I got a JOB! AKA a positive control for CV writing...

It finally happened. I applied for something great, I went through two interviews and, after a bit of contractual bartering, I'm starting next Wednesday! In the job application and job-finishing frenzy I haven't kept anybody up to date on what's been going on but here's what happened.

On the 19th February I applied for a volunteer role at the Natural History Museum only to find out that I'd mistakenly got the date wrong and applied one day too late! I was understandably miffed so I went into my flagged e-mail list to make sure I didn't miss any more deadlines.

I noticed that I still had one day to apply for two great internship roles at Sense About Science. Their name has come up a number of times when people were recommending employers to me so I wasn't going to let this one slip away. They make it their mission to help people understand the science they are bombarded with every day. This could be clearing up something confusing (or wrong) in the media, training scientists on how to best describe their own work or encouraging people to simply ask for evidence when given a piece of information.

Look! Dara O'Briain thinks their Ask For Evidence campaign is great!

I applied for two roles that were different in practice but similar in the skill-set required. They were Campaign Support Officer and Project Support Officer. Honestly, I put the applications together in half an hour and sent them. I did tailor each CV and cover letter to the roles but I didn't have to do too much work as this organisation (charity, actually) seemed to fit exactly what I wanted. I was really busy the next day at a TV masterclass (more on that in the future) but just two days later they asked me to come in for my interview the following week.

I had to submit a form and a written exercise beforehand and the interview itself only lasted 45 minutes. Nonetheless, I felt really pleased with the way it went. I didn't 'fake' anything or pretend to be anything I'm not and we all got on really well. There was even an awkward, but nice, moment where I had to namedrop that I'd been on Newsnight a few weeks before.

The follow-up interview with the managing director was the next week, where we discussed the role and the company in a bit more detail. Again, I felt very honest, I felt that they were being honest with me and there was no pretence. I was very excited. I still am.

Today, I wanted to pass on the great feeling that comes when you get a job you want, a job you know you can do well and (although I was sick of people saying it to me) when it's the right job for you, you WILL get it. Also, my 'positive control' CV was tinkered with in 10 minutes and sent out with a cover letter in just 30, but I've spent 18 months writing dozens of applications so I think I must've got pretty good at it! When it comes to the interview process, I've learnt that if you feel under a whole amount of pressure to 'perform' and be someone you're not, then the job is probably not for you. If you get the job under the pretence of a skill you don't really have or a type of personality that isn't really you, then the job is going to be very very stressful trying to keep that up!

Anyway, it's been a couple of weeks now but my contract is signed and I'm due to start next week, just a month after I applied. The whole process has raised quite a few issue of job-seeking including contract negotiations, juggling two jobs (I'll be at King's one day a week sometimes) and starting at the bottom, not to mention taking a huge (-60%) pay-cut. I'm hoping to share how this is all going over the next few weeks, with honest advice and tips for such a big life change.

I've also got some research to share on (science) writing and journalism. Just because I've found my niche (I hope), it won't stop me sharing my science careers stuff with you!

Oh yeah, If you're interested in the science communication side of the posts I've written, I'm writing on another blog called Experiments in Communication on the Speakers of Science network. That's more about what I'm learning about scientific communication from courses and as I go through my new career (job?)- Feel free to take a look. The other posts on the network are pretty cool too - one has a see-through egg!

Robots made me do it...

I turned down a job last month. 

Those of you who've followed this blog or (God forbid) know me personally, will know that I've been actively looking for a new job for well over a year, with absolutely no luck, so this was a big deal for me and may come as a bit of a surprise for you.

It was great job that would pay well, working for someone I really respect, so I think I should probably explain myself. I'll get to the robots in a bit...

The job was a research post with great opportunities to develop my career in a dynamic group keen to make big steps quickly - potentially with the resources and enthusiasm to actually meet these goals. In academia, things can move very slowly, one reason why I've always wanted to work in 'industry' - a catch all term that researchers use to describe jobs that makes a commercial product, rather than academia, where the research is usually more driven by the desire to learn (this is changing, but that's for another time...). This post would put me in a great position to go into industry in 2 years, maybe a little longer.

The cherry on the employment-cake was that I'd also get to work for an ex-boss that I liked, knew our work styles were compatible and I was confident we could do good research together. All of these positives were why I applied, why I was pleased when I went for my interview and why I left the enjoyable interview with a spring in my step.

I was told that it might be a while before I heard back about the job and that they'd let me know when they'd be able to 'let me know'. However, in the end, they got back to me quickly with an offer of a role. Looking back,  I think I probably knew straight away that something wasn't right. I felt really weird about the offer. Sad that I'd 'have' to take this job, that it was too good an opportunity to turn down, that all my investigations and inroads, however meagre, into life away from research was for nothing and that the decision had more or less been made for me by the offer of this great job.

Then, I realised something. If I was sad about taking the job, if I was sad to stay in research, I probably shouldn't do it! This sounds really daft, I'm sure. Of course this sounds like an obvious conclusion but it wasn't an easy decision to come to and I thought it might be helpful to others to explain how I got there...

