Susan
Welcome to Who We Are Inside a Cupid podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to who we are inside. Today we have Victoria Grieve, who is an assistant professor in the School of Pharmacy. She was awarded her PharmD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2014, with an additional area of concentration focusing on academic research. Following this, she completed a post-grad fellowship for clinical simulation at the VA Hospital in Pittsburgh with a focus on Andragogy and Andragogy

Victoria
Andragogy. Yeah, it's like pedagogy. So pedagogy is the teaching of children. Andragogy is the teaching of adults. Mhm.

Susan
I just learned so much.

Victoria
Oh, oh they, they come from the Greek and they actually have philosophical weight behind them that we don't usually use anymore. That's even more telling for the way that we treat things for education.

Susan
That's that's another story that we're going to have to come back to because andragogy. Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot more sense than the way that I pronounced it, which was horrible. I'm that person that, like, I can spell something for you, but pronouncing it is impossible for most words.

Victoria
That's fair. I took five years of Latin, so I just kind of go for it usually, right? Yep.

Susan
Yep. Um. Andragogy and educational sim. So, beyond pharmacy education, Doctor Greaves clinical expertise is gender affirmation and the care of transgender people and actively works to promote diversity and inclusion throughout the campus and beyond. She was awarded the Provost Award for Diversity and inclusion in the curriculum. She's taught on transgender care at Magee-Womens Hospital, Duquesne University School of Nursing, and several schools for the University of Pittsburgh, including the School of Medicine and the School of Sports Medicine. Victoria is a transgender woman. Her pronouns are she/her, and vi/ver. Victoria, welcome.

Victoria
Thank you for having me. This feels funny just because, like I've known you for so long now. I know, I know. Well, and this is the fun part, because we do all know each other well.

Susan
Yeah. So I think this will be hopefully. I don't want to say easier, but like, less intimidating, at least for me. Um, than than not that any of our guests have been scary, but like, um, so I thought that we could start by. Really? I realized that I've known you for a long time, but I don't know that I've ever actually heard. I don't want to call it your origin story, but I feel like maybe that's the right term, because I feel like you're kind of one of my superheroes. So maybe origin story is like a good it feels right. I'm thinking, like the Wolverine origin story for Victoria Grieve. Oh, no. Go.

Victoria
So? So the experimented me on me in Canada, and, um.

Susan
And you got your adamantium. Adamantium?

Victoria
Yeah, yeah, the whole nine. I was funny because I was first like, okay, so I came here on a rocket ship from Krypton. So funny. Funny quick story. My mother always said that, uh, so there's no photos of me that exist before. I was, like, three years old, and she always said that. That was because I was dropped off by a UFO at the age of three, and she was just like, well, I guess I'll take care of this. Um, okay.

Susan
That is a great way to start to start your story, right?

Victoria
Um, my mother lying to me. Yes. Um, no. So I grew up in Monroeville, which is just east of where we are right now. Um, I every time I tried to do something that wasn't in Pittsburgh, a better option always opened up in Pittsburgh. So I've just stayed forever. I grew up out that way, and at a very young age, there were two, two relevant things perhaps to talk about. I was fascinated by games, especially tabletop games, which is very relevant to the way that I do teaching and instructional design. I believe the the first game that I ever made, I was seven years old, and it was with like a checkers board and some like other like figurines and stuff. And I was, you know, I didn't know what I was doing. I was literally seven. But it's just this funny anecdote that my grandmother used to tell me.

Susan
But do you remember the name of the game?

Victoria
They didn't have a name, I was seven.

