FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET
Dive into the heart of the Catholic experience at Yale University with host Grace Klise, Director of Alumni Engagement at Saint Thomas More. In each episode, Grace and her student co-hosts engage in conversations with students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members. Together, they discuss the nuances of living out the Catholic faith in today's world, culminating in the question, "Where have you found God?" This podcast offers a space to explore the intersection of spirituality, community, and education, providing listeners with personal insights and meaningful perspectives. Subscribe now to join the journey of discovery and connection.
FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET
April Pruitt: Standing Where Faith and Science Meet
What happens when a bubbly and brilliant scientist lets her faith and passion for justice animate her life? Join host, Grace Klise, and student co-host, Mary Margaret Schroeder ’24, as they chat with the incredible April Pruitt, a Ph.D. student in neuroscience who is making waves in autism genetics research.
April takes us on a riveting journey from her science-loving childhood in Louisiana to conducting groundbreaking research at Yale where she proudly wears her STM shirt in the lab and marvels at the divine mysteries of brain development. For April, there is no conflict between science and faith. Tune in to hear why. Finally, April brings us with her to the US southern border, where she spent a transformative week in March 2022 as part of STM’s Alternative Spring Break trips. Hear more about the impact that trip continues to have on her.
This episode is a testament of the integration of faith, science, and community, and there’s no one better than April Pruitt to elaborate on this integration. Be prepared for this conversation to move your mind and heart.
Welcome to Finding God on Park Street, a podcast from St Thomas More, Yale's Catholic Chapel and Center. My name is Grace Klise and I'm your host, joined by Zach Moynihan as my student co-host today. Thanks for listening. There are some people who totally light up a room. April Pruitt, a PhD student in neuroscience, is one of those people. At STM, everyone knows April's infectious laugh, often heard on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, really any night of the week. STM is her home away from her other Yale home, her laboratory, where she proudly wears her STM t-shirt and marvels at the ways in which faith and science complement one another. In this episode, we talk with April about the impact of Alternative Spring Break trips, especially her visit to the US southern border in March 2022. We laugh and cry in this conversation and give thanks to God for this community of believers with whom we grow in faith and understanding. Let's dive in.
April Pruitt:My lab is right across the street, at 300 George Street.
Zach Moynihan:Well, April, we're so glad to have you here and, speaking of your lab, it's definitely a place that you spend a lot of time at. What sort of research are you conducting over there?
April Pruitt:I do research on autism genetics, so really trying to understand the genetic basis of autism spectrum disorder and understanding the functions of the genes that if you have a mutation in these genes it will increase your risk of developing autism, and so we're trying to understand the function of many of these genes.
Zach Moynihan:And how far are you in that process? It might be a sensitive question for someone who's pursuing a graduate degree, but how is that going for you?
April Pruitt:No, Zach, that is a question that you should never ask a PhD student.
Zach Moynihan:My apologies.
April Pruitt:No, I'm in my third year. I'm a rising fourth year, which is very scary to say out loud.
Grace Klise:We love hearing that, though, because we know you're here for still a few more years.
April Pruitt:I always say that I'll be at Yale forever. My degree, hopefully I'll be finishing in six years, but I feel like I've been here forever.
Grace Klise:It's hard with some of the grad students who just come in for one year or two year programs. So then, when there's a PhD student, I feel like all of the staff members say, oh, thank you, they're going to be here for a while. We don't have to lose them just as soon as they're starting to really make their mark and take on bigger leadership roles here in the community. But April, going back to when you were a little girl growing up in Louisiana, did you always dream of coming to Yale, working in a lab on the ninth floor working with zebrafish?
April Pruitt:No, absolutely not. Did not dream of being a scientific researcher as a kid. I was very much just into reading a lot of books. I still read a lot of novels, and that's what I do in my free time. But I was always into science and I started doing science things in the fourth grade, so even before the fourth grade.
April Pruitt:My siblings are much older than I am and they always did science fair projects, so I always wanted to do science fair projects with them. So I remember being in first or second grade and my sister was doing a science fair project on a tri-fold board. I wanted to do one, so I just put aluminum foil on a tri-fold board that my mom bought and wrote a title and gave a presentation on this aluminum foil and I thought that I was doing a science fair project, like my sister was, and so that was super fun. And then, when I was in the fourth grade, then I actually did start doing science fair projects and my first project was asking the question which detergent cleans best? Award-winning. I actually did win the science fair, everything. I swooped the categories, okay, and this was such a fun project because I put ketchup on little cloths and then I washed it with Tide and Gain and the off-brand from Walmart, and I'm pretty sure Tide did the best job, which was great to know, because my parents did use Tide at that time and they still do. This is not an ad for Tide, but that was the first time that I was doing an experiment semi-independently.
