I'm a professor at a small, private college located in Utica, a small city in central/upstate New York state. I teach a lot of courses each semester (4 - 5 courses, or 12 - 15 contact hours per week), which doesn't leave much time for research. But I love research, so I work hard to make time in my schedule for it.
To be frank, I'm not so sure about starting this blog, because perhaps it will take time away from getting my research done. But there have been a lot of calls recently for scientists to improve our PR skills. Although I have mixed feelings about these calls to action (maybe that's a subject for another blog post), I do think that scientists need to do more outreach.
Here is my current vision for how to use this blog:
1) I won't worry about making my writing grammatically flawless. If you want edited perfection, please just go away now. There are sure to be dangling participles and misplaced modifiers ahead! I'm sorry, I really am. I feel your pain. I know how annoying it is to see YET MORE grammatical errors and typos, in a world that is full of them! But I'm not quite sorry enough that I'm willing to spend hours editing blog posts when I could be teaching, researching, spending time with family, beekeeping, gardening, exercising, etc....
2) I may or may not cite every. single. thing. as I write. I am scrupulously careful about citing my sources when I write for the scientific literature. It makes the writing process very slow and laborious, but it is essential, ethical, 100% not optional, required, MUST-DO!--I believe in citing very strongly. However, I feel that writing for a blog should be light and quick, and at least a little bit fun for me.
3) I might not put a lot of pretty pictures in the middle of my text. I often seek out cooking recipes on blogs, and the recipe writers like to put many well-lit, attractive images of:
--the ingredients,
--the mixing of the ingredients (at all stages),
--and the final product from multiple angles.
These images seem to be for aesthetic purposes only, not to improve understanding. So I find all the incessant pictures irritating rather than illuminating. {Grumpy professor eyebrows DOWN.} They will also bog down the writing process (see "light and quick," above).
4) I will share at least one "file drawer" study. File drawer studies refer to unpublished research, particularly studies with null results, i.e., no statistical sign of a treatment effect. Probably all scientists have a few of these studies sitting around for various reasons. I try to not have file drawer studies--I will explain why later--but I do have one right now, and have for a few years. This frustrates me. (Side note: for some reason I remembered these studies being called "file cabinet studies." Not sure how I expanded from one drawer to the entire file cabinet.)
5) I'll attempt to do a press release-type summary of two of my studies that will be published later this year. Both of these studies were done with my much-valued collaborators. I LOVE my collaborators (and actually, that might be another good topic for a blog post).
6) I might talk about some honeybee research as I come across it. Or discuss some aspects of my beekeeping operation, Irish Ridge Honey.
7) I might talk a bit about what it's like to work as a professor in higher education.
8) I will almost always put two spaces after every period, and will unfailingly make use of the Oxford comma.
And now, I see that I have let the fire go out while I wrote this! Time to go for now.
To be frank, I'm not so sure about starting this blog, because perhaps it will take time away from getting my research done. But there have been a lot of calls recently for scientists to improve our PR skills. Although I have mixed feelings about these calls to action (maybe that's a subject for another blog post), I do think that scientists need to do more outreach.
Here is my current vision for how to use this blog:
1) I won't worry about making my writing grammatically flawless. If you want edited perfection, please just go away now. There are sure to be dangling participles and misplaced modifiers ahead! I'm sorry, I really am. I feel your pain. I know how annoying it is to see YET MORE grammatical errors and typos, in a world that is full of them! But I'm not quite sorry enough that I'm willing to spend hours editing blog posts when I could be teaching, researching, spending time with family, beekeeping, gardening, exercising, etc....
2) I may or may not cite every. single. thing. as I write. I am scrupulously careful about citing my sources when I write for the scientific literature. It makes the writing process very slow and laborious, but it is essential, ethical, 100% not optional, required, MUST-DO!--I believe in citing very strongly. However, I feel that writing for a blog should be light and quick, and at least a little bit fun for me.
3) I might not put a lot of pretty pictures in the middle of my text. I often seek out cooking recipes on blogs, and the recipe writers like to put many well-lit, attractive images of:
--the ingredients,
--the mixing of the ingredients (at all stages),
--and the final product from multiple angles.
These images seem to be for aesthetic purposes only, not to improve understanding. So I find all the incessant pictures irritating rather than illuminating. {Grumpy professor eyebrows DOWN.} They will also bog down the writing process (see "light and quick," above).
4) I will share at least one "file drawer" study. File drawer studies refer to unpublished research, particularly studies with null results, i.e., no statistical sign of a treatment effect. Probably all scientists have a few of these studies sitting around for various reasons. I try to not have file drawer studies--I will explain why later--but I do have one right now, and have for a few years. This frustrates me. (Side note: for some reason I remembered these studies being called "file cabinet studies." Not sure how I expanded from one drawer to the entire file cabinet.)
5) I'll attempt to do a press release-type summary of two of my studies that will be published later this year. Both of these studies were done with my much-valued collaborators. I LOVE my collaborators (and actually, that might be another good topic for a blog post).
6) I might talk about some honeybee research as I come across it. Or discuss some aspects of my beekeeping operation, Irish Ridge Honey.
7) I might talk a bit about what it's like to work as a professor in higher education.
8) I will almost always put two spaces after every period, and will unfailingly make use of the Oxford comma.
And now, I see that I have let the fire go out while I wrote this! Time to go for now.
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