Esra Nur Turan-Küçük

This is going to be an incredible event celebrating Alan Leslie's amazing career. Speakers include Susan Carey, Lisa Feigenson, Randy Gallistel, Ori Friedman, Zsuzsa Káldy, Ágnes Kovács, Sydney Levine, Sandeep Prasada, Brian Scholl, Luca Surian (and me!) Join in person at Rutgers or livestream

Children’s reasoning about possible outcomes of events in the present and the future

📣 Work by Esra N. Turan-Küçük & Melissa M. Kibbe

You can access the paper from our website as well www.bu.edu/cdl/files/20...

New from me and @esranur.bsky.social! In two exps with 3-4-year-olds, we find no differences in kids' reasoning about possible outcomes of an event in different temporal contexts; kids perform the same under physical and epistemic uncertainty psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... #devpsy #psychscisky

List of presentation sessions for talk (June 18) and posters (June 19 and June 20) from folks in the BU Developing Minds Lab.

Come check out work from my lab at @socphilpsych.bsky.social SPP 2025!

I have a 2 mo baby at home. And I have a job talk at Yale this Friday. What can help me?

Hey, people who have kids, can you please share some info about staying in academia (job search mode) + being a mom? Thanks!

Love this, thank you for sharing!

I think coming from Turkiye or a different place/lens I never thought that we could say “i am not prepared” or I don’t know”.

I learned so much from my advisor. Preparing for this presentation. I remembered, one time she presented in our lab meeting and said. It’s not fully prepared and I did not practice. I was like.. look at her confidence. I mean.. can we even say that? Wow.. I said to myself.

Now I’m 29. And I’m still learning.

I want to share what I’ve learned.

Then I got married. This time, I was 24. I had a Fulbright scholarship, and once again, I came to the U.S. This time, I wasn’t alone. But still, inside me, there’s a little girl who is growing up.

Even if I found WiFi, the internship was intense. At the Harvard lab, they had some free snacks and “oatmeal.” I survived on those for about 30 days. Haha! 😆

I ate that for days at suhoor and iftar. I had no internet. I couldn’t explain my situation to anyone.

He dropped me off at the house, but since I was new and shy, I couldn’t ask him where the market was. I was 21. You know..

I went out to find a market. I couldn’t find one. Thanks to my mom. She had packed bread and cheese in my luggage.

When I first arrived in the U.S. for the internship, it was summer 2018. I didn’t have a SIM card, so I couldn’t use Google Maps. I think it was the last five days of Ramadan. A kind person picked me up from the airport, and I still thank him.

I know—
Some will understand this post.
Some won’t.
But to everyone who supported me, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I hope peace to all our hearts.

What I want through these words is simply to let go of this pain
in a peaceful, releasing way, like casting it into the calmness of an ocean.
And to be able to say, “I had a voice too.”

So I wrote this not as a “statement,” but as a form of “goodbye.”

I am someone who fears God.
I would never want to wrong anyone. Even if someone hurt me,
I never want to be unjust to them,
nor do I want to be unjust to myself.

I studied psychology, and during this journey, I also went through therapy.
I spoke, in many sessions, about the deep hurt that had built up inside me.
My therapist told me that expressing these emotions and making sense of them is part of the healing process.

There were some things I carried inside me for years.
They hurt. The more I stayed silent, the heavier it got.
And now, I realize that I need to speak what’s inside me in order to heal.

Let me end by saying this.
When sharing this, I had no intention of targeting anyone, blaming, or shaming anyone.

And now, I’m reclaiming that story.
Despite being hurt,
I know that the kindness I gave is written in God’s book.
But I want to give voice to this lived experience.

This isn’t a fairytale or a dramatic story.
It’s the feeling of being unseen.

I was hurt.
Because while I was praying for her—
“May you start a beautiful new life”—

it feels like she erased my story.

I was the one who called her on her birthday back then.
One week later, it was my birthday—but she didn’t call.
Back in Turkey, she would contact me every day asking for advice, support.
Where was she now?

And today, she’s recording videos, sharing her success story…
But in that story, my name doesn’t exist.

That breaks my heart deeply.

A lesson about loyalty.
And I’ve learned it in the most painful way.

While I was being her friend, while offering free mentorship,
I was tired, sleep-deprived.
Most of the time, I postponed my own work to help her.

I never expected anything in return.
A thank-you wasn’t necessary.
But not even receiving a thank-you… not even being mentioned…
That really hurts.

If you ask me, “Does being made to feel forgotten hurt that much?”
Yes, it does. It really does.
This became a life lesson for me.

And I prayed, “May this be the beginning of a beautiful new chapter for you.”

But in this whole process, I was deeply hurt. I was left alone. I never had a space to express myself.

We bought everything for her new place, plates, forks, even bathroom soap dispensers.
I helped her decorate the kitchen.
I picked out the spring-colored pillows and a soft blanket for her couch so she could feel at home.
As someone I saw as a sister, I helped her for the sake of God alone.