Susan
Okay. Did they have, like, changing rules because my five year old likes to change rules according to the current real

Victoria
Calvinball rules? Yes. No, no. I think I was actually, like, surprisingly diligent in being like, no, this is how the rules are. Um, but that really sort of started something of a passion. Like I started collecting analog games very young. I have an enormous collection at this time, including all of those old games that, like, nobody's ever heard of that I still have from back then. Heroquest, which just had a reprinting, actually. And tower of the Wizard King. And like, all kinds of goofy stuff. So, uh, you know, I've been designing games and playing games for something like 33 years, which is very relevant to how I teach and how I design classes. Uh, but from the other side of things, I knew who I was at a at a pretty young age, but this was the 90s. So like, it was really hard to like I didn't have exactly the most supportive upbringing. So I didn't, like, have family members that I felt comfortable talking to about how I was feeling. I didn't really have any of the terminology or like the words or anything. And also like if you existed in the 90s, you probably remember that it's being trans is like wildly stigmatizing back then. I mean, all of the most popular films of those years, like hinge on mocking trans women specifically. And there's all of the problematic like history and medical science and things of that nature. Um, so I do high school and all of that. I actually thought that I would be a Latin professor back in the day. I took five years of Latin, and I really, really took to it. Uh, I couldn't do any of it now, but help me a little bit with, like, the medical terminology. Um, so I went to community college, CCAC, or as they always say, CCAC - It's a great place to start or start again. Um, I had a social studies teacher who always had that whole phrase. Anytime he mentioned the community college, I went there for two years, uh, doing kind of what was going to be like an associate's, like the start of a teaching degree. And I had decided pretty quickly that I wasn't cut out for public education. There was too much bureaucracy. But teaching was something that came very naturally to me that I very, I very much loved. Like, I tutored my sister through grade school. I like tutored other people, like when they needed it. I always even like the act of teaching somebody a game is part is like that is teaching. So I still had that drive, but I didn't know what to do with it. So I did a bunch of I did every class on psychology and philosophy that they offered at CCAC because they were fun, and also did some other, uh, like early, early requirements like bio one, bio two, with the expectation that I would someday transfer to Pitt. During that time, I got a job at a a, an Eckerd drug, which became a Rite Aid very shortly thereafter. Um, yeah, I love Eckerd.

Susan
I'm sorry, I just I need to marinate in that for a second, because the Eckerd lights, for those of you who celebrate Christmas there, right by my house or my my. Sorry. Not by right by my house. My parents house. It was like the best time of the year. And I was so sad when Eckerd went under because Rite Aid didn't. They didn't do it. They didn't do it. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.

