“What?!  You want to interview me for a podcast about fashion?” I said on the phone, incredulously.  
I continued, “Before I say you are crazy, maybe what you mean is that you want me to talk about the environmental impact of the fashion industry?”  (This is something that I have written about in one of my most popular research papers, so that would make total sense.)  “No,” said Misha Kaura, the fashion designer, and podcaster who was calling me on the phone.  “I want to interview you about the role of fashion in your professional life.”
Until that moment, I had not consciously thought that fashion played much of a role in my career.  Sure, I like to look nice and presentable, but that is a long leap from being fashiony.  
Misha’s invitation made me think.  Hmm…  I guess fashion does play quite a role in my professional life.  I did mention in my TED Talk that when I present about environmental health to girls, they also ask me about my clothes, shoes, or hair.  This can get annoying, until you think about it from their perspective.  I don't fit the media image of a scientist, so the girls are curious.  
For the podcast, Misha asked me to talk about my career path and when fashion entered my consciousness.  So I had to recall that my biggest role models were my aunts.  You see, I grew up in the mountainous countryside on the island of Puerto Rico.  My aunts were all professional women, 6 of them were secretaries.  That they had these glamorous jobs was pretty rare at that time.  And I wanted to grow up to look like them.
I remember that my aunts would walk down our unpaved road with their work shoes in hand.  When they got to the bottom of the mountain where the paved road started, they would wash their feet and put their heels on to go to work in the nice offices in the city.   To me, that was what a professional woman did.  
Now that I am an environmental health scientist, some people have the idea that I work with trees and forests and wildlife. But in fact, I work in an office and lab in a big hospital in Manhattan.   
Passion for fashion is important to me because many people think that a woman scientist doesn't really care about fashion.  Why would we, right?  We tend to wear lab coats and anyway, a woman who is brainy can’t possibly care much about her appearance.  That's if you believe the media.
For me, the concept of fashion is aspirational and also inspirational.   Aspirational because being a non-traditional female underrepresented minority scientist, I needed to break those stereotypes to be taken seriously.  Therefore, I started dressing more like who I wanted to be, a professional.  Like my aunts.  Carrying my high heel shoes in my hand until I get to the paved road. Literally and figuratively.  
Inspirational because, as I said in my TED Talk, when I talk to my students, especially young women and girls, it's really important to them to see somebody they would want to emulate. Now that I have a 12-year-old daughter I see more clearly how important this is to them.  I want to say to girls and young women: "you can dress and look anyway you want and still be a kick-ass scientist.  If you don’t fit the stereotypes, so be it."
I personally don’t have a lot of clothes, but what I do have I like. Last year, I joined the No New Clothes for a Year pledge.  I made the year,  buying only a pair of walking shoes and underwear, but cheated by having my friend, Martina Dietrich make me a dress for my TED Talk.  I got the jewelry from my friend Jane Diaz.  
So in the podcast I said that fashion style is not about having a ton of clothes or being trendy.  It comes with getting to know yourself and being able to reflect that knowledge in your own style.   Style comes from being able to wear clothes that make you feel in control, whether those clothes are the kind you see on the runways or the byways. 
Yes, being a woman scientist has the advantage of forcing people to see your brain power rather than only being measured by superficialities. That must allow for all styles to be represented.  Once I was wearing a classic Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress at work, when a colleague sarcastically asked me "are you coming to the seminar or to a cocktail party".  In fact, I was going to both!
Fashion style is about wearing and looking like who we are and who we  want to be.
Listen to the podcast here: https://passionforfashionwithmishakaura.simplecast.com/episodes/misha-kaura-interviews-dr-luz-claudio-ArYr0Fco

