Time really is flying this year. Can you believe that I’ve been in my new job three months already? Because I can’t. The first month was a whirlwind of information, the next gave me glimpses of the variety of things I can learn about in this role and that has only continued in my third month!
So, last month I revamped my day in the life of a PhD student series, to now show you what my job in scicomm actually involves, what I’m learning and how varied it can be. You can check out Chapter 1 here, but it is time to show you the next chapter in my scicomm career diaries. You can also see Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 here now too!
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07:28 – Tuesdays start a little later for me because rather than heading straight to work, I have meetings over at Imperial College London’s South Kensington Campus. That is one great thing about my role because I get the expertise of all the comms team at Imperial and all their networks and events in addition to the others. But I am also grateful because I get a bit of a lay in one morning a week.
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09:39 – Commute done and I have arrived at South Kensington on such a beautiful day. Meeting ready – but I don’t have access to all the rooms in the buildings I need so hopefully I can wiggle my way through and spot someone I know.
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10:57 – Time to wrap up our comms meeting. These meetings are really great for me because they let me know what all the other departments are planning. It stops me from staying in my institute bubble and helps with planning content for social media and the website with different awareness days and celebrations. They are also really useful for sharing your ideas and learning from what might have worked or not worked from the previous experience of others. But coming from a lab PhD background with no formal comms training, it is great to see another perspective on the role I’m trying to achieve.
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11:09 – But the best thing about having Imperial comms meetings over here is that it is Farmer’s Market Day. I seriously have to avoid buying so much of this delicious food every week because it is all so damn good! Well at least for the ones I’ve tried at least!
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11:18 – Time to leave the food behind, jump on the shuttle bus over to the Imperial campus I usually work on to actually get some work done today!
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11:59 – Back at my desk and reading an article about the scientist who created CRISPR edited human embryos for a different perspective ready for an article I’m writing about some amazing research to come out of the institute.
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12:24 – Lunch time! Featuring the most delicious brownie I’ve ever had from the Farmer’s Market earlier.
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15:51 – The rest of the afternoon has been spent preparing for one of our annual events celebrating women in STEM – and this year it is the engineering and physical sciences branch of our awards. One of my aims for the first three months in my job is to help with the deliver of this event. So, today I have been updating our guest list and sending out email updates, but mostly designing the event brochure which is nearly done and looking pretty good even if I do say so myself. Please feel free to ask if you want to learn more about the awards we do, or any of the events we host.
My event planning tasks fill the rest of my rather uneventful afternoon before making the journey back home at the end of the day. And that is a wrap on another insight into a day in the life as a scicomm officer for you – well my experience of it at least. And there is plenty more where that came from, so stay tuned for many more posts like this soon to give you more of a flavour about what my days involve.
Check out the other chapter here:
Chapter 1 – Chapter 3 – Chapter 4 – Chapter 5
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If you have any questions about anything you have seen in this blog, or about my career in scicomm generally, please ask me in the comments all of your questions!
Is this what you thought a day in the life of a science communications officer would look like?
I’m also thinking about making these style posts into video form – so if you would prefer that or would like that as well then I would love to hear your thoughts.
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