Victoria
Yeah. I mean, community pharmacy, a whole nother episode, but yeah. But no. So I got a job there because they needed a cashier in the pharmacy side. And a friend of mine worked in the front end and was like, hey, you want to work down here? So it was I was only there for like a month when one of their techs left and they said, hey, do you want to be trained to do the tech stuff? And I'm like, yeah, let's go. And I took to it the the pharmacist. I was paired with Paul, uh, rest in peace. Unfortunately. But he, uh, he and I worked really well together, and I took to it so well, like, the fast pace, the like knowledge required, the even counseling patients on, like, over-the-counter things. I was just all for it. I worked there for the rest of my time at community college. So about a year and a half, a little bit more. Um, and Paul was like, you are really good at this. You should think about going to pharmacy. He went to Pitt. It's a good program. You should go to Pitt. And so I said, okay. And so I transferred to Pitt, and I found that, uh, the pre-pharmacy requirements I had mostly done, but I needed four more classes chem one, chem two, Ochem one, and Ochem two. So, uh, I needed to take at least two more years. And, uh, in order to have health insurance. At the time, I needed to be a full time student. So I finished a degree, a bachelor's degree in philosophy and psychology, because I already had so much of it done while doing Pre-pharmacy. And I think my psych advisor was like, shocked that I was taking organic chemistry and then doubly shocked that I had A's in it. But even then, like my chem two class was particularly, uh, worrisome. The professor had come back from teaching honors. Specifically, he only did what he called objective measurements and stuff. There were no curves. There was nothing else. It was like there were four exams. You get the points, you get the points. That's it. That's what your whole grade is on. And I ended up leading. It started out with me and two other students leading a once a week tutoring session for the whole class, anybody who wanted to show up. And more and more people arrived. And the two students that I started it with fell off. And so then I was leading tutoring like 70% of my class. But honestly, that's probably why I did so well in the class to begin. So like again, there's that reoccurrence of like teaching and helping other people that need the help. Um, so I finished that. And back then pharmacy was a lot more competitive to get into the graduate programs. So I took a year off after I graduated with my bachelor's. And I worked at a hospital out way north of the city. And, um, there's a there's a actually kind of a funny story related to that, that I might come back to when we start talking about, like, being trans and such. But I worked there as a tech and the head of the IV room, uh, for I ended up working there for quite a few years because I started there on my off year. I did all the application stuff, and there was some bureaucratic thing that had my application like rejected. So I took another year off. I put in the application again. Um, I there were all kinds of weird things, like the standardized tests that you have to take is called a pcat. I took it I was the last year they did it on paper. And so, uh, there was a weird anomaly in my records that my writing portions were not graded because I write in cursive and they couldn't read it. And so, uh, the pharmacy school I go through, I'm like, I'm a solid candidate. You know, I have, you know, almost two years in community. I've got two years in hospital. I have a previous degree, like all of this stuff. I'm a really strong candidate. And they call me up and they're like, hey, why don't you have these pcat scores? And I'm like, I don't know, let me call. And so I called them. I find out that they couldn't grade them. I'm like, okay, but can you regrade them like you still keep that right. And they're like, oh, we usually do. But our storage, uh, our storage building burned down and I'm like, oh, that's strange. So I had to explain this to the dean at the pharmacy school, and, uh, they just waived those requirements. I interviewed, I got in, so I started in 2010, and I graduated in 2014. Uh, I, you know, I did well enough. I was actually surprisingly more difficult to, uh, like, really relate to my fellows being like six plus years older than most of them, having way more experience and like living, let alone actually working and having basically no support structure like nobody was paying my tuition. I've never been awarded like a scholarship or anything. Uh, and so, you know, I'm working full time, I'm pulling 16 hour shifts on the weekends and school full time and trying to maintain, like, a little, little dingy apartment in South Oakland that definitely tried to kill me like, eight times, once a year that I lived there. Um, but I, uh, managed to go through the whole program. Uh, during that, I focused on these things called areas of concentration, which are almost like minors, but like, not quite. And the one that I ended up, the one I wanted to do didn't exist. So I enrolled in the research one, but then did everything on education and stuff like that. Specifically, we focused on this concept called the underground curriculum, the idea of student made or student curated study materials. So study guides, old tests and all of the student organizations, they maintained repositories of these, but they were only for their members. And so we worked by collaborating with all of these different groups and collecting all of these resources into a single website that everybody could use, while also making additional material for the students, like YouTube videos and practice exams and extensive notes on for law specifically. And we did a whole poster on it and that we presented at PPA. But so that was the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association conference. And so that was my area of concentration. I kind of like made it what I wanted it to be. And my mentor, Susan Meyer, was the old assistant dean of academics, I want to say it was her title. Uh, she was great. Uh, I got to do her class on teaching. I got to teach her a few things, and I just have been able to have this passion. Upon graduation, I'd applied to some residencies. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. Um, didn't get callbacks from any of the residencies. Uh, but then Susan Meyer, not you. Um, she she found out about this VA fellowship and recommended me to it. I was, I think, the second year of fellows that they had for it. Only the second year it was running. Uh, there were only six of us in the country. I want to say it was a very small kind of program, but it was incredible.

Susan
Was it just for pharmacists?