April Pruitt:Obviously I had my mom's help, but through doing science fair projects from fourth grade on until I graduated high school, you learn how to ask a scientific question and you learn about the scientific method, which I apply in my daily life now. But even outside of the lab, I still think about science and I think about looking at the outside world, making observations, asking questions about them and then trying to figure out how to answer those questions. And that's what I do in the lab every day. I have a main scientific question and then I use zebrafish, I use human induced pluripotent stem cells that I turn into neurons to answer these questions. But overall, I still have that same curiosity that I had as a kid.
April Pruitt:And initially, back to your question what did I want to do? I wanted to be a medical doctor. I was a biology major in undergrad and every biology major in undergrad wants to be a pre-med and so I actually started doing research in undergrad to beef up my application for med school. So I started my first year and I was doing phytoplankton ecology, which is not biomedical science at all, and it was really fun. I got into the field into the Gulf of Mexico to collect samples. But I did a summer research internship at LSU Health Sciences Center in Treeport, which is one of the medical schools there, and that's when I first worked at a neuroscience lab and that was a very transformative experience for me.
April Pruitt:I was working on an epilepsy model in mice and I was screening them for autistic behavior, behaviors. And what does that mean? How do you screen a mouse for autistic behaviors? What does that? Do mice have autism? I always get that question, even today. Do these animals have autism? The answer is no. Autism is only a human disorder. But the way that we screen them for autistic behaviors is we were looking for repetitive behaviors which are seen in humans. We were looking for deficits in social communication which you can measure in mice. You can look at how often they are interacting with each other when they're separated in a three-chamber box. You can look at how much they sniff each other. You can look at how much they lick each other. And so I was doing that all summer and I loved it.
April Pruitt:I absolutely adored the neuroscience research and I will never forget that. My advisor, Dr Glasscock, who's now at Southern Methodist University, he was like, "April, you're really good at research, you should think about this as a career. And I was like, absolutely not, I'm going to med school, this is just for funsies. But that always stuck with me and I ended up joining a research, a neuroscience research lab at my home institution and I just continued on doing that every summer and throughout the school year and by the time I was a senior in college I definitely had decided to go to grad school.
April Pruitt:So that was pretty fun. I basically went from wanting to only do med school and just do research on the side for fun to think about doing an MD-PhD. And I did a summer MD-PhD training program at UC San Diego and that was really fun. It was like doing cardiology research. I was like shadowing a transplant cardiologist and doing cardiology research, did not enjoy that, and then went back to doing neuroscience research in stem cells. That was also related to autism and by that time I definitely decided that I wanted to do neuroscience as a career.
Zach Moynihan:As someone who's in the middle of the pre-med journey myself, a lot of your story speaks to me and it's so great hearing about you trying out a lot of different things and also having a mentor figure intercede on your behalf and encourage you to follow this passion that you've done and carried to here at Yale. And it's very clear that science has had a big role in your upbringing and I'm also wondering the way in which faith has sort of complimented that upbringing and the role it's had in your formation over these past years.
April Pruitt:I love that question. I have been a Catholic since the day I was born, born and raised. Cradle Catholic, love that, and I was very involved in my home parish growing up. I was an altar server, as I still am. At SGM, I was in the choir, I was a lector, I was in the youth group doing different things in my home parish or my home diocese really. We have a Black Catholic Youth Congress that happens every year and so I did that throughout high school and I was the lead chairperson for that my senior year. I was very involved with the Catholic community.
April Pruitt:I'm always just having my faith and my mother, who is a very strong figure in my life, having her to guide me in the Catholic faith was really essential. I've never had an issue with reconciling my faith and my science journey because I feel like the science that I do is really about the human experience and I think faith is all about God and the human experience. I feel that faith has really helped me to get through a lot of the hardships that happen in science. I mean science is like 90% failure and 10% you get a good result. Feeling like God is on my side and walking with me through my journey every day is something that I cherish and that I think really helps me on the days that I feel really down.