I asked for a week to think about the offer. I don't think they were thrilled to wait but they'd been happy to tell me that I should expect a long wait and I think, as an interviewee, you should never forget that you are also interviewing them!

Over that week, I spoke to friends, family, current and past colleagues about my dilemma. If reading this, you are one of those people, then 'Cheers' - by getting things off my chest I started to come to some sort of decision about what I wanted to do, but I was still of the splintery-bum-brigade, not quite getting off the fence. For a number of complex reasons that I can't Athena Swan my way out of, the role would also involve a change of my personal plans for the next few years and I wasn't willing to commit to the job, or to turn it down, unless I was sure the role was worth making certain sacrifices for.

That week, I also went to a Science Museum Lates event. The theme was Robots. Pretty jazzy, I'm sure you can imagine. There were tiny cheetah robots, creepy salamander robots, robot hands and robot fish that could be controlled via a video game. In a word, it was excellent.

I sat on the floor and made a robot wasp. The wasp, on the other hand, was pretty poor (and I ruined a mascara trying to put stripes on it, oh the sacrifice!). Anyway, my point was, as I trundled around the museum, agog at the technology that others had designed, truly fascinated by the work and throughly engrossed in the best way to get my robot to beat my husband's in a race, I didn't feel inspired to run back to the lab to produce my own imagination-capturing-inspiring research. What I thought was, 'Wouldn't it be great to work here' (and the occasional 'I could've explained that better'). To talk about science to people who just want to learn about it, or who didn't realise they liked it and only came for the speed-dating, but stayed for the circuitry. The idea of that really grabbed me. I know one night on a special event, at one of the most well-known museums in a city known for it's museums, is hardly representative of the normal life of your public engagement/scientific communication/museum curating employee, but I was far, far more excited by the idea, the challenge and the opportunity to at least try to do something like this than I was of a certain job, well-paid, with the aforementioned great boss.

Fundamentally, I don't deserve the job. Somebody else will do that job well, somebody who will throw themselves into a research career, somebody who is hungry for this position - and that 'someone' is not me.

So, I guess, what I'm trying to say is I've come to a realisation:

When you're 19 and you're sure you want to do a job, when you spend years studying, learning and occasionally crying en route to that job, sometimes, ten years later, it might be OK to change your mind.

When I finish my twice-extended contract in less than three months, with no job prospects, I may live to regret this possible act of folly. Until then, anyone want to buy my robot wasp (the wings fell off in the race that I didn't win. I hope it's not a sign)?

'To do' list of a fledging scientific communicator...

As you may be aware from some of my earlier posts, I'm really interested in different ways of scientific communication - From museum events to blogging and twitter. After speaking to lots of different people I thought the only way I could see if I was even capable of writing on a regular basis was to try some writing, so I started this blog.

I've only been doing it a few months and ended up on a panel about blogging (much to the chagrin/confusion of true blog aficionados) so whilst I'm not exactly a 'big deal' (Ron Burgundy quote #1 of this blog, I hope not the last) I am trying to learn as much as possible. In order to see just how far I can push this idea in a short period of time I thought I'd turn my hand to a few other things to see just how I can best communicate my science, the science of others and the science of well, science. After discussing this amongst my colleagues, the general consensus was 'Hey, can we have that list too?' So, here it is:

1. Keep writing the blog...

Sometimes this is easier said than done, although I do enjoy it - I'd recommend starting one if it's something you think you might enjoy, you can write about anything you like - people read all sorts of rubbish when they're avoiding their tax returns, their kids and their actual jobs!

2. Practice communicating science to a 'lay' audience. 

Urgh, is there a more patronising word than 'lay'? Anyway, you know what I mean, talking about science to those who aren't scientists or don't work in that area of science. This could encompass journalism, blogging, teaching, museum work, comedy and all sorts, as I've recently learnt.

 

Competitions

I'm going to enter a couple of science writing competitions, one on 'translating' hard-core papers into 800 words of accessible text, and another more vague competition (also 800 words) that requires the writer to discuss the topic of Openness in Science - I'm not even sure I like the word 'opennes' but I'll give it a try.

Plain English Summaries

I want to add a few entries to Science Gist, a site where you can add simplified summaries of any papers you may have read. An additional bonus behind this is that a lot of people make summaries already in their own note-taking, so why not share it and see if what you write makes sense? 

Not-so-plain English Summaries

If you want to take plain English summaries a step further you can give UpGoer Five a try - this is a project where you describe anything you like (your job, your pet, Schrodinger's uncertainty principle) using just the top one thousand (or ten hundred to be 'in the rules') words. It's an extreme look at the use of jargon but it is surprisingly difficult and suprisingly entertaining to try and describe spaghetti bolognese without 'meat', 'beef' or 'cow'. It gets it name from the original project where a rocket scientist described his rocket (or UpGoer) using these rules in a popular comic (xkcd).

