Sunday, June 7, 2020
By:
On the first morning of my internship with Physics Today, I sat at the desk in my Asheville apartment with nervous hands clasped in my lap. The chaos of the coronavirus pandemic had forced a complete reimagining of summer programs. Most institutions weren’t up for the task– REUs and internships had been cancelled far and wide– but SPS was determined to give its summer interns a valuable experience. So there I was, in the safety of my room, battling poor internet connection to log in for orientation.
After I successfully joined the zoom call (five minutes late), it wasn’t long before my nerves had calmed down. I’d briefly met the other interns in a virtual checkup several weeks earlier, and our group chat already make me laugh at least once daily, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the entire team– interns and staff alike– to be warm and friendly. Even as we talked and played virtual games from across the country, I sensed the potential for us to become a family.
Later in the day, I met Andrew Grant– my mentor– and any remaining nerves were displaced by excitement. The idea of becoming a science writer hadn’t occurred to me until recently, when I brought my childhood dream of becoming a best-selling novelist together with a love of science that reaches back to second grade, when I wrote in a journal that I wanted to “lirn more siens” (translation: “learn more science”).
Meeting with Andrew was fantastic. He set me off on an adventure reading articles from as many different science outlets as I could think of. I spent my Tuesday learning about butterfly technology that could treat cancer, black hole science that links energy and entropy, and sound frequencies that might alleviate Alzheimer’s symptoms. All the while, I was jotting down the ways that each magazine constructs their narratives to appeal to a different audience. A few days later, when I reported my findings to Andrew, he elaborated on the subtle differences between each media outlet. I’m only a week in, but I’m already starting to understand the depth and complexity of science journalism.
Halfway through the week, I got a book in the mail that Andrew had sent: The Craft of Science Writing. This book covers the basics of science journalism, from the technicalities writing pitches to the psychology of interviewing trauma victims. In the chapter titled Trading the Pipette for the Pen: Transitioning from Science to Science Writing, I read about researchers who left academia after realizing that they were hungry to learn beyond their specialized field. The tale was very familiar; it’s the exact same motive that led me to this internship.
Oh jeeze, I found myself thinking, I’m every writer’s worst nightmare: a cliché.
But, when I met the Physics Today staff in a virtual meet-and-greet, I came to realize how wrong that was. Many of the editors came from a similar motivation– specialized research wasn’t for them; they just wanted to keep learning– but each person’s journey was entirely unique. Just as I’d begun to grasp the complexities of science writing, now I was seeing the complexities of the writers’ career paths. I felt my excitement grow. I’m working with an incredible group of people in an exciting, ever-changing field, and I can’t wait for all of the experiences that the coming weeks will hold.
Samantha Creech