Two men confronted Sean Bearden outside a gas station one night in July 2004. When one of them punched him in the face, Bearden shot the man. Bearden was arrested, pleaded guilty to attempted assault, and at age 19 went to prison. He served six and a half years in New York State correctional facilities.
Today Bearden is working on his PhD in physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He expects to graduate this fall. Bearden told his story live in Honolulu in November 2019 for the Story Collider podcast. He speaks out publicly because, he says, “I imagine employers will Google me. I want to control my narrative.” (See also the story on teaching STEM in prisons in the May issue of Physics Today, page 27.)
Bearden grew up in Buffalo, New York. His parents are college educated, and an uncle has a PhD. “I had everything I needed to be successful,” he says. “But I just never cared about school.” He dropped out of high school and got his equivalency diploma. “Acquiescing to authority never sat well with me,” he says. “Even today, I have a PhD adviser I can push back on and I’m not a threat to his ego. There are no authority games. That’s what I need.”
PT: Given that you never liked school, why did you start studying while you were in prison?
BEARDEN: I got into reading in prison. I read The Da Vinci Code, and that led to reading a lot of conspiracy books. As I got bored with the conspiracy stuff, I craved knowledge of everything. I started reading books by science writers and skeptics like Michael Shermer. As I read more popular accounts of science, I realized I wanted to know more, and for that I would have to read textbooks.
But I was stuck on the idea that if I open a textbook, I want credit. It was immature. But I knew plenty of people who bettered themselves in prison, yet on paper they looked the same when they came out as when they went in.
Family members suggested I should think about college, but it didn’t resonate with me. If someone tries to manipulate me, I shut down. But my mother knows how to influence me. She guides me to my own decision. Once when she visited me in prison, I told her I wanted to learn more. The college programs popular among inmates were cheap, but they were not accredited; coupled with a felony, it was not impressive.
My mom did some research and told me about Ohio University’s Independent and Distance Learning program. You could get the same degree by correspondence as in person. Once she got me a course catalog, I was sold. They had courses in psychology, criminal justice, calculus, differential equations. It was not cheap. The only reason I got my associate’s degree in prison is because I had a family that could pay. I think it was about $1000 per course.
PT: What was studying in prison like?
BEARDEN: My first courses were in sociology and American government. They led me to work on my study skills, which really helped me. I struggled with all those essays, and I put in a lot of effort. I didn’t have access to computers, so it was all by mail.
The correspondence classes were not divided by semester. I liked the binge learning. I did the first course of the calculus sequence in three weeks. People were impressed, and I finally started to realize that maybe I could do something with my time in prison. This was in 2008 or 2009, past the halfway point of my sentence.
My story is not typical of incarcerated people. I had family and friends present. Once you have someone outside who can advocate for you, it’s different. For example, for some class I was supposed to have a scientific calculator. I was told I couldn’t have one in my possession. My mom advocated for me from outside, and the prison’s head of education worked things out so I could use my scientific calculator in the library.
But I didn’t have the freedom to go to the library as I pleased. I was allowed to possess a basic calculator, so I used that with log and trig tables. I memorized many digits of pi and e so I could input them into the calculator quickly. That made it easier to work all through the day, especially at night when things were quiet.
PT: How did you get into physics?
BEARDEN: I knew I was gifted in math, but I thought no one would pay me to do math. Because of all my reading, I knew you could apply math in many areas of science. I knew the stereotype that physics is hard, and I guess I wanted a challenge. I thought, “I have nothing but time, and a degree in physics is worth something.” I was aware of the stigma that I was going to walk out of prison with, and how hard it is to get a job. Plenty of people come back in, because the only way they can make money is through drugs. I knew that with a violent crime on my record I would be wearing a scarlet letter. I would have to convince people that I had moved on.
PT: How did you get your physics bachelor’s degree?
BEARDEN: I was scheduled to walk out of prison in July 2011, and I wanted to start classes at the University at Buffalo in September. I thought it would be easy to set all of this up before I was released. The university required a letter from my parole officer. But when I went to the division of parole in the prison to ask for a letter, I was told this was impossible, as you can only have a parole officer once you are paroled. The prison was not supportive of my education beyond what they were required to do to maintain the appearance of a correctional facility.
Once I was released, my parole officer wouldn’t give me the letter. He said, “If you hurt one of those kids at the university, they will blame me.” I had no way to appeal. It was a big letdown. I was told to get a job and stay out of trouble, and then the parole officer would reevaluate. Getting a job as a felon is never easy. My mom talked to someone who said they could get me a job doing collections of delinquent debt. My parole officer said it was a dirty game, and he wouldn’t normally let me if it weren’t for the recession.
I was grateful for the opportunity, although I hated sitting at a desk all day. I used to go out with the smokers to play Hacky Sack. Eventually I realized that virtually everyone there had a felony record.
We were the third or fourth person to go after someone’s debt on payday loans. I was not good at it, because I didn’t want to do anything illegal. I stayed out of trouble, and I did not violate my parole. Eventually my parole officer wrote me a letter. I started at the University at Buffalo in the spring semester of 2012. I did a double major in math and physics.
PT: What was it like to be in school? Did people know about your parole status?
BEARDEN: Most people did not know; I didn’t want them to treat me differently or to manipulate me. One student had a grudge against me, and when he found out I was on parole he threatened to harm himself and claim I assaulted him. Parole could’ve thrown me in jail at any point without immediate justification. Then I’m back in the system trying to survive.
My study skills were better than other students’ because I had worked on them so hard in isolation. I was more disciplined. I didn’t procrastinate. Maturity was part of it—I was farther along in life than other students, and I had a reference point of how bad life could be.
I knew I wanted to do a PhD. I was relieved when I got into SUNY Stony Brook, in case I was stuck in the state because of parole. When I got to UCSD I had one more year of parole.
PT: What is your area of research?
BEARDEN: I came to UCSD to work with Dmitri Basov. I ultimately left his group because I didn’t enjoy experimental physics. I am a numerics guy, so I switched to theoretical physics and I started working with Max Di Ventra.
It’s worked out great. I’m researching memcomputing, an efficient computing paradigm that uses memory to process and store information in the same location. I design and simulate scalable digital memcomputing machines to tackle constraint satisfaction problems.
PT: How is grad school for you socially?
BEARDEN: I was slow to make friends. Coming to California was a culture shock for me. One night talking outside a bar, someone said, “I like you; you speak your mind.” The New Yorker in me thought, “That’s all I know how to do.”
Most of my friends here I’ve made through Brazilian jujitsu. It’s a modification of the Japanese martial art. You try to strangle your opponent and break their bones, and you make friends. In the physics department, I get along with people and I feel I am part of the department, but it’s difficult to integrate into activities. The other students are not like me. For example, I like to watch UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship]. Some think that means there is bloodlust in me. But in my opinion there is nothing more fundamentally athletic that humans do than fighting.
PT: What are your plans for after graduation?
BEARDEN: I am exploring career paths. I’ve done some tutoring and some consulting. I had one interesting experience: I did a research project with a futures trader. I had a negative result in terms of what he envisioned. I was afraid he would be upset, but he said it saved him money to know it wouldn’t work. That opened my mind. I am exploring consulting and other options. I have not abandoned the idea of becoming an educator because I feel like I genuinely enhance the learning experience for nontraditional learners.
