This is what a scientist looks like!

When I was in 4th grade, my classmates and I each had to create a biographical book about our past and make goals for our future. One page in our books prompted, "When I am 25..." and left some space for a drawing.

I wrote, "When I am 25, I will be a successful scientist." I drew myself with chin-length blonde hair (which I currently have), wearing glasses (which I sometimes wear), donning a white lab coat (occasionally) and holding a test tube with fizzy green liquid contents (eh...). A speech bubble emanates from my smiling mouth and declares, "I have discovered a substance!" (which, let's face it, I'll probably never say).

We are driven by this stereotype of the "mad scientist," usually an older white man with too little hair, or too much hair in all the wrong places, examining something small in a test tube/Petri dish/microscope, pen in breastpocket and goggles nearby. The Scientist is "smart," "nerdy," and "boring." And, obviously, they work in a starch-white lab. This is a screenshot I took of the first page when I Google Image-searched "scientist":

That's what makes the new This Is What a Scientist Looks Like project is so exciting, and my post is up today! Scroll through the site, and within seconds you'll see tattooed, pink-haired, adventure-seeking, normal-looking people; parents, grad students, professors; sporting anything from pipettes to dead fish; from the bench to the field, mountaintop to the Arctic.

Scientists look—and are—just like everybody else. I suggest you all check out the site and, if you're also lucky enough to call yourself a "scientist," submit your own entry!