Read This Damn It! OR What I Learned at ScienceOnline
You know that feeling you get when everything comes together—relief, excitement, affirmation? I’ve got that.
I spent three and a half days last week in Raleigh, North Carolina, for the 6th annual ScienceOnline un-conference. Although I’ve followed the meeting online for two years, and I’ve gotten to know a few folks in the community through Twitter, I was pretty nervous about meeting face-to-face the people who will play an integral role in my future as I pursue a career in science journalism.
I met journalists, bloggers, editors, scientists, students, and Bora, the BlogFather. And I picked their brains every chance I got about transitioning from academia to science journalism and what it means to be a science journalist in 2012. Fortunately, I found the community to be incredibly welcoming and supportive—I’ve returned home even more excited about telling the stories of science.
You can read my account of Day 0 here. I thought, however naively, that I would be able to share more of my experiences as they were happening—I was wrong. Participating in sessions, chatting with fellow attendees, and keeping up with the overflowing Twitter feed for #scio12 proved to be about as much as I could handle.
I’m not going to re-cap the sessions that I attended because I know that there will be many other reviews of the conference that will go into detail much better than I could—I didn’t take notes. I will note that all of the sessions that I attended, and those that I followed on Twitter, were very well organized. In almost every case, I found myself wishing the session could last longer than the allotted hour. If you want to see my schedule, however, you can do so here.
What I would like to share is my social experience at ScienceOnline. I have a history of being incredibly shy. Although I usually want to interact, I sometimes find it difficult to do so. For the most part, this wasn’t a problem at #scio12. From the moment I arrived, Bora made me feel at home, and everyone I met was friendly, encouraging, and incredibly adept at describing their work—communication, what?! I found the spirit of the community lifting me up, that as I spent more time with journalists and bloggers at the meeting, I got more comfortable asking questions.
One of the questions that I brought with me to ScienceOnline was whether or not I should look into a science writing/journalism program after I finish my PhD. There are lots of great programs throughout the country—Santa Cruz, UW-Madison, Columbia, NYU—but would I really need to go into significant debt to become a science writer? I needed advice from the people who’d know best—working science writers.
I spoke with Hillary Rosner, Sarah Webb, Irene Klotz, Robin Lloyd, and John Timmer about their paths to science journalism. I asked them all about science writing programs, and I shared my own experiences so far. I came away from each of these meetings feeling as though I shouldn’t rule out journalism school, but that it’s definitely not necessary for success. I’ll just need to hustle a little harder to make my dreams happen.
And I’m ok with that.
This semester, I’ve applied for a media fellowship, I’m enrolled in an advanced reporting course, I’ll be heading to AAAS in Vancouver where I’ll shadow Maggie Koerth-Baker and Irene Klotz and attend NASW’s internship fair, and I’m beginning to write my dissertation. Pray for me. Meditate for me. It’s going to be a busy year.
Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. – Thomas Edison
