or not. And so it’s very, very late in that process, and that can only just, I think, cause a lot of anxiety and fear.

Nasim: I’m thinking that maybe we can just have a course about the job prospect, and they have guest lecturers from different areas. They just talk about what they have done, what was their focus, and now what they are doing, or–I don’t know–what would they have done if they have more information than they were walking to this way. All of them, their experience is that you shouldn’t actually experience all of them. You can gain them from someone else. 

Lux: Yeah, it’s true, totally. So, we put on a conference for and by first-gen students every year. It’s going to be the fifth year for the conference. Is that right, Jimena? 

Jimena: Yes, I’m pretty sure. Yes, because I wasn’t here the first two years, but the last three I’ve been, so. 

Lux: We had a little, a bit of a dry spell because of COVID, but every spring semester we host a conference at the library. It’s a free one-day event for first-gen students and faculty to do exactly what you’re talking about, to have faculty talk about their experiences and give a sense of what it’s like post-graduation. But yeah, as far as…we would love to hear your experiences at that conference too, honestly. 

Nasim: Great, I would like to do this too.

Lux: Yeah, that would be so great. We can talk about that more later. So looking at…I guess this is kind of, well, not exactly another direction, but building off of reflection…looking back at your entire time in higher ed, what do you feel proudest of? 

Nasim: Getting my visa, getting my, you know, going through all this, you know, way, that putting all my stuff in just one luggage, all my life in my home country in just one luggage and coming to live in a country that you are not familiar with culture, languages, even the academic environment, even the education environment is completely different from your home. It’s something completely new at the age 35, that everything, you know, you should have gone to something else, not just starting something at this age. And it was kind of starting from zero. And I think I put five years’ efforts for getting this admission and coming here, learning English language, getting IELTS [International English Language Testing System] exam, IELTS certificate, and, you know, working on my CV, all of them, started negotiating with advisors, learning about this environment, that how I should manage it, how I should, you know…even working with Canvas. All of them, this. Starting this new thing all on my own, without any support and without any financial support from my family and doing it all. Again and I’m married. I have left my husband in my home country. And when I come here, I had a terrible accident at the second month. I had a brain injury and I was seven days in the hospital last semester. And passing all of them alone, doing all of them alone, and starting on my own in this country. Doing all of them alone on my own is something that I’m proud about it. And it gives you a kind of–I cannot say it’s an ego–but it’s a kind of confidence that you come across with a problem, you think, I have passed all these ways. I can pass this one too. It’s nothing scary. I will, and, you know, this night will be finished. Again, the morning will come and everything will be okay. I will pass this one too. This is what I’m proud of it, that I did all of them on my own, not with any help from other people. 

Lux: That’s incredible. That is truly the hardest series of things to accomplish. And it takes so long, years of work. 

Nasim: Yeah. And, and during that time, everybody was like that. “This American studying dream will kill you. You should put it aside.” I don’t know, go to, go to universities in Iran, everything. No, that program is what I want to study. I know this is my target. I know what I’m doing. You know, everyone is trying to kind of, they were thinking that you are in a dream. You are in something, you know, kind of, it cannot come true, but I did it. 

Lux: Yeah. 

Nasim: I did it. And that day when I was on the flight and coming here, and when I passed the security check and I, I saw that sign “Welcome to the United States,” I was like, I did it. I did it alone. It was something that I was really proud of it. 

Lux: That’s incredible. Oof, that’s making me teary. 

Jimena: I know! That gave me the chills because it’s impressive. Not any person out there does that. So the fact that you did it, you did it all by yourself, like props to you, you know, like it’s very impressive. 

Nasim: Thank you. And one more thing was that I went to four interviews for my visa, five interviews for my visa, and they refused me. At the fifth one, I got my visa. And again, all people were saying that “Stop going to,” and “We don’t have the United States en masse in our country. We should travel to other countries because of that’s political problems. You should go to other countries.” And I traveled five countries between my own money and, you know, kind of backpacking just to go there and have that interview. And finally I did make it and I become one of the people that was, I know Iranian community, students community in the University of Utah. Not all of them are now in the Utah. Lots of them just have admission and they are passing the visa process. I become one of the person that was coaching them. That’s what you do and what you should do. I have gone through this process for five times, and I know what’s wrong, what’s good in talking to them and getting this visa. And I remember for six months I was in clearance process. I didn’t get an instant visa. It was clearance process. It took six months, and they had not informed me about my visa result. I sent a letter to the congressman of the Utah. I started negotiating with him that “I need this program. I was about, I had to be at the university at Fall 2024. Now it’s Spring 2025 and I’m losing my…” and they helped me to, you know, kind of expedite my visa process. And all other students were saying that “What happened that you decided to send email to the congressman of Utah for your visa?” And I was like, “I have learned to do a lot,” to do a lot of them. I, I, you know, that was no stop for me. I was always trying to do, to find a way. “You should negotiate. You should send him and you should try. You should do.” And when I think about all of them that I have passed in during this five years, I’m proud about it. 

Lux: Yeah. That’s incredible. Five interviews for that. Jeez. I would be so nervous at every single one, every step of the way. So just to wrap up, unless there’s anything else you’d like to share with us, we do just have one more question. 

Nasim: Nothing special. No, no, nothing special. I’m okay. And I think you have covered all the questions. 

Lux: Cool. So last question then, do you have any advice for current first-gen students or even folks who are considering being the first in their families? Maybe they’re in high school at this point, just thinking about college. 

Nasim: I think they should learn…they should practice to ask for help. That’s it. You are not allowed. You are not supposed to do everything on your own. Sometimes asking for help is good. Practice about it and catch yourself red-handed when you are doing again something on your own and practice asking. Just ask. 

Lux: I think that was beautiful advice. 

Jimena: Yeah. A lot of students need to hear that. 

Lux: Yeah, because it’s terrifying trying to get support from…whether it’s student services or an academic advisor or any part of that large bureaucracy that we’re all trying to navigate, it’s scary. You don’t know what their response is going to be like. You don’t know if they’re going to just blow you off or be unkind. 

Nasim: It’s okay. You should even practice to sometimes hear negative things. 

Lux: Yeah. 

Nasim: You should practice it. You should practice to learn the next time how should you ask for help or how should you manage your emotions if you say you heard the no, you heard ignoring, you are facing ignoring. 

Lux: That’s really, really great advice. Just keep asking. I love the idea of practicing receiving feedback or information that’s negative. 

Nasim: Exactly. 

Lux: That can really throw you through a loop if you’re like, “Oh, I was expecting help and I’m getting this instead.”

Nasim: Exactly. 

LD: Yeah. I think that’s really great. Well, that about does it for us then. Thank you so much for talking with us. 

Nasim: Thank you so much. Again, I’m sorry for that two times. 

Lux: It’s no worries. 

Nasim: It felt bad whenever I saw your email that, “Oh, again, I forgot it. Oh, something happened. I couldn’t join this interview. I’m so sorry for this.”

Lux:  It’s totally no problem at all. I understand. I mean, you’re a PhD candidate. You’re the busiest that you could possibly be, really. 

Nasim: Thank you so much for understanding.

Lux: Yeah, and thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us. I know this is going to help other students a lot. 

Nasim: Sure. Sure. I’m happy that I participated.