3. Get Political. 

Ok, not exactly, but I want to enter the poster competition that will be exhibited in the House of Commons. I think this will be a little different to the standard poster sessions scientists get involved in as it will involve communicating your work to a non-expert audience, not something you get chance to do often, is it? Or maybe you go to the House of Commons all the time. I doubt it, But maybe...

4. Get marks for attendance 

I'd like to get more of an idea of how science is communicated to the general public that's not via the written word so I've been taking advantage of living in central London and going to as many science events/seminars as I can fit in. Apart from Science ShowOff (science-based comedy, performance and juggling), I attended Science Uncovered at the Natural History Museum (and blogged about it here), Science Museum Lates at the Science Museum, attended a seminar on Science Gallery (and it's planned expansion to London) and also watched a heat for FameLab. I'm thinking of sending in a video entry. I may very well bottle it. 

At the Science Museum Lates, I bumped into a friend of a friend of a... you get the idea,  and we got to talking about the speed dating event that was happening at the museum. He commented 'Well, at least you know that the person you are going to meet will be of above-average intelligence.' I thought that was a bit sad (and not necessarily true) - I hope the (free) museums and their events in London are for everyone and not just those that deem themselves 'better than the rest'. To be honest, given the location of many of the museums in London, the only possible stereotype you could throw about is that the attendess might be richer than most. Or more likely to be called 'Cosmo' or 'Jacinta'. Both good names, by the way, but you get what I mean, I hope. (Funnily enough, I am planning to write a post on the people that actually go to the museums, but that's not for here and now).

5. Media Fellowships.

This is something I think I may have 'missed the boat' with, but I'd have loved to have heard about them during my PhD. There are lots of different media training opportunities available (listed on the BSA site here - British Science Association, not Bovine Serum Albumen, anyway...) but I've heard really good things from people who went on the Media Fellowship available from the BSA. you need to be still IN research, and contracted until the end of Dec 2014 to even apply for the 2014 places, something that's not an option for me, but I'd definitely give it a try if I could. It involves 3-6 weeks away from your research so your boss has to consent AND submit a letter of recommendation (i.e. you can't do it if they don't agree, it seems). For more information on working with/in/for the media, check out this page, again from the BSA.

5. Applying, applying

Basically I've upgraded from not getting well-paid positions that I'm not sure I want, to not getting lower-paid internships that I definitely want. I'd say to anyone else considering a similar move to mine (i.e. out of something where you've proven your experience, into something new) you're probably going to have to take a pay cut. This may seem like a pain to begin with, especially if, also like me, you're thinking of trying to buy your first house. In London. However, you are giving yourself a chance to try something new, internships are rarely very long and, if you can prove yourself, companies will usually keep people who've shown they are pro-active and keen enough to do an internship in the first place - so chin up, it's a bit of a cliche but I'd rather be doing something I actually liked!

I've recently found a new jobs board on the British Science Association (BSA), as well as a lot of pointers from Twitter and the PSCI-COM JISCMail. Actually, the BSA (again) has information on everything from  public engagement to graphic design on their Science in Society section - worth checking out. 

In other news

This week I applied for 3 jobs, 2 internships and turned down a well-paid, great opportunity job that I won't actually like doing (more on that later). 

Don't tell, will you?

Bloody hell, that was intense!

It’s Tuesday, I’m back in the day-job and people keep saying ‘How was the conference?’ and ‘What did you get out of it?’ The first answer is easy – ‘It was great, there were tappy-tap-tap badges!!’ The second answer is taking a bit more thought. 

I could now write a detailed description of all the sessions I went to, explaining the goals and motivations of the panel, the attendees and ending with profound ‘take home’ message from each session. But I won’t. Mainly because a lot of people are already doing this and also because I was told that all bloggers are basically narcissists and only really write from their point of view so I thought I’d add fuel to that flame. Realistically though, this blog is supposed to be my take on finding out about new careers, so I’ll try and keep it personal.

I went out the night before (not a great idea, but it was with a very good friend!) so I missed the StoryCollider (although I intend to catch up via Storify, blogs etc.) so I was a bit tired, but very enthusiastic, when I arrived with no idea what to expect. I received my Blendology badge, which you tap with each new person to share contact information, got a speedy cup of tea and entered the conference… 

The first session, I can say without fear of exaggeration was ‘brilliant’. Salvatore Mele from CERN discussing how they work at one of the most famous ‘labs’ in the world and how they publish their data. Might sound a bit ‘meh’– but he was an excellent raconteur! He was really enthusiastic about his work, comparing the attention around the recent Nobel prize announcement to a football match and commenting on publishing papers with so many contributors.

Some excellent moments/quotes were:

His précis of a paper with 3000 authors 

'The small greenish bump tells you that the Boson is there-you don't need to read the rest...' Mele on CERN's paper! #solo13
— lauren tedaldi (@LaurenTedaldi) November 8, 2013

His take on an awful lot of data analysing their site usage...