Victoria
No, it was for any healthcare practitioners. That is so cool. So my co fellow is actually he he majored in like medical equipment design or something like an engineer. And then the other ones. One was an actual like MD student. One, there was another pharmacist. Uh, there was like a chaplain, like they were all across. Like they were it was really broad. Uh, and so we learned a lot about using task trainers and the whole process, like the Kirkpatrick scale of evaluating simulations and such like that. Uh, and I got to do real hands on kind of teaching and designing of these kinds of experiences, which is great. Uh, and, and I'm bringing some of the game design concepts to it. This like ludic instructional design. I kind of showed them a few things about like, well, these simulations are kind of like role playing games. And if you think about it in this way, maybe there's like other avenues you could go down in other ways you can manipulate it. But I do appreciate that fellowship a lot. Everybody I worked with was fantastic. It was a wonderful experience. Um, and really, I think it gave me a stronger kind of foundation of. Some of the theory that I had been missing a little bit because I was more in like the pedagogy side of things. But andragogy is like the concepts that they use in clinical simulation. So it's this idea that you're teaching adults, they're coming to you. They don't have a whole lot of time. They have a background. They want to make sure that it's appropriate. There's like a whole set of heuristics for it that I think are actually probably more appropriate than any of the other things we use for like pedagogic strategies. But that's a tangent of a tangent. At the end of that. Near the end of that, I was contacted by the assistant dean for the pharmacy school, and he said that there was a class, the drug development class, that, uh, the instructor couldn't teach it anymore. Uh, and they, he and a bunch of graduate students had kind of come up with like, a stopgap solution for that semester, but they wanted to do something more interesting with it. They didn't know where to go, but they knew I had a real interest in educational design and things. So they contracted me for a couple of months to come down, and that's when I started building what we somewhat jokingly refer to as our expedition. But it's really the current iteration of the drug development class at the pharmacy school, which I'll sure, I'll talk about more if you want, but at the end of that, I finished my fellowship. I applied to, I think, 127 jobs, and I heard back from none of them and then got a got contacted by the the dean at the pharmacy school who wanted me to come down and have a meeting. And over the course of that meeting she says, well, I have this fund that I can make a one year faculty appointment for you. Uh, you'll be a lecturer. You'll be required to work on these. This is going to be your main focus, this drug development class. And, um, if it's if you prove to be good enough. If he proved to be useful enough, we'll keep you around. I said, well, that sounds great, actually. So I somehow proved myself in that year, and I've been there ever since. This is my 10th year now as faculty. I promoted I got promoted to assistant professor I think five years ago, 2018. I want to say I did it mainly because when I would go to conferences and talk and I'd be like, And I'm a lecturer, and they're like, oh, I don't care what you have to say. I'm like, okay, I need I need that professor word in there somewhere. That's right. Um, so that's that's sort of my professional backstory, I guess.

Susan
I want to go back to that. This was really this path that you, that you ended up on was mainly because you had a friend who worked at the front counter at Eckerd.

Victoria
Yes. All of it. Correct. That's the only reason I ended up in pharmacy is because, uh, a friend of mine worked in the front end at an Eckerd drug, and she said, hey, they need a cashier in the back, and you want a job.

Susan
I love how stories happen that way. It feels like there is always this moment of serendipity or whatever you want to call it, if you, you know, believe in, in other things, but that, like, you can point to, it's like that's your life trajectory. That's incredible.

Victoria
Yeah, but you can only really see it in retrospect, of course. And so the idea being that it's oh, man, that goes to such a specific like fundamental philosophy that I have is that there is no use in planning. Like, you can do short term plans, you can do like broad fake plans. But like whenever somebody at my work, like an admin person or something is like, where do you see yourself in five years? I'm like, I always have a flippant response to it. You know, it's always something like, I don't know, dead from some climate based catastrophe or, you know, whatever. Um, right behind you with a knife. That's a good one. Where you see yourself in five years.

Susan
Um, does that get you reported to HR?

Victoria
Weirdly, no, but I've gotten reported to HR for other things that make no sense. So, um, that we'll probably talk about, but, uh, but yeah. So it's like my experience in my life has been that any plan you make doesn't survive contact with the future and taking advantage of opportunities, being flexible and following your passion, following what interests you, following what sparks joy is where you actually find your path. And you can look back on it and say, wow, that is a linchpin moment. But at the same time, uh, if I hadn't taken such an interest in teaching, or if I hadn't taken such an interest in Latin, I wouldn't have gotten interested in teaching in a more professional way, and I wouldn't have even been at that school to do that. Or if I had a different pharmacist that I worked with who had gone to a different school or who didn't like, bond with me as well and make those suggestions or like push that like little extra bit of being like, maybe you should look into this. Uh, who knows where I could have ended up? I mean, you can go back even further than that. And, uh, one time, many years before, when I was thrown out of the house, uh, for disobeying my mother, giving a stupid mandate, uh, and I ran away and joined the renfair. I had an opportunity to come back and finish school under very strict guidelines. Or never speak to my family again and become a drifter on the renfair circuit. And that's a very different life. So. But yes, but but Eckert is is a linchpin moment, part of my backstory

Susan
that warms my heart.