April Pruitt:Just this morning I was in the lab. I got to the lab at 8:30 am. I went to check on my cells and all of them were dead. All of the plates had one to two colonies of cells, which is terrible. They need to be growing rapidly so I can continue to do experiments. I was showing the undergrad that works in my lab with me, I was like "this is the reality of research Things go wrong all the time.
April Pruitt:As I was running down the hall to get reagents from the freezer, I was just thinking, even though this is not something that I wanted to happen, maybe this is a sign that God is telling me to slow down and to think about what I need to do and to find the optimism in failure. I always tell my students that fail means first attempt in learning. I've had many first attempts in learning. I think that having the faith that even through the times when I'm in lab really really late at night or really early in the morning and just doing extremely long days, like Jesus with me on that journey and he's there as I'm dissecting animals, or he's there as I'm in the tissue culture room trying to rehabilitate my cells so that they'll live another day. Jesus is right there with me, helping me to move forward. It's very reassuring to have faith in God that he will be with me every single day.
Grace Klise:Something I've noticed, April, in knowing you the last couple of years, as you're often running to or from lab is the hiddenness of the work that you're doing. That it's not kind of shiny and exciting. As you said, the majority of the work will end in failures or recognizing that we have to pivot and try something else. That is so similar to the call to be a disciple of Christ, too. There's so much that is hidden from the world and failing and trying again and recognizing where we are deficient and in need of God. I had never been struck by that until you were just sharing of how many parallels there are with the call of discipleship.
April Pruitt:Yeah, I completely agree, Grace. I think that following Christ can be difficult. It's like a difficult journey. We're all on this journey to be more Christ-like and to listen to God's Word and to try to love our neighbor. That can be really difficult.
April Pruitt:Every day I see a lot of parallels in my work. My work is sometimes monotonous, sometimes repetitive. Sometimes I'm doing a really difficult protocol and it's hard to have the energy to continue to do this every single day. I feel exhausted a lot. I think, similarly, we can get into a space where we are doing so much in the day and we still have to make space for prayer and for trying to live out the Gospel. As we are in our crazy stress of the world, I think just being really busy and being in science and doing all these things and also trying to be a good disciple of Christ is difficult. Having the time and the space to thank God every single day is something that I do, even if I don't get to really sit down and pray every night, I'm just like in the morning, "Thank you, god for waking me up. I hope that I can be a good person today. I hope that I can follow Christ in the best way today, and then I just start my day.
Zach Moynihan:April, earlier, you gave a beautiful testimony about your journey, reconciling this one part of your life, these scientific pursuits, and also your faith life. Maybe reconcile isn't even the right word. Maybe it's just finding ways that those two paths complement each other. I wanted to zero in a little bit more on that question related to your specific field of study.
Zach Moynihan:I'm a neuroscience major. I think about these things a lot. I'm wondering how you tackle this question of faith in science with specific regards to neuroscience. And the way I think about it, so much of our human experience, you mentioned that our human experience is something that ties us so deeply to God, but so much of our human experience comes through the brain and our nervous system. It seems to me that the more and more we learn about neuroscience, the more it could either connect us to the wonder of God's creation or could also lead us down into a sort of scientism the way in which, if we're able to localize so many parts of the human experience to parts of the brain, where's that through line to the divine? I'm wondering how you think about these questions, as I do almost every day when I'm perusing the field of neuroscience.
April Pruitt:Super light question, extremely light.
Zach Moynihan:Yeah, soft. I just want to give you a soft one.
April Pruitt:Softy yeah, I mean, that's a really intense topic. I think I spent a lot of time thinking about it as well. I think the cool thing about science, like you mentioned, is that we're finding out new things about the brain and how the brain works and how this like three pound organ in our head kind of facilitates our entire sensory experience of the world and it facilitates our emotions and how we relate to other people. But I think that, even though we're finding out very specific things about the brain which brain region is responsible for this and how do these circuits work, there's a lot about the brain that we don't know and that I don't think we'll ever know, and I think there's something wondrous and miraculous about how all of these circuits, how all of this brain development, actually arises. And I think that's kind of where a space for the divine comes in, like when I think about brain development, which is the area that I study.
