Sophia Spencer has never been able to hide her love for bugs. She loves to talk about them, to learn about them, and she even loves to give grasshoppers piggyback rides. In fact, Sophia loves bugs so much, that the eight-year-old has now co-authored a scientific paper in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America.
Sophia had quite a journey from bug loving kiddo to scientific co-author. For Sophia, as with many kids who are different in some way, loving bugs so much also meant being teased by the other kids at school, and often, the other kids trying to make her feel bad or weird for being so interested in something that most of them don’t understand. Sophia’s mom, Nicole, hated seeing her daughter mocked for having found her passion so early in life, and reached out to the scientific community of entomologists for support last year.
A young girl who loves insects is being bullied & needs our support. DM your email & we’ll connect you! #BugsR4Girls pic.twitter.com/kjtfSJSlre
— Ent Soc of Canada (@CanEntomologist) August 25, 2016
Nicole herself is no bug expert, and she also wanted to learn more about the different kinds of jobs she could encourage Sophia to be interested in as a bug lover, in addition to ensuring young Sophia didn’t feel weird or alone in her interests. The organization Nicole reached out to, the Entomological Society of Canada, heard the appeal and ran with it. They tweeted out an abridged version of Nicole’s requests, alongside the hashtag #bugsR4girls, leading hundreds of individuals to respond and encourage Sophia.’
The author of that tweet, Morgan Jackson, decided he wanted to work directly with Sophia for a personal project that fits right in with the situation, a peer-reviewed paper on the role Twitter can serve in promoting women in science. In her portion of the paper, Sophia wrote, “After my mom sent the message and showed me all the responses, I was happy. I felt like I was famous. Because I was! It felt good to have so many people support me, and it was cool to see other girls and grown-ups studying bugs. It made me feel like I could do it too, and I definitely, definitely, definitely want to study bugs when I grow up, probably grasshoppers.”
The internet reaction to this story has been so great, that Sophia and Morgan have now appeared on NPR together, as well as countless news stories. Morgans said on the radio program that he was blown away by the Twitter response, which garnered a thousand replies and more than 130 direct messages. Morgan said, “I learned that a lot of my colleagues are really compassionate people, but I also learned that a lot of people maybe can see themselves in Sophie a little bit and are taking this chance to … kind of reach into their own past and provide a little bit of compassion and help that they wish maybe they had.”
Becoming a published author in her trade has also helped Sophia’s classmates respect her more, with them now asking her to help teach them about buts, instead of teasing her for her love of them. Sophia, for her part, says she is helping to teach her classmates to be kinder to bugs and to handle them in a way that won’t hurt them. Sophia left the NPR listeners with her parting thought, “I see myself growing up to become an entomologist. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, but the more hard work you do, the better the thing you’re working for is.”
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Source: NPR
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