Adriana
So, Victoria, you have a fascinating professional story. Um, so can we shift gears a little bit to your personal story. When did you know that your gender identity did not match your assigned sex at birth?

Victoria
Oh, so. I knew that I was uncomfortable being a boy at probably like 10 to 14, like early puberty was was when it was like this. This is terrible. Like, I don't like this, but I wouldn't have been able to use that terminology to describe it because again, this is the early to mid 90s. I wouldn't have really known, but it was a weird thing where when I was the only one home and I would try on one of my sister's bras and it was like, why does that feel? Why doesn't that feel more shameful? Like in a weird way, or how jealous I was of skirts and dresses and things of that. And like, man, why is it that my fashion has to be so stifled? Like, why is it that all I get to wear or, like, jeans and black shirts and, uh, you know, I was like, the quiet kid in high school and such like that because I was so. And looking back on it, I can say I was so, like, mired in the dysphoria that I didn't. I had a really hard time, like, uh, navigating a lot of social spaces. People thought I was scary in some cases. Yeah, I the jokingly I was elected most likely to reenact Columbine in high school because it was around that same time and I wore I had a long black trench coat, which is wild because like, I'm as leftist as they come. And those guys were like, literally fascists. But you know, but we, you know, the kids.

Susan
I can't believe that was allowed to be an award.

Victoria
No, it was it wasn't like an official, like school sponsored superlative. It was a joking like there were a whole bunch of them that like just the different, like, clicks and stuff had.

Susan
Wow. Wow. Yeah. High school is so mean.

Victoria
Yeah. Correct. Mhm.

Susan
Um, that gets me on another tangent, but we won't go there. Um, it's just like I, I'm angry for high school. You that somebody would like. I have no words like that's.

Victoria
So it actually was was a little better because since I had this weird reputation of being very strange and nobody really knew how to handle me, everybody wanted to be my friend so that they wouldn't be the ones I would come in and harass and and murder. Come on. So I had this, like, weird. Seriously. Like, I have this. There were like, a lot of people who were very friendly towards me, but it was because of this, like, weird reputation that I absolutely didn't deserve because, like, I was too busy playing, like, Dungeons and Dragons with with the friends I did have. So I was like, all right, I don't really worry about this, but it's nice that, like, all the cheerleaders talk to me and stuff. So it was very funny in that respect.

Susan
Oh my gosh. Um, so you said you sort of knew that you didn't. And I'm paraphrasing here that that it didn't feel right being a boy around puberty. Um, when was the first time, but that you didn't have any kind of words or or way of describing it? And I think that is that is true for so many people who I think grew up in that time and ended up getting or having kind of difference in some way, whether it be like Neurodivergence or gender identity or gender fluidity. Um, and so I'm curious, like when, when did you when did you learn the language or how did that kind of knowing evolve over time?

