Personal Story
Job
-Lots of emails
-Gets research stories out and educational activities
-Working on web page to highlight grad students and post docs
-A lot of it involves getting people to write articles about faculty research and coordinating people for various aspects of communicating the story (videos, articles, pictures, press releases within and outside of Hopkins)
-Lots of meetings
-Office generates obituaries, articles about new science, new seminars, events around campus, gets info about faculty and their research
-She was always coming up with new ideas and created a new position for herself
-Sits on animal rights board
-Talk to editors
-Read and write a lot
-Work on your craft
-Be able to tell a story well
Advice:
-Started with family and friends and then reached out to friends of friends, etc
• Ask them what they do, how do they like it, how’d they get there
-Always ask for more contacts to expand your network
• Practice being more extroverted
• Don’t be afraid of talking to someone new, they don’t know you either
• Assess
-Don’t get caught up in the specific wording of the skills- what is the more general aspect of that skill that they’re looking for?
• Project management
• Organization
• Teamwork
• Deadlines
• Planning
• Prompt in answering emails
• Multi-tasking- For example, you could say you’ve juggled writing a thesis, lab
-Read The New Yorker-Science and Medicine section, New York Times, Science News, Nature front page, New Scientist, The Smithsonian, HHMI magazine work, training for a marathon, was on this committee, etc
- Graduate School -> Post Doc -> Time off -> Job as a Cook-> Taught for 1 year ->Masters in Science Writing -> Internship -> Job with Hopkins in Marketing and Communications
- Always liked to learn about a lot of things, just not in depth.
Job
- Promotes Hopkins
- No typical day
-Lots of emails
-Gets research stories out and educational activities
-Working on web page to highlight grad students and post docs
-A lot of it involves getting people to write articles about faculty research and coordinating people for various aspects of communicating the story (videos, articles, pictures, press releases within and outside of Hopkins)
-Lots of meetings
- Was initially a media relations rep
-Office generates obituaries, articles about new science, new seminars, events around campus, gets info about faculty and their research
-She was always coming up with new ideas and created a new position for herself
-Sits on animal rights board
- Don’t need another degree or a postdoc for her job
-Talk to editors
-Read and write a lot
-Work on your craft
-Be able to tell a story well
- Everyone has a lot of independence in her office, however, there is an institutional style writing, depend on faculty for fact checking
- Collaborative environment
- She had no web development experience
- Marketing side deals with math, the health system and data on people and how to target populations to keep the beds filled
- Internships with National Academy, AAAS, National Academy of Science Writers (NASW.org)
- Huge need for science communication so there’s fairly good stability
- Wishes she could learn/read more in depth about certain research and stories.
- Frustrating aspect is people not meeting deadlines- there are lots of people who need to look at the final product and one person can hold all of that up.
- Average day 8:30am-5pm
Advice:
- Network!
-Started with family and friends and then reached out to friends of friends, etc
• Ask them what they do, how do they like it, how’d they get there
-Always ask for more contacts to expand your network
• Practice being more extroverted
• Don’t be afraid of talking to someone new, they don’t know you either
• Assess
- Assess your own skills- what skills do you have in lab that can be used in other jobs
-Don’t get caught up in the specific wording of the skills- what is the more general aspect of that skill that they’re looking for?
• Project management
• Organization
• Teamwork
• Deadlines
• Planning
• Prompt in answering emails
• Multi-tasking- For example, you could say you’ve juggled writing a thesis, lab
-Read The New Yorker-Science and Medicine section, New York Times, Science News, Nature front page, New Scientist, The Smithsonian, HHMI magazine work, training for a marathon, was on this committee, etc