To say I was a deeply uncool tween is an understatement. A list of adjectives describing me at 10 years old is indistinguishable from a list of Asian stereotypes — quiet, shy, studious, unathletic. After school I went to piano and cello lessons; on the weekends I participated in academic competitions. In my school photo from fifth grade, I am wearing a WWJD baseball tee under a plaid button-up. 

Thanks to the lack of self-awareness possible only in childhood, I was blissfully oblivious to my uncoolness. I loved things without abandon, things like the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs and R. L. Stein's Goosebumps series. So it was no surprise that the first time I watched The X-Files, I was hooked. I'm ashamed to admit that what drew me in initially was Fox Mulder; I loved him so much that at first I was bitter about how much he cared for his partner, Dana Scully. But the more I watched, the more her character intrigued me. How come she wasn't blonde like the women on all the other shows I watched? Patty Mayonnaise on Doug was blonde; Sabrina on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch was blonde; even Jenny McCarthy, the host of Singled Out, was blonde. 

Not only was Scully not blonde, she broke a fundamental rule about the universe: She was pretty and smart. I did not know much about coolness but I did know that there were two types of girls — pretty girls and smart girls. I wasn't pretty, so I'd taken up being smart. But how was Scully both? Was that allowed? And how come when she said a bunch of big words, people weren't annoyed but impressed? Where did she learn to cut into dead people without even a wince? 

So while the other girls in my class threw themselves into Titanic mania, I devoted myself to studying everything there was to know about Scully and Mulder. I waited for every rerun and recorded them on VHS tapes, each one carefully labeled with the episode name and number. I spent hours after school downloading X-Files video clips and pictures, reading fan fiction, and chatting in the "X-Philes" AOL chat room. To this day if you Google my first AOL screen name, the first hit is my signature on a "Mulder Scully Relationshippers" petition.

I gleaned every detail about Scully so I could better emulate her. She wore a cross, so I started wearing a cross. I practiced her sarcasm by reciting her most blasé lines, hoping the attitude would rub off on me — "Sure, fine, whatever." She was an FBI agent, a scientist, and, as she never failed to remind the people around her, a medical doctor. I hated blood, so doctor was out. Being an FBI agent sounded fun, but shooting guns seemed dangerous. That left scientist. 

It's hard for a fifth-grader to fully grasp what a real scientist does, but I threw myself into the effort anyway. I knew it probably involved numbers and big words that showed I knew a lot of important stuff, so I checked out library books about volcanoes, tornadoes, and astronomy (so I could help Scully and Mulder find out where the aliens were coming from). My dad had a book by Stephen Hawking; I read the words without understanding any of it. I was delighted whenever I came across a term I'd heard Scully utter on the show: quantum physics, Erlenmeyer flask, cosmic radiation. 

With encouragement from my parents, I applied to a math and science magnet middle school. The application prompt asked what I'd do to investigate a mysterious mass fish kill in a local creek. Easy, I thought — what would Scully do? Take a sample of the water, bring it to the lab, and check the pH. I got in and even tested into a special advanced class where I was one of seven girls. 

Finally, my uncoolness dawned on me. Liking science, I discovered, was not considered cool; the advanced class was a place for nerds, and we were bottom feeders in the middle school ecosystem. To make matters worse, I had my hair cut into a Scully-inspired bob, but it looked terrible on me. I channeled her anyway. Would Scully take shit from dumb boys? Would Scully care about Abercrombie & Fitch? No. She was a scientist, and science busied her with important things like autopsies, government conspiracies, and being chased by helicopters through cornfields. She exuded confidence. She was never afraid of people who knew more than her. She questioned everything. She called people out when they were wrong. If she could get through an alien abduction, cancer, and a 13-month pregnancy, I would make it through seventh grade.

When The X-Files returned for a 10th season, we discovered what happened in the last 14 years of Scully and Mulder's lives, and I thought about what's happened in mine. I went on to a math and science high school, studied psychology in college, got a Ph.D. Now my full-time job is to explain science to non-scientists, which, in a very loosely interpreted way, is totally what Scully did on The X-Files. Along the way, I've often thought of Scully, my lifelong patron saint of science, as I asked endless questions and bought a Scully-esque pantsuit for my grad school interviews. Scully's not the only woman in science I look up to, but she was the first, and I'll be forever thankful to her for being brave in all the ways I didn't yet know how to be.

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