Victoria
Um, So when I. First. Okay. So when I went to community college this coincides with as 2003 coincides with my first interaction to the internet because my my mother doesn't trust technology. She freaked out when I brought home a DVD player. Uh, so having the internet at home? Not a thing. So going to college, I could access their computer lab, and that was my first chance to be on the internet and meet other people, other communities and such and start learning a bit more about just kind of like the breadth of human experience to a certain extent. And I very quickly, uh, fell in with the, the local furry community. Um, and one thing you can say a lot of things about furry as a subculture, but, uh, we're very open about like, queerness and like gender and expression and all these things. So that was when I really started meeting other people who were like me in that respect. And, uh, I was sort of, I don't want to say struggling with my sexuality. I was I was like, reveling in it, I don't know. I dated people of any gender, uh, for, for a long time and kind of like, you know, just enjoyed myself in the space and the camaraderie and finding other weirdos like me. And then I came to Pitt, and I ended up, uh, starting. I dated somebody who's a very dear friend of mine now, uh, who is high up in the Rainbow Alliance. And this was like 2005, I want to say 2005, 2006. So we, um, so I started learning some of like the terminology from that, even though I was already kind of like living in an existing in a space for it. And so I, um, I started thinking of myself as, like, okay, like gender fluid maybe. And, uh, there would be like, they would do, like a drag show or something. And so I would dress all femme because I had a box of, like, skirts and things that I had collected over the years. And, um, my, my dear friend Jack, who, uh, I spent a lot of time with during undergrad, uh, who's a trans man, uh, now, he would come over on my birthday dressed very masculine, and I would dress up very feminine, and we would go out for breakfast. And that was like, that was one big thing. And then another friend of ours who also struggles with a lot of this would have a costume party for New Year's. And specifically, you had to go as a gender that is not the daily gender. Like everybody went in some costume of a character that like, wasn't how they present every day. And so I had these kind of release valves to a lot of the experience. And, um, developed a lot more of like the understanding and the language and a lot more connections within the community. That's actually when I started using vi/veur as pronouns, although I never really held it to people because neopronouns are really hard to use. Um, and the other trick is that I had, undiagnosed ADHD, it turns out, and I was self-medicating with Mountain Dew, uh, and other sources of caffeine. Uh, and part of the reason it was undiagnosed is because it specifically the inattentive type, which is usually codified for more feminine and like, you know, female coded individuals. So there was no reason to suspect. So I got my diagnosis literally just a few years ago. Um, that's been very revolutionary in other ways. But part of it was I could hyper focus on work. And so I became this kind of like I would have a social life. I would do things with these friends in the social group that I found. I would have these outlets, but most of the time I would be focusing either on school work or like a video game or something to kind of distract myself. I was I would just become very obsessed with it, especially the the schoolwork. And that only, like redoubled in graduate school for for pharmacy because, uh, you know, they like the old saying goes, uh, you know, there's reading for pleasure and then reading for pain, also known as graduate school. So, um, I became this, like, shut in workaholic for it, which actually really hurt a lot of my, my social, uh, group, like, everybody that I was friends with, uh, graduated and moved away. I didn't have barely any connections from high school. Most of my undergrad friends were gone, and then I started falling away from, like, a lot of the other local community kind of things because I was just busy. If I wasn't doing schoolwork, I was studying for it. If I wasn't studying for it, I was at work. And somehow I slept in in between all of those things.

Susan
Did you eat too?

Victoria
So we got real good. Okay. You asked. So I'm going to tell you. I'm gonna tell you the story. I got really good. So. So I had $400 that I lived on every month during undergrad. I had more during graduate school thanks to the better internship. But I got so good at knowing what buildings on campus had recurring presentations and food catered for them that I would go after all of the people had like raided it for the second half. I would go and pick from what was left and that was how I maintained, like anywhere approaching an appropriate amount of food in my diet. Food insecurity is a real, real thing.

Susan
It is. And thank you so much for sharing that. I was thinking more about it as from along the lines of having ADHD and being hyper focused. Like I know friends of mine just they don't eat because they're like so focused they kind of forget. But I really appreciate you sharing that, because I think it's something that is only now just starting to get talked about. And still, when you're in a graduate, professional place, um, I think people assume that everybody comes from privilege and like, that's not a thing. Oh, that's a huge it's a huge assumption that is completely wrong. So you're you're walled up doing grad school? Yeah. Uh, losing your friends?

