What's this all about?

02.26.12: Addendum

The below was true at its time and still is, mostly. The blog suffered as I wrote papers and moved from abroad back to the States at the end of my postdoc. I am now out of academia and fully immersed in making the transition from lab rat to writer. So far, this has meant some freelance and contract work. The blog is being dusted off to build my online presence, to practice writing, and to have a format in which I can have the freedom to discover what niche I want to put myself in. 

Happy reading.

emb


Greetings from jaded-postdoc-writer-wannabe-land.

Somewhere in my march from undergrad biochemistry degree, subsequent PhD in pharmacology, and current postdoctoral fellowship, I have realized that as much as I love science, I don't want to be doing it anymore. It has nothing to do with my scientific career thus far - on the contrary, I've been blessed with fascinating research projects and supportive advisers and colleagues along the way. I just don't want to have my own lab in an academic setting.

This brings me to my present quandary: how to acquire skills and experience that don't involve a lab bench and a microscope, while not abandoning my postdoc, which gives me both security that I don't "have" to find a job right now and will soon increase the number of publications on my CV, which never hurt anyone.

My current state of soul-searching in this matter (which, thankfully, has moved past the "just quit and jump into the world of freelancing without any formal experience! Who needs a paycheck?!" state) is to find time to do what I want to be doing, even on a small scale.

That brings me to the next problem: what is it that I want to be doing? I love science: I love talking about it, learning about it, analyzing it. I also love to write. Seems like a no-brainer: science writing. But in what medium? In what style? I haven't developed myself as a writer. I have zero formal writing experience. I can write lab reports, grants, and research articles like a champ, but if that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I'd be an academic researcher.

The other morning, I was spending hours I will never get back deteriorating my eyesight and my posture at the microscope doing some really mindless trained-monkey stuff (for the sake of posterity, you will get no details as to my current position). I had this sort of out-of-body epiphany, which caused me at once to realize the tragedy and comedy of the situation. What was I doing?? In that moment of clarity and depression, I had a clear idea of the kind of science writer I wanted to be. My favorite scientific conversations are with non-scientists. I get the most thought-provoking and challenging questions and viewpoints when I'm trying to explain what I do to my non-scientist friends and family. Unlike many of my colleagues, I LIKE explaining what I do to my mother. I want to write for all the non-scientist mothers out there. I want to translate the scientific jargon and boil it down to what really matters, what's really important, and the ways of interpreting it. I think scientists, in general, do a fantastically horrible job of stepping off their "these are the facts so you should believe them" pedestal to take the time to explain the basics, explain the evidence, explain the counter-evidence, so that everyone - mothers, politicians, policy-makers, media - can interpret what the science is saying.

So that brings me here. To begin my quest to bridge the communication gap between scientists and their mothers.

Why a blog? It avoids any conflict-of-interest with my current position. I can do it on my own time, with my own word-count and weekly production limits. Even if no one reads this, it's a challenge to myself to keep up with the literature outside of my field and present it here. At the very least, I'll be acquiring "writing samples" for any future job inquiries. I'm sure the format will change and evolve - I hope so! Right now, I see this blog as being a combination of commenting on popular science in the media, presenting current research articles I think are cool, and discussing conversations and interactions I have with scientists and non-scientists alike over a scientific topic. I want to avoid being too political - with the disclaimer that this is really really hard for me to do, especially around certain subjects. I want my role to be translator, because there are enough scientists out there ready to put the interpretation into your lap without explaining the data behind the interpretation.