Physicists- 'on average, at 2am, they give up'. Excellent quotes throughout this keynote! #solo13
— lauren tedaldi (@LaurenTedaldi) November 8, 2013

Describing the previously baffling Higgs field with a cartoon video  – still a bit baffling but at least I have a cool link I can send to people now.

And the fact that you can make a Lego version of their particle accelerator!

Instructions here

If you're still a sceptic, you can watch the presentation here

Then I attended two sessions that have blurred together in my mind – one on open access journals and one about peer review. These are rather hot topics in the field with the general 'ScienceGist' being – when we are fundamentally funded by the public and then published, the material we write should then be physically and mentally accessible by the public. The peer review session was looking at organisations and newer publications such as F1000, Frontiers, Rubriq and Peerage of Science that are attempting to change peer review. This is the standard current process adopted by most journals by which our colleagues must ‘approve’ our work before it’s accessed by the rest of the world. Currently the system is under scrutiny due to a number of critiques ranging from misconduct, retractions, time-delays and ‘it’s simply not the best way to do this in a modern world’. I’m tempted to agree but, as with most things, I think it’ll take time to change the status quo. There is still a lot of prestige (and funding) tied in to publication in the high-end peer-reviewed journals.

After lunch there was talk of a revolution involving such choice life advice such as:

If you want to demonstrate in the streets you do need permission from the police... #solo13
— lauren tedaldi (@LaurenTedaldi) November 8, 2013

Make your point, but make it quickly...Not a bad slogan for life. Thanks @alokjha #solo13
— lauren tedaldi (@LaurenTedaldi) November 8, 2013

'I work within the law... Up to now...' Competing with Mele for quote of the day #solo13
— lauren tedaldi (@LaurenTedaldi) November 8, 2013

MT @lexbwebb: Tips for (life): Wake up and become active. Make an effort. Speak to people and hear what the have to say. #solo13
— lauren tedaldi (@LaurenTedaldi) November 8, 2013

All interspersed with ponderings on just how Alok Jha keeps his hair so voluminous?

The afternoon went by in a blur of saying NO to PDFs and deciding on some do’s and don’ts of Twitter before trundling off to the pub.

Science Showoff showed us that scientists do have a personality, as well as a love of chocolate, guitars, clocks, juggling and of disproving ghosts (or should that say LENS FLARE!).

The  next morning we were thrown in to a session on procrastination, ahem, I mean science games. They were all pretty cool, especially the game that lets you build up neuronal connections by ‘connecting the dots' to a snazzy 80s sci-fi theme tune. I have to wonder though, how many game-players are learning  and how many are just  scientists playing the game as it has less of a guilt-burden than Candy-Crush. I should stress, I honestly never play games on my computer/phone, but, after this session I’ll probably start.

Then… it was time…I had to do my session….Well, there’s the narcissism again, not my session but the session on blogging...

I introduced myself as the newbie I am, got through without getting into hyper-speed speech (too much) and mostly ‘got away with it’. I did get shot down once or twice but that actually helped things move along. We discussed what we blog on and why, who to and if we care what they think.

All the topic from today's discussion at #solo13blogs pic.twitter.com/15xaT2aAwl
— Beckie Port (@BeckiePort) November 9, 2013

The floor discussions were really useful for me to understand lots of emerging opinions in the area, as well as those I disagree with, such as ‘blog comments are dead’ (Thanks Roland Krause!). Personally, I would really appreciate someone leaving comments on this blog - this whole thing is a learning exercise so I’d love to know what people think about what I’ve said and how I’ve said it – I’ve been warned that the number of comments is usually inversely proportional to how useful they are though so keep it clean, people.

Here’s the video - Yes, I have watched it back (narcissists, remember?)

After our session there was a really interesting panel discussion about staying in research and doing scientific communication at the same time. I think I’ll add it to a full post when I ‘officially’ cover scientific communication careers but needless-to-say, it seems that you can ‘have your cake and eat it’ (although there was no cake) but you can’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) expect your institution to understand/be supportive, especially at the start.

The final session I attended covered the idea behind the XKCD comic Up Goer Five project. In this, a rocket scientist described his rocket or (Up Goer) using the ‘top ten hundred words people use most often’. As ‘thousand’ wasn’t in it, you can see how they start to immediately rewrite their description using simpler words – ‘door’ instead of hatch,  ‘people-box’ instead of capsule or cockpit and (my personal favourite) for the helium store – 'things holding that kind of air that makes your voice funny.' It sounds a bit pointless until you realise it’s a good way to stop using unnecessary words as ‘standard’. I confess, I’m really guilty  of this – I’ve already used the word raconteur today, but it’s a good exercise to go to their website and try it out. Try describing your job without the words ‘associate, manager, web, retail, engineer or project’ or spaghetti Bolognese without ‘cow’, ‘beef’ or ‘meat’

On the 'What did you get out of it' stream-of-consciousness, well, that's going to take some time but one thing that I found really interesting was the big idea of the conference: Impact. For those who don’t work in science and don’t have to write grants (lucky you, when you read 'grant' think ‘written begging for money’) nowadays scientists have to outline the ‘impact’ of their research. I write it like that because the impact of my research is often very limited at the start, but doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

For example, your average Joe isn’t ‘impacted’ by Bragg’s law, they couldn’t care less about X-ray diffraction, they don’t know who Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick or James Watson are, but they probably know what DNA is, and their lives and education will have been shaped by the early fundamental science that lead to Bragg’s law. How does your average physicist assert the impact of an equation that could, someday, have enormous uses and ramifications?

