Claire Duvallet

Claire Duvallet

STEM equity @ Science for America | formerly: data science @ Biobot Analytics, PhD @ MIT, Luce Scholar in Cambodia | public health data, microbiome, personalized medicine | gender and racial equity in STEM | she/hers

On solitude

2 minute read

Published:

I’ve been spending a lot of time alone on this road trip. Both on this trip and over the past few years, I’ve been thinking a lot about solitude, specifically with respect to not having a romantic partner. I’ve been surprised with what I’ve learned recently. In my mind, there’s four different flavors of being alone:

  1. Being alone, being not okay with it, and wishing you were with someone else. This is basically every high school girl who hasn’t been kissed yet, and also very much what society tells us every high school girl who hasn’t been kissed yet should be. In fact, this is the plot of the movie Never Been Kissed. Also, as awesome as the movie is, it’s the plot of Miss Congeniality. Or probably any rom com that you love.

  2. Being with someone else, and therefore satisfied and happy, but underneath it actually not being okay with being alone. I imagine this is many, if not most, people who are in generic relationships. (Yes, I’m judgmental. But it’s because I have “unreasonably” high standards for partnership.)

  3. Being alone and totally satisfied. This is what I’ve been working very hard to achieve for the past year or two, and what I was expecting to really solidify through this road trip. I do feel that I confirmed this level on the first part of my road trip, most notably drinking a beer and watching the sunset at Big Bend after having said no to hanging out with a fellow traveller. Also, deep and satisfying friendships are key to unlocking this level.

  4. Being with someone, and also totally satisfied alone. This is the surprise one, both because I didn’t realize it was possible and also because I didn’t expect to be with someone (in general or on this road trip). I’ve found myself truly deeply and fully enjoying the moments I’ve had and the things I’ve seen by myself on this trip, and also I’ve really missed the person I’m with – independently. I used to think that if you really liked someone and they weren’t with you on a trip, everything you saw or experienced would be colored with the thought of “I wish they were here.” What I didn’t realize was that it’s possible to divorce their not being there with my experience of the thing. One doesn’t have to color the other. Cool. :)

You May Also Enjoy

Thank you for 18 years of DVDs, Netflix

Soon, Netflix will be canceling its DVD-by-mail program, the original service that helped Netflix crush Blockbuster and got us used to watching movies on-demand from the comfort of our homes before streaming was a thing. Perhaps not coincidentally, my dad cancelled my family’s subscription to the DVD service this winter. As my brother wisely put it upon hearing my dad’s news, “Netflix can finally stop buying physical DVDs now that their last customer cancelled!” ... Read more

Early startup employee lessons learned, part 4: adapting to your changing role

In Part 3 of this series, I wrote about strategies to build a team with a positive organizational culture. That post was about the team; this post is about you: as an early employee, how does your role change with the changing company and how can you gracefully ride that wave? When I joined my company as the fifth person, I knew that if all went well and our company succeeded, I’d have a very interesting path within the organization. What I didn’t know was any of the details of what that meant, and importantly what skills I’d need to gracefully walk that path. This post is about the things I’ve learned over the past two years as we’ve grown from 5 to 100 employees, and as my role has undergone countless transformations in the process of growing our team and responding to the company’s needs. ... Read more

Early startup employee lessons learned, part 3: building culture

A core function of being an early employee at a rapidly growing startup is helping it grow! At my current job, I’ve helped the data science team grow from being just one person doing a little bit of everything (me!) to a team of over 15 people working in three focused sub-teams. Growing the data science team has been one of the best parts of my hyper-growth experience, and I’ve learned a lot of really useful lessons from it. ... Read more

The Boston morning commute time warp

Like many young adults our age, my partner and I did the classic pandemic move of fleeing the city and moving in with his parents. That’s how I discovered I actually really enjoy living in rural New Hampshire, and last December we officially moved in to our own place in southern New Hampshire. ... Read more