April Pruitt:So many things can go wrong and do go wrong in early brain development and this can lead to a lot of developmental delays. It can lead to a lot of problems as you're growing up, and it is wondrous how all of these transcription factors that we study, all of these growth factors that are necessary, it's wondrous how they all come together in perfect alignment to give us brain development, and I think about how it is masterful that our brain is, even like, evolved in the way that it has. What we think about our brains is like the cerebral cortex, right, this is the six layers that are all squishy and look like little squiggles when you see the drawings of the brain. That is the cortical area that gives us our humanness, right? The rest of our brain, the deeper structures of the brain, we share with a lot of other animals. It's like the cerebral cortex is kind of what makes us a little bit more human. It is wondrous how we have these intricately designed structures in the cerebral cortex of neurons that are talking to each other, from layer four to layer one, from layer four to layer five and six, all of these very tiny circuits that are absolutely necessary for how we function. It's impossible to think about that, we have 80 to 85 billion neurons that are doing this all the time in an almost perfect sequence. How that happens computationally is beyond my understanding. We have a lot of scientists who are studying this and we're making incremental steps every day that we do experiments and every paper that we publish.
April Pruitt:There's so much about the vastness of the brain structure and function and how even the matter that we have, like the actual physical substance of the brain, allows us to create art. It allows us to have consciousness, it allows us to see somebody else in pain and then feel our own pain, even though whatever is happening is not happening to you. There's a lot of space where I think the divine comes in. Sometimes I spend many hours thinking about this and it boggles my own mind. I think it's a fun space to think about and I think it's interesting to consider that God made all of this and made this wonderful organ for me to study. He was like, "You get to do this as your life's work. I think that's such a special gift. I don't ever think that we'll know everything about the brain and honestly, that would be really boring. If we did. I would also be out of a job. It would be extremely boring if we knew how the brain worked entirely. I think there's a gift in the mystery and the wonder.
Grace Klise:As you speak, April, it seems like that integration is so seamless and obvious in ways of the mystery of the brain and the mystery of our Creator, who we believe is behind all of this. Is this something that you speak about with lab mates? What is it like working in a lab as a PhD student at Yale, as a person of faith?
April Pruitt:Grace, this is a great question. I talk about the matters of faith and science a lot with my best friend, who is also a person of faith. She's Jewish. She comes to STM a lot. We talk about faith and neuroscience and working in labs and doing all of this. short answer answer is I talk about it with the people that I know would be perceptive.
April Pruitt:I would say the space of science can be a bit hostile to faith at times. Typically, a lot of scientists are not of faith and they want to only believe the evidence of what they see, like what is in the physical realm. They may not be of fait, I think still scientists can be receptive. In my lab I've definitely had a lot of conversations about faith, especially late on a Friday night when we're all still working really hard, we're all doing experiments, we're all exhausted, but we can have deeper, free-flowing conversations.
April Pruitt:I think that overall, people tend not to see how science and faith can coexist. I think through my just everyday discussions I try to elucidate that. It's never been a problem for me. It might be a problem for other people, but I really see that there are things that we can understand on the physical world and in this physical realm. Scientists can ask certain questions and can answer certain questions, and faith asks certain questions and can answer certain questions. Science can never ask the question like is God real? How would we ever test that? There's no way to actually test that. That's not something that scientists can definitively have some way to answer that question, because theologians, I don't think theologians are really asking how does this neuron talk to another neuron? I mean they could, but what tools would they use to answer that question? I think it's not impossible to have faith and science coexist and to have intellectual conversations about neuroscience and the Catholic faith or any other faith.
Grace Klise:I just think it requires a receptive ear, it requires people who want to listen and who want to engage, and you're a real witness to that, in that you don't leave that part of yourself, part of your identity as a believer, at the door of the lab. You bring that with you into everything you're doing, not just when I often see you at STM serving at Mass or going to Grad Council or at one of the social events, but you are bringing that with you into everything that you do.
April Pruitt:Yeah, everyone knows that I am Catholic. I wear my My Catholic Yale shirt pretty regularly, which is like a big statement, but I mean, even in just everyday conversation, like if it comes up, I don't shy away from talking about my faith.
Zach Moynihan:And you've been such a great witness on this campus, but especially at STM itself, and Grace just mentioned your work on the Grad Council and you mentioned being an altar server. You've also participated in some of our Alternative Spring Break trips. A lot of what STM has had to offer you've been a part of, and so I'm wondering what have been some of the most formative moments or activities in your years here at St Thomas More.