Answer: They could use scientific communication.

They could make people ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the seemingly magical function of a gyroscope. They could make chocolate mayonnaise to describe surfactants. They could enter schools and discuss the interesting facets of a career in science. They could blog about their research to the public. They could tweet from the lab or a conference. They could do all manner of things to show the funding bodies that they have IMPACT. They could go the extra mile to show that their research isn’t just a bunch of self-serving superiority-complexed people swanning around the corridors of their local institution. If we want, expect and need the government (i.e. taxpayers) to fund us then we need to be part of their lives as much as the local community centre, the playground, the museums and the art centres or, when it comes to chopping funding, who do you think will come first?

Where two worlds collide…

I’ve recently started using social media to investigate science, rather than just as an outlet for the more gossipy side of my nature and I have to say, I felt a bit like Alice through the looking-glass. There’s a whole world of research and opinions going on that the large majority of researchers simply aren’t aware of.

The way it’s worked for me is that I’ve started following just a few people via Twitter and quickly been linked to blogs, articles (the difference is something of a contested issue) and research sites on a variety of topics. You get a constant (sometimes too constant) stream of suggestions and, from there, you decide what you want to read, watch or hear. 

The first thing that strikes you about the research promoted via Twitter is how concise you need to be. We’ve all pored over an abstract just to try and understand what a paper is about, only to come away none the wiser – Twitter gives you 140 characters (including your link) in which to get over a title that captures the readers’ attention enough for them to click on the link. This can be done with scientific language

Epilepsy and neonatal diabetes due to a compound heterozygous mutation in #IER3IP1 http://t.co/eQagDHbboL
— Ingo Helbig (@IngoHelbig) October 26, 2013

or, more commonly, a quirky by-line that you can’t ignore

Sewing...in SPAAAAAAACE. http://t.co/GUXoqRptwD HT @helenfields
— Ed Yong (@edyong209) November 5, 2013

and, before you know it, you’re reading an article on an area of science that you never would have read had you merely used your list of usual suspects of reading matter. 

This leads me to my second ‘huh’ moment regarding Twitter - You get an insight into much more varied information than via other means, as well as more varied ways of writing about science. Recently, I’ve learnt about reindeer eyes and lion-fish amongst the occasional cute squirrel picture.

Today's installment of squirrellishness...RT @BBAnimals Squirrel carrying her newborn baby pic.twitter.com/S4izzS4WkT
— Lou Woodley (@LouWoodley) October 28, 2013

This has reassured me that I do indeed find science fascinating and awe-inspiring and that perhaps my recent slump is more to do with the repetitive nature of reading dry documents, mainly within your own field, rather than ‘falling-out-of-love’ with science in general. It’s really refreshing to read an article and then feel the need to explain it, share it and dissect it with someone else. I think as scientists we could learn from the way blogs are written. Generally, they aim to keep the readers’ interest and not just educate them – can we take this approach and apply it to the reporting of core science? I’m not suggesting that the mechanism of the Heck reaction should (or could) be rendered jargon-less, but we could try to make it, at least, interesting to a broader audience where possible. There will always be ‘niche’ research that can’t be made ‘friendly’ but I think it’s all too easy to get lost in the tiny field in which you work and forget that there are other things going on outside of your lab, your field and, dare I say it, your discipline. We’re supposed to be professional ‘learners’ – learn something.  

Finally, and fundamentally I think, a blog about particular research can be read before the original article is printed and distributed. A tweet about the same article can be written quicker than someone can read the blog and it can be re-tweeted faster than...you get the idea.

Communication is now fast and science needs to keep up. Research has always been a pain-staking process, and I think sometimes it needs to be, to ensure all the necessary controls are carried out and the research stands up (see retractionwatch), but we need to get better and quicker at communicating our goals, research and results and it looks like the internet is now providing a conduit for this. The unregulated nature of blogs and tweets could be both social media’s downfall and its saving grace for the communication of scientific research and ideas- You don’t need peer-review for Twitter, you don’t submit a grant for Google+, you put your idea down and you wait. If people like it, you find out immediately. Is using social media for research a bit self-satisfying and narcissistic? Probably. Is it a scary way to get often brutally honest critique? Definitely. Could it be the start of a new way of dynamic and responsive communication between scientists? I think so, watch this space.

