Hello all of you beautiful people!

So 2022 was… um… was a thing.

It happened.

Not that there weren’t a ton of amazing things that happened for me (As we’ll see before)! But some of the things that happened in politics this past year was… yeah, no. Some things were rough, I’m not gonna sugar coat that.

(Side-eyes the removal of certain constitutional rights on my left, side-eyes unexpected medical issues on my right.)

On a better Let’s go over some of the highlights of 2022!

1) Finishing a Science Communication Fellowship! Yes! I finished the workshops before summer, and then I finally received my certificate the other day after I completed my Science Café talk and my Meet a Scientist work!

2) Did not catch COVID in 2022: I did manage to catch RSV, but NOT coronavirus! Hey, I’m gonna celebrate that as long as I can!

3) Presented for the first time at a conference and received an award for my poster: Who knew that doing a fellowship that teaches you how to present in front of people could be so instrumental in talking about one’s research!

4) I turned in my revised F31 Grant: I will hopefully have more (good) updates on that very soon, but I can’t make any official announcements quite yet.

5) People noticed my blog: I know this sounds like a silly highlight, but I want to stress that I have no statistics for this site. I use Amazon Web Services to host my website, and unless I want to pay for specific add-ons, I have no idea if anyone is seeing my blog. And it’s been that way since 2019, when I was writing my posts in the 30 minutes before grad school classes. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, I’ve been writing into the void for ages. So it meant so much when many of you lovely readers started to reach out and tell me you read my blog! Thank you so much, everyone!

Now, for my science communication goals, both on and off the blog!

1) I still want to have guest authors on the blog: No one reached out to me to either co-author a blog post, or write their own specialized post for Getting The Science Write, but the offer still stands! If you want to do something for the blog and you want some experience with science writing, send me a message on my Instagram @phdungeon_master, my twitter @beccmel2, or my blog’s email gettingthesciencewrite@gmail.com.

2) Make more worldbuilding posts: Those were a huge hit this past year! I don’t know how I’m going to outdo myself with the elven blog, but we’re gonna try! Maybe I can do some odd creatures this year, or really delve deep into dragons :)

3) Make some science writing YouTube videos: I am currently writing my first script for the first video and you will all get to see that 1) I exist and 2) I am actually that awkward in real life. These videos would be affiliated with my blog; they would just be more tailored with writing techniques for grad students in STEM. Hopefully, I will have the first video out by the end of January, but I do need to figure out how to make and edit a lengthy YouTube video, which may be the limiting factor of this project.

4) Write a blog post about spider stuff: I have had two spider-themed posts for the past year that I just could finish in time. The ideas I have for spider silk… so many!

5) Write more micro stories for Instagram: Granted, this may end up being super annoying for my readers, but I kinda want to try it this year! Why not add a bit more fun writing under my belt?

6) Keep posting once a month: I was so close in 2022. I missed a few months in there, but I was close. Let’s see if I can get 12 posts in 12 months.

To be honest, there was more ttrpg-focus things on this list, like “get on a science communication DnD actual play once” or “write one piece of science related content for DnD,” but as I am writing this, the DnD community is currently on fire due to the Open Gaming License fiasco (not to be covered in this blog, that for you to google because… hoooo boy, is it a lot). So, those plans are probably not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

(Which is sad because I had some cool ideas for my scientifically accurate vampires… sigh)

Anyhoo, that’s all that I have for the update! I’ll be writing the next installment of the wounds series, and I’m hoping by the time I finish that, I’ll also have a link to the first of my video series.

Let’s have 2022 be the year of science communication! If you have any fun ideas for a blog post, or things that you really want me to cover, please let me know via my social media or provided email.