The Fellowship of the thing

I once tried to explain to a friend what exactly a fellowship is in the field of science – and I failed miserably by trying to make analogies to Lord of the Rings. At that point I realised that a fellowship in science is kind of opposite to the type forged in Middle Earth.

In LOTR, the eponymous fellowship of the first book is a band of warriors joining forces with one (or more) common goals. Although this sounds a lot like what science can and should be about, it’s not that way at every stage of a scientist’s career. When I was lucky enough to win this fellowship, it was, somewhat ironically, the start of my independent research career.

Despite the idea that independence is a metric of career success, getting anywhere in science is impossible without the support of hundreds of scientists/non-scientists/friends (elves?). The days of lone geniuses running experiments in a basement are gone. Perhaps this cliché still lingers, because when it comes to moving “up” the academic career ladder it’s often every person for themselves. This has always been something contentious for me philosphically. Science is fundamentally about working as a team to destroy a proverbial piece of jewellery/bring down a dark lord (I haven’t seen the films in ages so don’t expect any dazzling metaphors!).

One thing I took from this fellowship application (and many previous failed ones) is the feeling that you really need to sell yourself as a superhero. A typical application involves a few pages about the science you propose to do, how much it might cost, and then several more pages about why you’re the best person to do it. Is this part of the reason why diversity at top level positions is so low? It’s easy to be put off by these kinds of exercises unless you already have a very particular mindset.

In a typical academic career, a researcher will write funding applications several times a year, to keep their research going. I personally didn’t enjoy the ego-inflating aspects of my previous applications – it felt unnatural and unscientific and sometimes had a negative impact on my mental health. But this seems to be the current model for scientific funding and I don’t know whether change is on the horizon. What I do know is that university academics are stretched in many directions throughout their career, and based on Twitter posts many are not best pleased with the current system.

So unlike the type led by hobbits, a fellowship in the research sense can be a lonely pursuit, especially when moving to a new institution (or country). But I should end on an optimistic note, because I am thoroughly enjoying my fellowship and the opportunities it has given me to try new science and meet new people. I expect the new connections I make here in Graz will help me build a scientific team of warriors in the future!

Starting somewhere

How does a person approach a new blog? As someone who has never used this medium before I’ll be seeking advice far and wide to help me set the tone and themes, to make this a better and more insightful series of blogs. As a research scientist, I have experience in extended writing for research and review articles, but the style of writing and content is vastly different. Even in these first 3 sentences I’ve broken at least 3 unspoken rules of scientific writing: use of personal pronouns (although opinions on this differ depending who you ask), contractions, and a “chatty” style of writing. It might end up being a cathartic experience breaking free from these usual restrictions! (Exclamation marks are also frowned upon).

I’m going to start by asking myself some questions to help clarify the greater purpose of this blog, and hopefully not come across as something Alan Partridge would do:

Who Am I?

Without getting too deep and philosophical, I’m a research scientist who has recently started a fellowship overseas. I’ve changed my focus a bit, moving from a chemistry to a biophysics department. I will go into detail on what this really means, as I realise many people may not know what exactly I’m talking about (just as I wouldn’t have a few years ago).

Why write a blog, and not just be a twitter-er?

This is a tricky question… I think the fact that Tweets are short and snappy is off-putting for me. It seems like expert Twitter users can just drop a perfect tweet without laboring over it. That’s a skill I don’t seem to have and would prefer to share longer thoughts with whoever might want to read. I also have a couple of issues with how Twitter handles misinformation but I won’t get into that now!

Who am I expecting to read this?

Someone and anyone – with an emphasis on anyone, as this is not intended to be a blog for the scientists only. If anything, this is aiming to be a piece of scientific communication or outreach that will help people understand the life of research scientists. The majority of research at Universities is funded by public money, so shouldn’t people have the right to know a bit about what’s going on behind the laboratory curtain? (Just to clarify, labs very rarely have curtains).

What tone am I aiming for?

This might be the most difficult question and it’s something I expect to evolve over time. I’ll be very appreciative of any feedback about how it reads and what I’m doing right and wrong. I’m building up a list of pro bloggers that will be providing inspiration which I expect will help me a great deal. What I want to avoid: self-indulgence, bragging, patronisation, rambling… But there are other questions leading on from this, such as to what extent to I want to bring politics into it? It’s unavoidable to some extent, but it could easily lead down a rabbit hole and put some readers off. Do I need to react to every major world event in the blog? Not sure if I have time for that! And do I condone the use of emojis? Another complex and nuanced issue.

How long should an average blog post be?

Seems like a good time for this question, as I think it’s starting to go on a bit… But a very quick internet search tells me that 1000-1500 words is something to aim for. There seem to be two extremes of communication/entertainment styles in the modern world: the short and instantaneous snippet (e.g. Twitter and TikTok), and the slow and deliberate style that requires more attention and immersion (like those 3 hour real time videos of train journeys in Switzerland) but can easily be dismissed as “tl;dr”. For now I’ll sit on the fence and aim for something in between…

I think that’s enough of an intro to set the scene, will follow up soon with more content. So I’ll conclude (do blogs need conclusions?!) by saying that I hope in the future anyone who comes across this blog can learn something (especially myself!).

Not actually anywhere near where I’m living, but hopefully gives the impression of finding direction, or something. And at least it’s not a stock image.