I’d like to end with a ‘reader-beware’. Keeping an eye on Twitter and blogs is a time-consuming affair if, like me, you try to make sure that you read everything that looks enticing. As more people use this method of communication to give readers a ‘sneak-peak’ into their research and the research they find interesting, I’m afraid that the information might start to fade into the ‘noise’. If we become bombarded by this head-line and that research topic every 3-4 minutes then, a. how will we know what is worth reading and b. how will we ever find the time to carry out the research! As a lab-based scientist, I spend very little time in front of a computer screen, I've generally liked it that way. How in the world, then, can I possibly keep up?

I don’t know, to be honest, but I’m going to try!

What's the point of this 'Twitter' thing then...

As a self-professed 'people person', I can honestly say that, until very recently, I didn't really 'get' the power nor point of Twitter and the like. I'm on Facebook, of course. I joined nearly ten years ago when you needed a uni account and people didn't realise what it was or could be, so I know what the concept is, but I've never really appreciated the power of it as a tool to communicate new ideas rather than just a place to check out ex-classmates, ex-boyfriends and their ex-classmates and ex-boyfriends.

So what’s caused this change, then? Well, a number of things actually. Mainly, I’m coming to a haitus in a fairly typical research career and for the last (nearly) two years I’ve been trying to get a job back in industry.

Trying. It seems that our degrees/PhDs are not that special or unique after all. Something no-one tells you. There are so many degree'd and PhD’d people now, that you have to find the thing that you have that is different and extra to all the other people out there and capitalise on that ‘thing’ to get your desired role. But (and yes, I did just start a sentence with 'but') what if you don’t know what that ‘desired role’ is? And (now ‘and’, my GCSE English teacher would not be impressed - Hi, Mrs. Hughes!) I think that this accounts for a lot of people – particularly a lot of PhD graduates.

Why don't we have any idea what we can do? I think, primarily, that we simply don’t know what else we can do because during our PhDs we are surrounded by people who did the conventional degree-PhD-PostDocs-academia - i.e. our bosses. This is a perfectly valid and potentially fulfilling role, but we don’t ever seem to talk about any other choices because this would be a ‘cop out’. Those PhD students that leave the lab to become tax attorneys, patent lawyers and teachers are met with a (fairly sizable) level of derision. They've ‘given up on science’, they couldn't cut it. I’ll be honest, until fairly recently, I probably felt similarly.

The problem is that by not talking about the other options, and there are plenty of others, and, in particular, by devaluing the other options, those people who perhaps aren’t suited to the life of a research scientist are left floundering.

So there I was, wondering what else I could do with my qualifications, my talents and my ‘transferable skills’ and who do I ask? My boss - who wants me to stay (Of course he does, I’m the only PostDoc in a group with an increasingly absent boss)? My PhD supervisor - who planted the seed of research in my brain (and is probably somewhat invested in the idea that I will continue his scientific genealogy)? My PhD cohort - mostly we’re in the same boat (and trust me, nobody wants to be the first to say that they have no idea what they’re doing with their life)? My (new) husband - who  thinks my degree and PhD should be rewarded with riches and fame? Or even, God forbid, my parents - who have very little understanding of what I do (my Dad still doesn’t get that there’s no-one to tell me the answer)?

This is where Twitter comes into it’s own. Unless you’re guilty of some seriously questionable behaviour, most people will let you ‘follow’ them – allowing you a rolling, updated, 160 character facebook status of their lives, if you like. Unlike Facebook, where an unsolicited 'Add' is a thing of cringe-making comments of 'who the f$£k is so-and-so Edwards?', Twitter is designed for you to be able to see what complete strangers are broadcasting to the world. It's supposed to be less private and you immediately have access to an insight into the jobs, opinions and day-to-day lives of everyone you follow, particularly if they realise the power of this medium for shameless self-promotion and detailed descriptions of their work - which most SciComm people should and do. Over the last few weeks, since being on Twitter, I've learnt about the changing attitudes to the hallowed world of publication and open access research, found job ads, got a place helping to organise a session at a major scientific communication conference, been approached to enter a science communication competition and, oh yeah, shamelessly guided over 1000 views to my blog (although I'm sure Facebook helped, too!). I have also learnt a lot more about new and exciting science than I've got from reading my usual list of detailed, focussed and often-not-particularly-exciting journals for my own research.

Yes, Twitter can be a really fun and a great way to find out about things you like socially, but, by it's nature, it's fundamentally a place for promotion. Promotion of ideas, promotion of products and OK a LOT of self-promotion. But, if you know what you're doing if you follow the 'right' people you can learn SO much from the 140 character snippets. The fact that everything is limited to 160 characters means that you get a précis of what's being said, promoted and commented upon. You can then decide of you want to follow the link to an interesting paper, article or, occasionally, random picture of a funny badger.

If you are interested in Scientific Communication and journalism, I've started a running post - a sort of Who's Who in the area...

Pretty much any field can be found and 'followed' on Twitter, giving you crash course in anything you can think of. So my advice would be - If there's something you think you might be interested in, an area of science, retail or life in general, something you've always thought 'I wonder what that job is like' - get on Twitter, have a skulk around and oh yeah, follow me - I've only got a few followers and we all need to save face, don't we?

#2:Scientific Communicators...

