It’s been a while since my last post – and even longer since my last real post. Part of it is that I was sick for a while, but the other part is that I have 3 draft posts, and 0 complete.
The motivation in starting this blog was (other than to show off my cats) present and communicate an area of science that is usually ignored. My friends have frequently heard my complaints that space, black holes, even plasma physics – these are exciting! Relatable! People like learning about planets and galaxies! An outsized portion of science outreach is done by astrophysicists. Which, in my opinion, is great. Astrophysics is what set me on the path to science curiosity, these mysterious objects called “black holes” that we can’t see because they’re, well, black. Everything I know now about black holes is from those formative years, Wikipedia, and Interstellar.
However, this doesn’t change the fact that there are so many fascinating areas of science that are washed over and ignored. For all my gripes, it makes sense. It’s difficult to be interested in something you can’t relate to. Someone I know studies cells in mosquitoes – everyone knows what a mosquito is, and even if you think ‘yuck’, you might still want to know. But if I’m presented a paper written in Farsi on livestock breeding – what? Why? I can’t even understand Farsi.
And here we have one of the barriers to communicate about topics that are so far removed from public perception, it’s an alien language altogether.
I have tried to start science blogs several times in the past; documenting science itself, and documenting research and interests as an undergraduate. Most recently, this has been sparked not by an internal desire, but because of a press release on a (scientific) paper published. It turned out I had no idea how to communicate the contents of that paper to a general audience in any conceivable way. (The final press release couldn’t either, but that’s the scientist in me speaking.) So I took a science writing class. Learned a bit about “the other side”, the challenges in straddling journalism and science, and the reasons why scientists and science communicators tend to butt heads.
The class is over, but I didn’t want to let it end like that. There’s another paper coming up that might get a press release too. So! I’ll keep trying, and hopefully one of those three drafts will be finished and posted soon, with some semblance of public comprehension!
a cat's journey through academia 