I hoped to avoid what
seems like the inevitable downward trend in posting rate for blogs like these,
but nevertheless, it has been over a month since my last post. As I
previously mentioned, I also have a blog on SciLogs, but I hoped to save this
site as a more personal and perhaps experimental forum for science writing. If
anything it would at least let me re-hone my active voice after years of “The
solution was stirred for 10 minutes before calcium chloride was added.”
However, my perfectionist
qualities tend to get in the way. If I don’t have anything interesting to say
–and can’t say it using the perfect language – why contribute to the ever
increasing internet content? One idiosyncratic anxiety of mine is the seemingly
endless amount of content and content-producers on the internet versus the amount
and desire for content by content consumers. If a Science story has already been covered by major news sources, and
the likes of Carl Zimmer, what possibly could I have to contribute?
So how about an update on my
career transition?
Something I didn’t expect
when I left the bench was a re-ignition in my interest, and dare I say, passion
for science. No longer is it work since I haven’t had a single paying science
writing gig; I get to pursue science questions that interest me. With the
competition for both publication and grants, I always felt I should be reading
more about potential techniques or papers in my field – reading about science
was a means to an end. Therefore I couldn’t help but perceive any time spent on
science outside my field as inversely related to my productivity and chance for
success. I am sure this isn’t the case for scientists who truly love what they
do. In retrospect, it is just one more reason why research was not the career
for me.
However, I lately have less
time to pursue these interests – hence the gap in posting – as I am a month
into a science policy fellowship with a nonprofit science advocacy organization
in D.C. Coming into politics with little knowledge, I have enjoyed the
demystification process immensely. I am forced to trade in the academic and
scientific jargon of “noncanonical”, “ubiquitous”, and “aliquot” for the
language of the beltway: “taps”, “stopgaps”,
and “markups”. I get to look for scientifically inaccurate statements from
politicians. This election cycle appears to be especially ripe with Mike
Huckabee’s “proof” of life at conception in the form of the “DNA schedule”, which scientists all
over the internet have lambasted as both incorrect and a
very weird phrase better suited for “a band, an app, or maybe an erectile
dysfunction drug."
While it has been an
adjustment to have fixed schedule and sit at a computer all day, I appreciate
that there is a large creative component, such as writing material for the
website, coming up with messaging for worthy issues like stem cell research or
comparative effectiveness research, and digging through all that content on the
website to find tangible examples backed with solid numbers on how science has
improved the lives of American citizens…and why the world will end if we don’t
increase NIH’s budget.
