Escaping Academia

I decided to start a blog about my big career change.

I was a PhD student in Earth Science, but one year in I've decided to downgrade to a Masters and pursue a career in science journalism instead. I wanted to write a blog about my transition from academia to media.

Why? Well, to put it simply, I'm still very interested in all that science has to offer the world, but I don't want to do the research myself.

Now, it's difficult, when putting it that way, not to come across like I think science is too hard and I think journalism is the easy way out. While that's certainly not the case, I decided to call this blog 'Escaping Academia' as a tongue-in-cheek summary of my transition.

So, to go a little further in depth, why I want to be a science journalist specifically stems from a hate and a love. The 'hate' is for the way science is sometimes horribly misrepresented in the media, especially in the way science is conducted. In a world where an email between colleagues that mentions a 'trick' is taken to be an admittance of misconduct and akin to espionage in the minds of some, there is requirement for the general public to be better educated in how science works. Scientists are no longer revered as the intellectual elite, and while I believe they shouldn't be put on a pedestal, and that everybody should be inquisitive enough to question everything, my dream is perhaps if people understood the intricacies of research life better they could make more informed decisions on the outcomes.

The 'love' is the fact that I am that rare breed that loves writing essays. Nothing gives me more joy than having a bunch of complex, disseminated information and distilling it into something not only readable and informative, but enjoyable to my audience.

So that's my motivation. I hope this blog will provide some insights into the minds and practices of the scientists around me while I'm still in the academic field, before 'escaping' to the media world. I hope I never forget my roots.