Since graduate programs are very focused on a specific subject, they are best for students who are pretty certain of what discipline interests them most.
For an article published in US News and World Report, Ilana Kowarski asked several experts in higher education to explain what is graduate school. Students must weigh the decision to pursue graduate education very carefully and this article is intended to help in that regard.
One common misconception about graduate school is that it is similar to college, but higher education experts say that graduate courses tend to involve more self-directed learning than courses at the undergraduate level.
"Too often, college students or people who only have had a college experience somehow think that graduate school is going to be more of the same, and it's not," says Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University in California. "It's going to look very different. So students might be tired of sitting in small plastic seats in large lecture halls and listening to professors drone on and then taking tests and things like that, and they don't realize that often graduate school is not that way at all."
Plante says graduate courses tend to involve small classes as opposed to large lectures, and he notes that grad students are typically engaged in academic research outside of the classroom.
In addition to Dr. Plante's comment, I was quoted as follows:
 "Luz Claudio, a tenured professor with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, says graduate school typically requires an abundance of motivation and personal accountability, since students are frequently asked to work independently.
"I tell college students that one of the keys to success in graduate school is self-discipline," Claudio wrote in an email. "There's generally no 'homework,' quizzes and few exams. Students need to learn how to learn class materials without such close guidance from a teacher. However, most graduate programs have a long-term project that students must complete, such as a research paper. These require a different kind of relationship with a teacher. For these, the teacher becomes more like a mentor and the student is more like an apprentice."
To read more, go to US News & World Report.

Do you have a friend who once did a frog dissection and now acts as if they were a surgeon?  Well, I don't want to be like that friend.
I have done one TED Talk.  Therefore, I am no expert.  I am still learning and exploring how I can incorporate that experience into other parts of my professional life.  But  since this is what you asked in the FAQs, then I will tell you the things I learned that helped me.  Hope that they may help you next time you have to give a scary talk:

• Prepare, then prepare some more: Nothing calms the nerves like being prepared.  Study, rehearse, record yourself.  Try it in front of friends and family.  I once recited my Talk to my poor friend Lucia while we waited to be seated at a restaurant.  I'd say, if someone is willing to sit through it, they are fair game for having to listen to my Talk.  It is important to try your Talk with different people.  I rehearsed my Talk with my group of residents several times.  Although the feedback was valuable, the reactions were no longer genuine.  You really need new people to rehearse with in order to know whether jokes, meaning, tone, will work with a new audience.  
• Think about how much time it will take you to prepare the TED Talk, then double it: The TED Residency program requires near total commitment for 4 months.  And you will need every minute of that time, if you are not experienced.  Since I continued my work at my job during that time, I ended up working 12 hours a day, seven days a week from September to December.  Other residents had a more sane schedule, but none worked less hard than me.  
• At one point, you just have to let go: One of the difficult things about giving such a short talk is that every word is important.  So every word has to earn its place on the Talk. After every sentence, I would ask my self: "Is this what I really mean?".  But there comes a point when the Talk is done.  You must give yourself a deadline and stop editing.  Accept that it is what it is.  Now it is time to memorize. 
• Memorize?:  Yes.  Memorize.  I am often asked whether there were teleprompters.  The answer is NO.  Almost every speaker memorized their Talks.  I used a modification of the Memory Palace technique,but others used repetition, or writing it long-hand.  Either way, it is a scary and for some, an impossible task.  But I tell you, it can be done, with practice.  I was lucky to have had two occasions during which I had to give 5-minute speeches in the weeks before the TED Talk.  I did not have to give memorized speeches on those occasions, but used the opportunities to practice and modify the Memory Palace technique to use in the TED Talk.  Not only did it work, but I am amazed at how long the memory has stayed.  I think I could still give the TED Talk without notes all these months later.  
• Balance memorization with improvisation: The Talk that I gave on the TED stage was 90% what I had memorized.  The other 10% came to me in reaction to the audience. As I was speaking, I realized that one section needed more explanation, so I winged it and added a couple of sentences.  I feel that I was able to do that because I was very present and in the moment, and because I had studied very hard for this.  Can you spot where I went improv in the Talk? 
• Do YOU: In preparation for the Talk, I watched dozens of Talks. Some of my favorites. Some of the most popular.  Some of the most informative.  Some about topics similar to mine...  I tried some of the classic TEDTalkish approaches: The enumeration ("Three things that I learned"), The epiphany ("And suddenly..."), the dreamer ("Imagine a world..."), and the dramatic ("If we don't do this now, the world as we know it will end").  None of these strategies worked for my first TED Talk.  I just wanted to tell my story.  Maybe next time I will do a TED Talk that is more of the classic stereotype.  But for now, I just wanted people to get to know me and my work.
• Speak slowly: It is so counter-intuitive, but when we have a very short time to give a talk, we try to cram it all in by speaking faster and watching the clock.  This is such as big mistake!  By speaking slowly, I was able to connect with the audience and think through the Talk instead of going full blast autopilot. Speaking slowly I was able to feel what I was saying and feel comfortable being more me.  So I wrote a 5 minute talk and allowed for a bit of stretch and pauses to get to the 6-7 minute mark required.  