April Pruitt:I just want to start by saying how much I love STM. I think that's pretty evident, but STM has been such a beautiful and fruitful community for me and I have tried to take advantage of everything that STM has to offer because, like when I moved here, I moved during COVID and so I, like, knew no one in New Haven and that was still when everything was on Zoom. And so I remember doing Zoom happy hour with STM and making an Old Fashioned in my home with my laptop right in front of me and showing me pouring the drinks in the glass. It was just very funny. Just thinking back to COVID, it was a crazy time, but even then STM was still there to try and build community, and so I really appreciated that. I think some of my most formative experiences would probably be the Alternative Spring Break that I took to El Paso, which was last year, so not this March but the previous March, and that was such a life-giving experience.
April Pruitt:We went to the border and met with a variety of different people there. We talked to a lawyer who was educating us on immigration law, which I knew nothing about. We talked to actual migrants who were coming in. When we volunteered at a migrant shelter, we talked to this guy who was a representative for migrant laborers and we went to like this building that provided resources for migrants who would come over during the day and work in fields like picking chili peppers. We talked to two wonderful people who were hosting us, who had been living in El Paso for many years, and talked to them about all the work that they are doing. We went into the community and talked to this very elderly woman about how she was the only person left in her neighborhood. Everyone else had moved out. Everyone else had moved out primarily because the city was kind of kicking them out to develop their neighborhood into something else, and she was the last person there. We discussed women and their rights as laborers and how women here in El Paso and across the border in Juarez, what are their working conditions like. It was just a very prayerful time, a very eye-opening time. We talked to border patrol agents and discussed what is their actual job and a lot of what they have to experience and what they go through and their relationship to migrants who are coming into the US. That experience is definitely one that I keep on my heart all the time. I still think about it today and pretty regularly, at least once to twice per week. I would say that that was probably the most formative experience, just going there and learning so much and being so engaged with the community there and talking to migrants who are at the shelter.
April Pruitt:I don't speak Spanish. That is a fault of mine and everyone speaks Spanish except me. While I was there, I was working in one of the areas where the migrants will come in and they have almost nothing. They have whatever is in a plastic bag: their phones, maybe their passport, maybe a few bills of money. They have the clothes that they were in in the ICE facility, which is typically blue sweatpants and a blue shirt or sweatshirt. So they don't even have the clothes that they came in with. They have almost nothing. When they come to the shelter, I was in this room where I was giving them toothpaste and shaving cream and diapers and formula. I just remember, especially a few people who it came in. They have bracelets on their hands that ICE gave them. Sorry, I didn't think.
April Pruitt:So they had bracelets that ICE had given them, because when you get processed by ICE, you basically just become a number instead of a person, and one of the things that I was able to do for them was to cut off that bracelet, which was really powerful. And so, yeah, like working in that space just like for a day, was like very much eye-opening for me. And then, yeah, I just got to like play with a lot of the kids that were there and that was really fun and helping them to like find clothes and find shoes. Like there's so much that I like have thought about with the immigration experience, but I hadn't really seen it firsthand ever until that trip, and so it was like extremely worthwhile to go on that trip just to be able to like feel the human experience of someone else who has, you know, a very different lifestyle than I have.
April Pruitt:Like I'm at Yale extremely privileged, extremely, extremely privileged to be here, but to go out and be with the people of God, just as, like Pope Francis says, to go out into the margins and interact with them and like be a field hospital, which is, like you know, I was only there for a day, so I'm not trying to get myself like any credit, like zero credit, but to go out there and be a field hospital and to just like provide aid for a day and like just talk to people.
April Pruitt:I feel like I got a lot out of it and I don't know, maybe that was the point of the trip, so to like change my heart and maybe you know the migrants that were there, like we helped them out for one day to give them clothing and their toiletries and the necessities that they need. But I definitely felt transformed from that experience and I can see how Pope Francis is like saying that we need to go out and be with other people, be with people who are different than us, and truly like live out the Gospel. Like what would Jesus do in this instance, like if he sees a lot of people who need help, and what would Jesus do? Obviously he would go out to the people and serve them, and I think that was just like an experience that helped me to see how to be more Christ-like and I wouldn't trade that experience for the world.
Grace Klise:I loved that day at the migrant center and just talking to these families who had traveled from all over, not just Central America, but there were families and migrants there from other parts of the world too, who had just come through our southern border and were seeking asylum.