Updated March 2014: I've updated the statuses of my 'favourites', where necessary, and added some new people to the list...

Last October I started looking in to scientific communication, using Twitter, Blogger, Facebook and Google+ to learn as much as possible about who was saying what and how. I had no idea where to start but I quickly built up a selection of people whose tweets and work I liked. I thought it would be useful to list this somewhat random bunch, in order to help anyone else out there who fancies skulking around ('following' on Twitter) these people to see how they communicate their opinions and ideas. And the occasional picture of something cute/funny.

Something that I've noticed is that there is definitely an in-crowd in this 'anti-the-in-crowd' crowd. For example, there's a distinct inner-circle of avid bloggers and science journalists who cover a lot of ground between them, re-tweet each-other's work and all manner of interesting stuff. 

If you're looking around with scientific communication in mind then, as somewhere to start, I would start a Twitter account and follow these people, see what they tweet, WHEN they tweet, what they cover and how they write. Their tweets will lead to articles, events and some really useful blogs. Some people have short blogs of a few paragraphs whilst others lean towards my rambling style. As I said, this is my opinion, to which I hold firmly, whilst being completely aware that it may, in fact, be wrong.

In no particular order I like...

On Twitter...

Carl Zimmer - Writes books, articles for the New York Times and Slate, blogs for National Geographic (often cross-referencing his articles - clever use of directing traffic to his articles) and tweets on all things science-related. Definitely a 'biology' man with lots of books published on evolution but also more esoteric topics like science tattoos of the science-and-pain-loving! 'Revered' is a strong word but he is highly respected, it seems, by all in the community.

Ed Yong - Science writer, blogger at National Geographic and prolific tweeter. He has a very irreverent style that is always informative, often quite funny and regularly takes the piss of science and people he deems 'sub-standard'. He tweets A LOT, often in quick succession and his tweets can be a good running commentary and 'thermometer' on the community. I often wonder how he has time for anything else. His name seemed to get dropped at all classes, courses and workshops I've attended recently.

Virginia Hughes - Another science writer and blogger at National Geographic. She has a more 'serious' tone compared to Ed and tends to tweet on a wider variety of things, including art/photography, travel and conferences. Like her NatGeo writer mates, she uses Twitter to heavily promote all of the writing that she does, as well as the work of others at the same publications as her.

Laurie Winkless - My brother recommended this physicist SciComm-er and, after following her on Twitter and listening to her interview on Speaking of Science (see below), I can see why. She's became the Editor for Nobel Media at just 30 and I think this is really impressive. She's working at a prestigious world-renowned organisation, bringing them into social media circles and spreading their message to a much younger, more dynamic audience than it had before. She's got a book coming out in 2016 called 'Science and the City' which I'll be keeping an eye out for as I love to see scientists drawing attention to the science in everyday life.

Laura Wheeler - Recommended by a marketing professional as 'someone-to-learn-from' in the SciComm community. In the few months since I first wrote this post she's moved from the Communities Co-ordinator at Nature and is now the Community Manager for Digital Science. Watch and learn.

Lou Woodley - She's involved in all things science-social-media-online-technology related, it seems. You can find more info on her blog here. I started following Lou after seeing a lot of her tweets re-tweeted by the people above (further evidence of the 'inner-circle' effect). I've found out about lots of online resources, articles and events through her twitter feed. She's recently started the excellent MySciCareer site with Eva Amsen (see below) which I've lost many hours to, browsing the different career paths of those who started out with science degrees. 

Athene Donald - Physics professor at Cambridge, blogs via Occam's Typewriter. I really like the way she writes about life as a scientist, life as an academic and, well, life.

Hope Jahren. I gave her whole name a sentence because I like her a lot. She's a research scientist, working in Hawaii who writes interesting, inciteful and often tear-jerking prose. She also gets to work in HAWAII. I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks hopping around the islands last year and the thought of someone who gets to be this good a writer, a scientist and a resident of this freakishly beautiful part of the world makes my heart hurt. Keep an eye out for the resurrection of @TotalGrasshole. Trust me, it's hard to explain why the tweets of an aggressive grass are so funny, but they are. 

Dean Burnett, aka @GarwBoy (Say, garoo-boy) is a Welsh neuroscientist, comedian, blogger and generally interesting guy. He writes regularly for the Guardian in a style that is thought-provoking, topical and, ultimately, very funny. By the by, he does NOT like Hitler.

Kate Whittington draws wonderfully detailed illustrations. You can find them on her blog here. I also like the way that she writes, peppering anecdotes about saving a bee with species identification and rolled-up-newspaper-threats from her dad (for the bee, not her. I think). 

Eva Amsen is the Outreach Director at F1000Research, serial blogger, co-founder of MySciCareer, pro-open access publishing and regular speaker at SciComm and careers seminars. I was once at a seminar where she got narked at the eternal question 'How do you find the time?' Her response was 'I've never seen the Wire or Breaking Bad, I do other stuff instead'. It's fair to say, I like her attitude to just getting shit done, although she may have a clone, as I'm sure she still manages to do more than most. Oh yeah, she also likes investigating the links between science and music at MusiSci. Like I said, she does lots of things. 