There are books and books about how to give Talks.  Hey, Chris Anderson, TED's founder himself published a book about this, and there's numerous other copycats.  If you would have asked me "what I would have done differently about my TED Talk?", I could have filled pages.  But thank you for asking me about what I learned.  That was a much better question.

You know that warm and fuzzy feeling that you get when walking on a lovely beach at sunset? 
Giving a TED Talk was NOT like that.
Giving a TED Talk was more like riding a roller coaster, when you are not a roller-coaster- type-of-person.  It was the longest 6:54 minutes of my life.  I felt every emotion: fear, excitement, despair, focus, distraction, nausea... then, just like riding a roller coaster, as soon as it was over, I wanted to do it all again.  
To answer your second most frequently asked question (FAQ), here are some of the salient points of this experience:

• It was not a competition: Everyone in the TED Residency wanted each other to do their best.  Especially since everyone was speaking about vastly different topics, we all shared our best tips and genuinely cheered each other on.  It was more like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood than Survivor.  The lesson from this: When other people do well, it doesn't take away from your own Talk.  Everyone can do well without there being a ranking of who's the best.
• Intense bonding experience: Like getting stuck in an elevator with 4 strangers for hours, going through a hard experience with other people creates an intense bond within the group. I can honestly say that I consider many of the people in the group friends-for-life, even though our experiences may be so different outside of TED.  I have seen this happen with many people in the group.  Some have hired TED classmates to work at their startups.  Others have hosted them at their homes.  Although everyone is really busy, we are meeting once a month as a group.  I am excited to hear about everyone's successes every time we get together.
• More storytelling, less elevator pitch: I never thought of the story of my research as compelling or interesting but only to my closest friends, if to anyone.  My Talks have always been about the facts and the data.  Through this experience I came to understand that my story IS part of the research.  Talking about it is part of the reporting, but it was hard not to feel indulgent for telling this story.  I had to get over this feeling if I was going to be an effective storyteller for this Talk.  That was probably one of the hardest things to do.
• Clarity was key: I have many topics that I could have talked about for TED. After all, I have been a scientist for many years, but I am also a Mom, an underrepresented minority, a writer, etc.  The hardest part was to become clear about what my intention was with this Talk.  My intention was not to sell an idea for a start-up or a book.  My intention was to get you to know me in my most authentic self.  My TED Talk is a calling card.  Once I decided that intention, everything fell into place.
• Once it's done, it's done: I could easily spend sleepless nights second-guessing my choices in the Talk.  I cringe about my hand movements, my messy hair, and even whether I could have looked better, sounded better, been more X... There are a million things that I can see I could have done differently.  But unless I see this as a learning experience, those thoughts could drive me mad.  This TED Talk is done.  It's out there for you to see.  I learned a lot, now I will move on to the next thing.
• Everyone wants you to do well, really: I felt that everyone; my fellow TED Talkers, the Residency directors, people in the audience, everyone wanted us to do well.  While I was giving the Talk, I felt like dying at minute 3:42.  What helped me get through it was to "know" that people didn't want me to fail.  It helped me to focus on that one person who was looking straight at me, hanging on my every word. Or at least, I imagined that is what they were doing.  It helped.  

So, to answer your question, I can tell you that at some times, doing the TED Talk felt like torture.  I asked myself more than once "why did I need to put myself through this?!"  And then, like a roller coaster, with hands shaking, I wanted to do it all again.