Grace Klise:One of my other favorite experiences was when we went out to the mountain to do the Stations of the Cross up the mountain and I remember thinking that this is the way of the cross, we'd see clothes discarded because migrants often cross through that desert area, and thinking of the holy family and their flight to Egypt. So it was an incredibly powerful trip that sometimes those trips, it can be hard to integrate what we saw and experienced and what was disrupted within us. When we fall quickly back into regular life here at Yale and in New Haven. It is harder because the headlines I read a little differently now and we also have a really amazing abundant immigrant community here in New Haven. And there's work that continues to be done, but STM is involved in our refugee work and work with IRIS. It's an opportunity to have our hearts disrupted in ways that are uncomfortable and permanent if we let it be.
April Pruitt:Yeah, absolutely. Again, it is definitely transformative if you are receptive to it, and I think that the students that decide to go on Alternative Spring Break are generally changed by the experience. And, yeah, I just hope that any other students that might be listening to this, I want to encourage them to seek out those experiences, just because it might be a completely new environment. You might feel really uncomfortable, but it's okay to live in the uncomfortable space. It's okay to not have all the answers or have your expectations be completely disrupted, and I think that brings us closer to God.
April Pruitt:Yeah, I just think about again going to the margins, hearing Pope Francis say that we should accompany people. We should be there to accompany people and we should be there to be facilitators of help, and whether it's like actually physically going out there to the border or anywhere else, or whether you're in the New Haven community and you are finding a family that might be coming, finding an immigrant family, and just talking to their kids or tutoring their kids or helping them out, or if they need to go to the grocery store and you have a vehicle, take them to the grocery store, just going to our brothers and sisters who are marginalized and accompanying them on their journey. I think is one of the tangible things that you can take from these Alternative Spring Break trips or any type of transformative experience that we have at STM or elsewhere. I think these are tangible, realistic things that we can bring to the community. The trips are also just really fun, they are.
Grace Klise:It's so much fun on that trip. There's a lot of singing and dancing.
Zach Moynihan:I would also like to jump in and plug for the Alternative Spring Break trips. They were amazing. I went on one this year to Navajo Nation. It was definitely transformative and, in your words, April, life- giving. One of the most fun parts of the trip was getting to know members of the STM community that I'd seen around STM but I didn't really know too well, and participating in that trip allowed me to get to know them in a new way. It's been those relationships that I've formed over the past few years at STM that have been so powerful and so transformative for me. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit more about those sub-communities that you've found at STM. I understand that you're a part of Grad Women Spirituality. That's been a very important part of your experience here at STM. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about that experience.
April Pruitt:Yeah, absolutely. I am a part of Grad Women Spirituality, which we have a wonderful group chat that we call Grad Women of God, that I hear is now being called Catholic Spice Girls.
April Pruitt:The unofficial name of the group, Catholic Spice Girls, and Grad Women Spirituality is such a wonderful group. There's at least like 10 or 12 of us and we meet once a month on Monday nights to read books and discuss kind of just whatever is going on in our lives. Last semester we were reading a book about Mary and like the different faces of Mary, the different versions of Mary. Mary as like the sorrowful mother when Jesus at the cross, Mary as a young mother with a family and how she's keeping the family together, all that. There's like really many different faces to Mary. And all of our discussions generally start off with the book and then veer off into how are we dealing with things in our own lives and what type of relationships are we having with, either our romantic relationships or our friendships or relationship with your advisor and how your work is going and if you want to complain about that, it's an open and free space and that group of women is absolutely wonderful. We still text and we'll go to Mass together or hikes. There was a few people in Grad Women who were at the School of Music and so we would let go to their musical recitals. It's a really strong community of people who are willing to come together to talk about God and also talk about everything else under the sun that is going on in life, and so I am eternally grateful for Grad Women. Another group that I'm in is Grad Council, which is hilarious. We always have really fun meetings on Sundays to plan out our events and make jokes. Honestly, a lot of it is making jokes and eating food and then planning events for STM and praying. That's like all the things that go on at Grad Council. Grad Council is a great group of people because we are coming from different areas of graduate school, so there's law students, there's PhD students, me primarily being the only one in science, but PhD students from English and other humanities areas. There's people from YDS, of course, so we have just grad students from across the entire university, from different schools, and so it's great to get their perspective. I love Grad Council, love Grad Council. It's so wonderful.
April Pruitt:There's also Women Reading Theology, which I'm a part of, and that is primarily middle-a ged women from STM in the community, and middle-a ged women are my favorite demographic because they are so wise and they have their lives together. I feel like I learned just how to be a better woman from them in that group; it's also mostly food and joking around and then talking about books. But we read a really fantastic book by Shannon D Williams about Black Catholic sisters and I just had really engaging discussions on the state of the Church in the past and how it has changed and racism in the Church and what have sisters done, what have congregations done in the past and how are they reconciling with this pretty difficult Church history and so just really engaging thoughtful conversations. We also met Sister Helen Prejean when she came last semester and had dinner with her and we were all just kind of fangirling over Sister Helen.
