Wearing Many Hats (and Doing Big Things)
I have so many job titles. It's confusing and chaotic, but fun!
I’m a science writer, strategist, journalist, policy professional, and educator. That’s in addition to being a neuroscientist — I did academic research for 10 years. At times, my skill set and experience feels like a Magic Eye — if you look at my resume in different ways, you will get a lot of different ideas about what I actually do.
I help explain science to people.
I train scientists to communicate better.
I help elect pro-science candidates to office.
I bring relevant information to the people as a journalist.
I help students learn to read and write (most often) and do math and science (a little less often).
I nerd out on bills happening in Congress and help people trying to make an impact in the policy world.
I nerd out on marketing and SEO to help people in the health, business, science, technology, finance, and policy worlds communicate better.
In a way, it’s exhausting and chaotic to wear so many hats. One week, I’ll be using my marketing and SEO hat, and the next week, I’ll abandon that completely in favor of helping strategize with a candidate running for public office. I’ll tutor students several hours a day, and forget I have any other jobs. I complained about this on Twitter and ended up chatting with a scientist and journalist named Lambert about wearing so many hats. It’s a lot of work — but I love it! One thing I really enjoy — and that I’ve talked about before on our newsletter — is the idea of bricolage, or bringing together different ideas to create something totally new and exciting.
I like having so many hats because it transcends the mindset that I should only be doing one delineated thing. It helps me solve big, real-world problems, because the real world isn’t just segmented into a bunch of tasks that require one person.
Recently, I got to help Science Friday come up with a neuroscience escape room for Brain Awareness Week. You can see that here. I was the developmental editor and science fact-checker for the neuroscience-based activities, which involves being looped in at the earliest stages to be able to provide input to make editing easier.
When I think about the work I did for them, it was a combination of my:
a) Journalism skills — What do people want to read about on Science Friday and how would young people want to experience an activity?
b) Neuroscience skills — What can young people learn from this activity? In what new ways can we fuse neuroscience and different fun activities for middle schoolers?
c) Education skills — What’s the best way to teach students about neuroscience while keeping it fun?
d) Editing skills — What’s the best way to explain activities to young people?
Would I be able to do the project if I did not have one of those hats? No, probably not. So, I ended up realizing that I am grateful for my many hats, even if it means that I feel like I am doing way too much at times. It also makes Fancy Comma unique for bringing together new ideas to yield new insights. We’re like a think tank of sorts, merging our expertise in many different areas: science, health, business, technology, finance, and policy (and more!).
Do you also wear too many hats? I would love to hear from you!
What Fancy Comma’s been up to:
Writing!
On our blog, we’ve been talking about campaign communications, since 2024 is an election year. I blogged about ChatGPT’s uselessness in crafting campaign comms, and gave some tips myself about effective political comms as well. I also blogged about trustworthy science in courts.
YouTubing!
It’s been an exciting month on our YouTube. I talked about our “rambling” YouTube series in last month’s newsletter; you can check out my ramble on burnout here.
I also did a number of fun interviews:
I talked to SciComm Shardul about engineering SciComm!
I chatted with Lambert Baraut-Guinet about wearing too many hats.
I discussed pandemic SciComm with Santiago Gisler, who worked at the European Medicines Agency (the European equivalent of the FDA) as a writer in the pandemic.
I also kicked off my SciComm course, which is no longer open to the public, but you can view the lectures here:
Lastly, I did some more chatty videos about things I wanted to talk about:
Wow — I did a LOT of video editing and captioning this month — but I had fun! If you have ideas for future videos or would like to be interviewed, please get in touch! I think you can reply to this email, if you’re a subscriber, or contact us via our website.
That’s all for this week! If you liked this newsletter, please share the wealth!