I am now officially a starving grad student!
Monthly Archives: August 2009
Holy forged-mass-spectrometer-output, Batman!
Just got sent an interesting article from the Journal of Organic Chemistry written by its editor. He’s got some interesting things to say about their publications (or rather, their rejectied publications):
If only someone can work out the dynamics of that tingling thing
Speaking of gecko stuff from before, Nicola Pungo is one of my favorite people ever.
No, Grandma, I’m not working with Geico
It’s always a little tricky explaining the grad school thing. Not many people remember their high school chemistry, and even fewer remember liking it. Heading off to UMass in a few weeks has prompted a lot of friends and family to ask what I’m going to grad school for. Once they hear it’s for chemistry-ish studies, well, then it’s always “what are you doing that for?” (Note: snark is my own. It’s really not that bad.)
I love talking about my work last summer with Al Crosby’s group because it’s so much better than trying to explain to my grandmother what a polymer is (which invariably leads to one of quoting The Graduate). There’s a time and place talking about long-chains and functional groups, and it’s usually not over dinner with my parents’ friends (although was an awesomely unexpected exception at a fundraising dinner for the National Yiddish Book Center). But gecko feet! Everyone knows geckos; everyone likes geckos! At least they like theoretical geckos. Actual geckos scurrying about the room usually aren’t as welcome. So saying I tried to design synthetic gecko feet, useful for anything that needs super gecko-stickiness to come on and off easily, is a good way to gradually address the fun chemistry bits. (Footnote: I actually gave up on synthetic gecko feet really quickly after A.) it turned out to be way out of my league for a 10-week research stint, and B.) we accidentally stumbled on something much more interesting experimentally but much less interesting to talk to random passers-by about. I’m sure the geckos will enjoy their sticky superiority that much longer).
Hello from the Land of Science!
I’ve always felt a bit weird about scientific writing. I certainly see the point, and I understand why it’s important. Scientific writing has an objective precision that you need when presenting research and experimental techniques to a peer-reviewing audience. It’s just dreadfully boring to read, is all. It’s fun in exactly the same way reading your cell phone manual is fun: you slog through it so that afterwards you can come up to your buddy and go “Hey, look what I just found out I can do!” as you make the phone play Outkast’s “Hey Ya” or you explosively ignite a thermite reaction.
There are plenty of good popular science and technology writers out there. The entire journalistic collective of Wired magazine is a particular favorite of mine, for example, and the annual The Best American Science Writing [insert year here] collections are great places to start. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places (and maybe someone can point me in the right places?), but it seems to me that the catch is that there are precious few popular science writers these days who are still actively engaged in research. There’s a certain reluctance to sit down and write things for pleasure when you could instead be playing with big lasers and impressive glassware in a laboratory like Dr. No’s, I imagine.
“So what’s the deal with this oh-so-cleverly named blog?” those who have not yet figured it out may be asking. I’m starting up my MS/PhD studies in the coming weeks, and already I’m a bit terrified at the prospect of having to solely write things with titles like “Synthetic Strategies Employing Moth Flatulence in the Assembly of Chiral Moieties” for at least the next, oh, five years or so. I envision this as being both an outlet for telling stories about today’s scientific research world and as an opportunity to practice my accessible “popular” science writing. And for anyone wanting to read it, I promise not to say things like “the extrinsic factors of oxidative work-up.” Not much anyway.