Victoria
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Not not being able to connect with my colleagues in pharmacy because I really had very little in common with them. Mhm. And I get through the program I do my fellowship. I have like a really good year with that fellowship and I. I get the job in the pharmacy school as the faculty. And so there's this there's this moment because during fellowship I was living with a partner and they were having a real hard time. They were kind of worked from home. They did art and things, but they had an opportunity to do a programming boot camp in Colorado, and I just got offered this faculty position. I'm like, well, I guess we're going to have to like go our separate ways. And things were challenging. We were both kind of depressed. And it's unfortunate I, I still miss them a lot actually. But um, so I moved to South Side to start my, my, uh, faculty position, mainly because I was like, okay, this is more money than I ever thought I'd make. Uh, it's not not to say that like that faculty salaries are crazy high or anything, but I'm just saying, like, I had pretty low expectations for myself. So I moved into the a pretty nice, kind of modern like apartment building just to like, have the experience of living in one before I moved out somewhere that was cheaper. Um, and so I was in that place for two years, that first year as faculty, and the next year and I had basically no social group for most of it. I interacted with students. I interacted with other faculty. I worked way too hard, uh, way too often. I, most of my other friends and such, even after they moved away, like just stopped reaching out. Uh, which is fair, because I was probably overworking myself and not being in a position to be reached out to. Um, and I did a little bit of what I could do, but I spent a lot of time alone. Uh, that's actually when I started hyper fixating on a video game called Destiny. Uh, it was around that time, and most of the iconography on my sleeve is actually related to that video game. Um, because it it's kind of like an MMO, so it has a massive multiplayer online game. So it has a lot of like different kinds of, like dark pattern systems and things. You can kind of like lose yourself in. Um, and it was also like a good story and fun to play. Um, and so I actually sort of if it's in a weird place right now, but it's been with me for the last like ten years. And I think that's actually, like weirdly important, which is one of the reasons why so many of my tattoos are related to it. Um, so that was.

Susan
Wait, can you say more about that? I'm curious. Or do you not want to say.

Victoria
What do you what do you want to learn?

Susan
Um, like, how is this game? How like what? What about it has been so important.

Victoria
So, uh, it's a multiplayer game that asks you to create social groups to do some of the hardest, most interesting content, the raids. So I would have I went through something like seven different clans over the course of the ten years that I played, starting with some friends, and then they would fall off, and then I'd find a new group and I would play with them, and then they'd fall off and I'd find a new group. Uh, but the game, it was something you could play by yourself. It's something you could play with 1 or 2 other people. It was something that you could schedule, like a six person, like big event for. And these are people that I have and will never meet in real life. There are people that only have relevance in the game. Mhm. Um, and so it became something of a substitution for the social group I kind of didn't have, while also uh the game itself, I mean it's made by Bungie. It's got some of the best game feel there is. It had has really good extensive lore, and I found myself like, really just, like, immersed, like compelled to the story, to the world to like what the possibilities is really a big part in that early time. And I just became it was just the game that I played. It was the thing that I did when I wasn't, uh, at work or at asleep, I guess, or the very, very rare moment when I had other people to interact with and like real life. Um, so I, it was really important to me. And then it's changed a bit in like, how, how I interacted with it because, like, I probably interacted with it. Also secondary to like depressive kind of things where it's like very low, um, activation energy to just sit down and like play this game. That is good. It's immersive, it's fun to play. It's creates interesting stories. Um, a lot of like, you know, I was there when kind of moments and yeah, it's for all of its faults, it was still an incredible experience. But then like, as time goes on, like I got to really my, my nesting partner who was who is also my wife. Uh, I got to introduce her to the game and we played since then like we played through the whole back half. And so it was, it became instead of like a substitute, it became a thing that I did with actual people. And the last clan that I ended up in was the one I made with a bunch of my local friends, some of whom were new, some of whom were old, that like, we reconnected and such. And so it was, um, I don't know, it's just been a really meaningful kind of experience. And I'm glad that they really finished it with like, the recent expansion that happened. And now they're doing like smaller things and it's going to be like kind of almost maintenance mode, but like I feel like it has run its course, like it has done the thing it needed to do. I'll dip in to see things, but I'm no longer like as tied with it. But it was still very impactful for me and very, um, like, supportive in a weird way. Like it was something that I ended up focusing on so much.

