As readers may have deduced from my first post a week ago, I have always had a very broad range of academic and personal interests. My dilemma is that my interests are so wide and so many that I often am hesitant to pick just one to pursue in depth, possibly out of some irrational fear that I might be locked into one subject permanently. For the last three years I have had the opportunity to satisfy all of my interests in bits and pieces, taking a class here and a class there while not confining myself to one subject area. But my time at Scripps is coming to a close, and the real world is looking very alien indeed. Where I go from here? How do I even start to pick a single career?

I first began to address these questions last summer after the realization that the job of research scientist was not for me. After much reflection about what it was I really enjoyed about science, I came to the conclusion that I liked doing science experiments and research, but it was learning about science that truly excited me. And I enjoy learning about all kinds of science, and in many different ways. I have also loved communication, and have focused a great deal of personal energy in my life to learning how to communicate effectively. It was clear from half an hour of brainstorming and furious scribbling that my ideal career would have elements of science, logic, communication, writing, and creativity. It seemed so clear that being a science writer would be the ideal job for me. Such a career would allow me to learn about new science constantly, and communicate exciting new discoveries to others and express my creativity in a variety of formats. Ah, at last I had found my dream job…

So I began the search afresh. I glued myself to Google for a week, hitting all of the major graduate program search sites and, at times, blindly searching on the web. I tried every combination of the words “science writing” and “science communication” in every department and every school I could find. I even got lucky and hit a few sites that were designed specifically for people like me that listed all of the programs focusing on science writing. In the end I’m fairly sure I found every science writing program in existence in the United States and Canada. The next step was to investigate each program briefly, looking for things like subjects covered, classes offered, and internships available. Most of the programs were dedicated to writing for medical journals, a specific branch that didn’t grab me. But once the programs that weren’t great fits were weeded out, the list was condensed down to a healthy size of eight excellent programs. Each had a variety of great classes that covered a multitude of media types and spectacular internships at great organizations.

That was when the uncertainty began to set in. I had run across one program in my search that was an awesome hybrid program: a year immersion in environmental science and a year immersion in journalism. It resulted in a dual master’s in environmental science and science writing. Among the many programs I had investigated, this one was unique in its inclusion of science with science writing. It suddenly hit me that if I went straight into a science writing program, I would be unlikely to even do classroom or lab science again, unless I switched tracks later. And if I did decide to switch tracks, it would be far more difficult to get into a science program after having been removed from science for two years. After the first bout of cold feet concerning a phD in astronomy, I was suddenly hesitant again. Was I really done with science? Sure, I didn’t want to do research permanently, but was I ready to never do it again? It seemed that no matter what choice I made, I would be cut out of one path or the other, the exact thing I feared most.

(continued in part II)