2025 Update!

27 Jan 2025

Hello All of You Beautiful People!

THAT’S RIGHT! I’M NOT DEAD!!! I’M BACK!

Oh, beautiful blog, how I’ve missed you!

For those who’ve been wondering where me and my rapier wit have been these past few months (leaving my dear blog un-updated for far too long), I have your answer now:

I’ve been in PhD hell.

Yeeeeeaaaaah, I was aiming to send in a massive science paper to a science journal back in October. For those not familiar, my PhD program currently requires me to have two “first-author” papers published in order for me to graduate. I technically have one from a review I wrote a while back, and now I’m trying to publish most of the research that I’ve done during my PhD. It’s a massive paper.

(What exactly my research covers, I aim to make a whole video about. I think it’s easier to describe with visuals.)

Since August, I’ve been in “survival mode” trying to push this paper out. I’ve had to redo a massive amount of experiments due to a machine error. Turns out that having cracked tubing in a machine DOES drastically alter your results! There’s also been way too much drama around this paper, which I’m not at liberty to discuss here, but what should have been a simple “write-edit-rewrite-repeat” cycle was not that.

And after much ado, I finally sent in my paper to the science journal Blood… Last week.

To say that this process has taken longer than expected is quite possibly the understatement of the century. I thought I was going to be gone from the scicomm gig for three months, maximum. Instead, I was away from my blog, my map making, and my writing in general for over half a year. But we’re back! “Getting the Science Write” lives once more!

Accomplishments of 2024

I…

Um…

Look, I know I did stuff, just… give me a minute…

I did not Develop Any More Life-altering Diseases! Hey, I gotta take my wins were I can get them.

I Participated in Playing For Palestine! That’s right, I played Dungeons and Dragons with Science and Sorcery in a their massive fundraising drive, Playing for Palestine. I created a monk using science for our game, “Hydroponic Shop of Horrors” with plant-science inspired skills! Unfortunately, our game’s video recording got screwed up halfway through, and so there’s no youtube video of the game. But it was amazing!

I Had a Guest Author Write for the Blog! After 5 years, I was finally able to have a fantastic guest author for my blog! The amazing Charlotte Roughton, PhD, wrote this blog post last year, checking off one of my biggets goals I’ve had for this blog since 2019! Thank you, Charlotte!

Goals For 2025

This section is extensive, because…

I’m Gonna Graduate and Get My PhD!! You heard it here, folks: your girl is going to be defending her thesis this year and movig on from the grad school life! I’m aiming for a late-spring or early summer graduation. That means I’m going to have so much more free time to focus on science communication!

I Want More Guest Writers for the Blog! We got Charlotte last year. Let’s get some more science writers on here!

Write More back-up Blog Posts. This one’s self-explainatory. I really need to build up my “emergency” blog posts so that we don’t have another 6 months of silence on this

Make Science Communication Videos! Okay, I know this has been on my “too do” lists for the past two years, but this time, it’s actually happening! I got a special microphone for it this year

Make My Own DnD Adventure! I’m cheating with this one, as I’m working on finishing up my first science-based adventure for Science and Sorcery. But I really, REALLY want to do so many more. This has been so much fun, you just need a lot more time than what a final-year PhD student has.

Dabble in Science Journalism! I’m trying to improve my science writing resumé before I head out into the real world. I’m currently in talks with my University’s science news department, and they said that if I pitched them an idea or two, I could write them an article and they’d possibly publish it! And I’d love to learn how to do some freelance science writing for the coming years.

Make My Own Science Communication Website!

Wait, a Website?

Yes; I’m going to set up my own website that has links to not only this blog, but also the articles I’m going to write, the youtube I’m going to set up, the workshops I want to set up (for future goals post-PhD), and (hopefully) links to my little book once I’ve finished writing it.

Firstly, this was recommended that I make a living resumé for science writing via a website. I started thinking about it, and after much debating, I realized that having a “home base” for all of the scicomm experimentation I’m going to do in the next few years is very helpful.

This includes the videos I want to make. Once I have time to produce them (they’re going to take quite a bit, but I’m so excited to finally start making them. I’m going to redo my first attempt at a video and then then produce probably three more before I start posting them on youtube).

Now, I know my plan sounds a little wild: a scifi fantasy writing blog, scicom videos, fantasy novel writing, journalism… and I didn’t even mention what I want to try on Instagram! Do I even have a scicomm niche or focus?

But you see, I can afford to test the waters. My livelyhood doesn’t depend on any of these taking off, gaining views, etc. Why not try everything to see if I have a gift with other forms of media? Why not mess around? Why not–dare I say– fail? There’s no harm in making something that won’t gain critical aclaim or “go viral.” Someone out there, even one person, will like it whatever I make, and that’s enough.

I’ve been keeping up a newsletter for the past year as an experiment. Currently, it’s very loosy-goosy in terms of content. I write how my PhD

HOWEVER, due to some of the things our current government is probably going to do, like censor science communication, many science communicators have started building up their own scicomm spaces via newsletters or substacks.

I’m not abandoning this blog, Instagram, or anywhere else I have a scicomm presence. However, I will actively start to pump out way more science content via that newsletter. I could go on and on about this decision, but that can be a question that I can cover in future newsletters, because it could turn into a mini essay.

In fact, here’s what I aim to cover in my future newsletters: 1) Provide links to other fantastic science communicators. The more we boost each other right now, the better. 2) Discussions on science topics that may be “misrepresented” by the media and government. 3) Updates on my scicomm projects (including my little book; we already had a mini poll on what readers want me to discuss during the drafting process) 4) Polls on future blog post topics. 5) Artwork that I’ve made for DnD or science communication. And trust me, there will be art!

And fair warning: my newsletter will not be apolitical. I can’t afford to be (see the freeze placed on the NIH at the time of this writing, and then note that I’m paid by an NIH grant. Science is not apolitical).

Onto 2025!

That’s all that I have for you all!! Here’s to a year of graduation and science communication!