Wow…yet again it’s been a while since I last wrote anything. It started off because I was busy, and then continued because I was lazy/had time to do non-computer-related things…:)
I finished my internship at Science Illustrated and Popular Science magazines back in end-May. It was a really great experience, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Not only did I get to do a whole bunch of writing and editing, and hence end up with a whole lot of clips, but more importantly, the editors really went out of their way to try to help me improve. It would have been easier for them to not take the time and effort to give me feedback and helpful comments/suggestions, so I’m very grateful for the experience. And even after I was done, I continued work on my last piece, a Headlines article for the August issue on ‘Overachievers we love’. Unfortunately that article isn’t available online, so it only appears in the August issue table of contents.
Not only did I bid goodbye to my internship, but also to New York, as my wife and I moved to Washington, DC for her to start a medical fellowship Of course the move had me wishing for someone to go ahead and invent teleportation already (and not just for individual atoms, which is the level they’re at right now…). But now we’re all settled into DC, and I’ve been enjoying it so far–our apartment and neighborhood are especially nice, with great parks and trails nearby. Unfortunately I haven’t done any blogging though, but I’ve been exploring a little bit of DC and relaxing/reading before I get busy again.
Part of the reason I haven’t been busy is because I’ve had to turn down freelance assignments, since my visa status over the summer doesn’t allow me to work. But I’m not too concerned about the lack of writing (and blogging), as I expect to do pretty much nothing else over the next year, as I attend the graduate science writing program at UC Santa Cruz.
I’m really excited to be going there (and to be headed back to the west coast), and although I considered not going back to school, I think this is the only time that I’ll get to do so, and between the classes and the internships (one every quarter, with a variety of options like newspapers, university press offices and web writing) it’s going to be a great experience, and one that hopefully helps me get a good internship/job once I graduate.
I have to admit it was a pretty tough choice, as I also got into NYU’s SHERP program and Johns Hopkins’ Masters in Science Writing, and it came down to a lot of different personal factors, since they’re all excellent programs (and I met a lot of very nice students and alums from all of them. In fact, PopSci’s office itself has a whole bunch of SHERPies…).
But now all the decisions are done with (after I spent a long time being very confused…), I’ll be off to Santa Cruz in about a month! I’ll try to keep blogging periodically, at least to reflect upon my time there, but it’s a very intense program, so I’m not sure how much time I have.
One thing that could help, is twitter…I signed on several months back, and haven’t used it much, but it IS a good way to quickly post links to articles I read, as I forage around the internet looking for anything interesting. I’m also spurred on by the fact that I received a new Iphone as a gift, which I personally find a more natural way to tweet, since I’m not big on signing on to Facebook/Twitter from my computer. So hopefully I’ll be tweeting updates. Not because I think my life is so interesting that it’s worth reading my tweets…instead, I’ve come to see twitter as a way to broadcast information – a lot of it is mundane, but it’s proved to be a surprisingly useful way to search for news/information (with the caveat that it’s not exactly fact-checked, as all the false ‘Bill Cosby is dead’ tweets testify 🙂 So tweeting interesting links and tidbits of information is something I’d like to try.
So after a summer of a lot of changes, I have one more move, and it’s back to being a student again…:) One of these days I’ll maybe finally stop studying, and actually get a job, but clearly that day hasn’t come yet!