Anonymous tweeters and bloggers have received some attention over the past few months- have a look at this blog post and subsequent comments for some interesting thoughts. I will say that I've often been asked if I'm concerned about potential employers reading this (loosely) careers-based blog and finding it imperfect/wrong/rude/desperately job-seeking. The simple answer is 'Yes', but I do it openly because it never occurred to me that I should do otherwise. Sometimes, I do think of things that I would like to write/rant about but I try and keep myself 'on track' and occasionally this does mean I'm not able to talk about what I want. Anyway, my recommendations for some anonymous tweeters and their blogs has a place here as I feel that, rightly or wrongly, this allows a different level of honesty that would be difficult in the first person. In this spirit, check out BioChemBelle, Dr24hours, Dr. Isis and InBabyAttachMode

Miscellany...

Lush green grass at a friday afternoon - Ignoring the strange grammar in the title of this blog leads you to an interesting set of blogs that are used to 'express and share some of our thoughts about the current state of science, its place in society and our lives within this continuously changing discursive environment' - Sounds hard-core, but it's well written (by two people) if only for this candid blog on working in a lab where prior work gets retracted.

Speaking of science - This is an interesting site run by Julie Gould, the Naturejobs web and advertorial editor at Nature Publishing Group. The site acknowledges the myriad ways in which you can be a 'science communicator' and aims to be a repository for interviews (some written, some audio) with people who work in Science Communication - Ed Yong and Laurie Winkless are featured, amongst many others.

Julie Gould has also recently launched a network of science bloggers called Speakers of Science that brings together new people in the SciComm community to try their hand at blogging on different science-related topics. Using cartoons, pictures, videos, text and handy hints for new SciComm attempts, it's ace! (Dislaimer: I am one of the new bloggers and am indebted to Julie for getting me involved!)

PSCI-COM - I can't really complete this post without mentioning this huge site, chock-full of threads, conversations and requests related to all things around 'the public communication of science and public engagement with science'. The most useful thing about this site is that it's a JISCMAIL that you can subscribe to. It's somewhere between a forum and a huge e-mail list where everyone can speak to everyone very easily about anything they need. Generally people abide by etiquette and don't just use it to promote themselves. So far I've learnt of loads of different events and applied for numerous jobs that I heard of through this. It's moderated by Jo Brodie, a veritable font of job adverts, SciComm info and helpful advice on the forum and Twitter. 

In updating this post I've found many more new people to 'follow', websites to scour and blogs to read, but will only add them to this list once I feel that I know a bit more about them. I'll be adding to this post regularly, I hope. In the interest of keeping things as concise as possible I haven't included major organisations such as museums, research councils, festivals etc., you can work that out for yourself.

For all the Twitter sceptics, I posted on my early interactions with this new 'Twitter-verse' and 'blogosphere' (you've got to love the cheesy terminology, if nothing else) and tried to convince you that it's not all just pictures of people's dinner/pets. Although there is a bit of that. And I like it.

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Potentially useful fact:

It's worth mentioning that at the time of me writing this (Oct 2013), there was a somewhat stormy time going on in the world of SciComm. I only include it here as, if you do intend to look in to this field, then you should know that this has gone on...

It 'started' with the removal of a post from a black female blogger (DNLee) who wrote about being called a whore for not wanting to blog for free - causing a massive backlash questioning whether she would have been expected to work for free, or her post deleted, if she'd been a white male scientist - (answers on a postcard). For a whistlestop tour of the ensuing fiasco see here and here.

The shady behaviour of the editor in question (now fired) and the response from what was supposed to be a higher power (Scientific American took her post down) resulted in a name being added to a year-old post about sexual harrassment. This has caused a complete bombshell as the man in question (Bora Zivkovik) is (was?) a heavyweight in the blogging community, loved and respected (there was a twitter hashtag #IhuggedBora for a while) and quite, quite powerful.

Ok so, rewind. There've been a huge number of posts on this, I'm new to the whole area and couldn't/wouldn't comment on what's going on. The gist of it, as I see it is... in a field that is friendly and often revolves around a very casual and social manner, there are a number of people who seem to think that this is a great opportunity to behave inappropriately towards potential writers. This seems mainly to happen when a young or new writer approaches an established member of the community and, as someone who is looking at maybe moving in to this field, I'd honestly say that it's given me pause for thought. It seems like this goes on a lot but the massive uproar this has caused between supporters/victims and everyone else has probably opened a few eyes to what's, at best, pretty shitty behaviour. As I said, I won't go into detail, most of the blogs about this are pretty heated, but the original posts are here:

This happened: Monica Byrne

This happened: Bora Zivkovik

What I will say is that if, like me, you were initially tempted to think this was bad behaviour but put the huge rhetoric down to a (little) bit of over-reaction then check out #ripplesofdoubt on Twitter to see the impact this can have - it really opened my eyes. 

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