April Pruitt:The Women Reading Theology group is just a different vibe than the grad-s tudent-only groups. It seems like we just have super rich conversations that you can only get from having an intergenerational group of women there. So I really appreciate that group as well.
Grace Klise:As we're wrapping up here, April, I just want to acknowledge that you are recently married too, so this next chapter of your life in New Haven now married, too, stepping into this vocation. How has that been, and what are you excited about in this next chapter?
April Pruitt:It's been great. Yeah, being a newlywed is fun. It's nice to have a partner to do life with. At my wedding, the priest, who is a family friend of ours, was saying what's the most important thing, and my husband was like "God and the priest was like love, which I think God is love, so both are correct answers. But yeah, keeping the love of God and love of spouse both at the forefront is super helpful, and even when he sleeps with the TV on, that's fine. It's something you learn to love.
April Pruitt:And I think, as far as my vocation as both a scientist and a married person, I think that it is really nice and helpful to have a partner who is very supportive. And being a scientist is kind of grueling at times, because I was in the lab until like 1 AM a few days ago. I got there like 10:30 PM and left at like 1 AM, because I have a lot of things to do and sometimes I have to go back in and I get home really late, and so it's nice to have someone who is supportive and understands. And I think just in this next chapter of my life there's like uncertainty of where we will go afterwards. The PhD is only for six years only. But then I think my next steps are going to be like to do a postdoctoral fellowship, which will be in a new city, new state potentially, and it can be anywhere from like two years to like another four years or something on a new project, like there's so much change.
April Pruitt:But I think having a husband is like a point of constancy and it's really nice to have someone who I can lean on and who I can complain to, but also like share the highs and like the joys of everything in life, like being in the lab, being outside the lab, going to see shows in New York, I love going to see Broadway shows, so we have gone to see shows together and like sharing his interests as well and taking time to relax. He always tells me to take time to relax, which I have a difficulty doing. As you may have noticed, I have difficulty relaxing and I think it's a good balance to have someone to be like yeah, you need to stay home and like maybe not do anything this weekend, so it's good.
Grace Klise:That's a good reminder for all of us here at Yale. I think we all could use more time resting, taking a deep breath, taking a pause, absolutely. Well, we're excited to see Cam around STM in the future, and so our final question that we ask all guests, do you want to do the honors, Zach?
Zach Moynihan:Well, thank you, Grace. Last question to round us out, and it's been so nice to have you here on the podcast, April. Our last question is where have you been finding God recently?
April Pruitt:Oh man, what a good question, and you guys prepared me for this and I still didn't come up with a solid answer. I was going back and forth between answers. You know, I think my go-to, which I still am experiencing this, whenever I take walks and I'm like very silent and very quiet, is where I feel God the most. And so, even though I've been ripping and running a lot, like even just walking between labs one of my labs, like I said, is across the street, at 300 George Street, and the other is at Sterling Hall of Medicine, so it's just like a five, 10 minute walk between labs. In those moments I'm like trying to be extremely quiet, I'm trying not to think that much, I'm trying to just like silent my mind and have like a moment to myself, and that is where I feel God a lot.
April Pruitt:I went on retreat at the beginning of last year and one of the placards at the retreat center said that silence is the language of God and I've always kept that with me. So I try to like make time for these little silent moments. Also, like when I wake up in the morning it's very quiet and so I like feel God there too. But I think, especially when I'm just like walking and trying intentionally to be silent, is where I feel God, and so I try. I mean, I walk back and forth from my labs every single day, so luckily I have like at least, you know, like five solid minutes of quiet where I can like try to listen to God's voice, and so I think that is the answer I will go with.
Grace Klise:Great answer. Thank you, April, thanks Zach, and thank you everyone for listening to Finding God on Park Street. If you enjoyed listening today, please share this episode and leave us a rating and review. The producer of this podcast is Robin McShane, director of communications at STM. Sound mixing and editing are by Ryan McAvoy of Yale Broadcast Studio and graphics are by Mary Lou Cadwell of Cadwell Art Direction. We hope this podcast encourages you to seek God's presence in your everyday life. Thanks for listening and be assured of our prayers.