Adriana
During this time of your life, did you feel you were two different persons? You behaved at work one way, and then you would go home and you would behave totally different?

Victoria
Absolutely. And there's a there's a big part of that. So there's this concept called masking that is very relevant. I'm sure you've probably talked about it before, uh, neurodivergent people like everybody who is minoritized in some way masks. But in a perhaps interesting thing to know about pharmacy as a professional space is they train you to mask as a professional. Like part of the experience is sort of indoctrinating you into like professionalism, including making almost like a professional like persona. That you should embody while being on the on the job and the idea being that like eventually you wear the mask for so long, you forget your real face, which I think is having done existential psychology and such beforehand feels gross. But hey there, you got it. Um, so yeah, I had kind of a work-sona. That was who I was at, uh, at work. And then there was the me that was not there, and I don't I don't do that anymore. Uh, because I am now just always me and that that has led to, uh, some challenges, let's say. Um, but yeah, absolutely. That was a big part of that experience back then. Um.

Susan
Well, and I'm wondering if it's, if it's something about belonging to like, you know, if you're masking all day, but then when you're when you're in your clan's, like doing these raids, you know, having these experiences, it's like you are a part of something you like truly belonged. Not you, the professional, whatever that means. But like you, Victoria.

Victoria
Yeah. Um, well, and it's maybe even so, like the even objectives like this is gonna be. This is gonna be such a statement. There is nothing that I have done at work that was more personally meaningful than running the early raids with my clan in Destiny, and, like, teaching each other how to do stuff and figuring out these puzzles and like, you know, beating Atheon in the Vault of Glass is, like, more personally satisfying than, like, anything I've done for work that'll mean something for like a dozen people.

Susan
But But I think it's it's important to, to recognize because I feel like there are certain things that we value. Right? You're talking about capitalism and and but then these other things that can have such important personal impact, but that for, you know, many people might just blow off as like a waste of time. And I think it's really important that we adjust that narrative because something is as valuable as its impact on you and your life, not what it does or the deliverables that it has externally.

Victoria
Well, and that specifically reminds me, there's a there's a book called The Queer Art of failure that I've referenced a few times to like my admins, and I don't think they get it, but the idea being that, like a minoritized person may have different goals, may have different things that they find meaningful, and less of an incentive to fall in line with the culture of a place and like what their objectives are for the person. So this becomes a problem at work because Cause I find a lot of value in teaching and mentoring students, in designing classroom experiences, in collaborating with other schools on campus and beyond. But the pharmacy school doesn't have a framework for teaching faculty only research or clinical. Neither of which I do or have the time for as part of my job description. So any talk like I'm not actually that interested in promotion because it's just a change of title. And like I'm already making more money than I ever thought I would. But they keep saying like, well, you should work towards promotion. I'm like, why? And they can't give me a good answer. I'm not tenure or anything. I was actually told that I was not tenured material when I was hired, which was a fun, a fun thing. And so it's just like, okay, well, I'm not going to do the goals you're going to set for me because I don't find them valuable or important, and you can't provide any evidence to counteract my interpretation of them. So I'm going to keep doing what I do and get personal value from it, and make myself indispensable in a way that you will feel like you can't get rid of me in a way like, who's going to teach my class? Like, nobody can teach my class the way I do kind of thing. But it's very frustrating because I refuse to play their game, and I feel like that's related to a lot of what this is, because back then, before I came out, uh, before I finally confronted everything, I tried to play their game. I tried to, uh, care about the things that they said I should care about. I tried to to do the things that they wanted me to do, and it was just misery.

Susan
Who We Are Inside is created and hosted by Susan Graff and Adriana Modesto Gomes da Silva, in collaboration with Karthik Hariharan and John Gannan. Thanks for being here.

Music
♪ I still have stories to tell ♪ ♪ I feel ♪ ♪ I still have stories to tell ♪