This semester, I have three classes: one on Mondays, one on Wednesdays, and then an all-day class on Thursdays. The first class is New Media, and focuses on familiarizing myself with social media platforms that are used for science communication (e.g., Twitter, YouTube, blogs, podcasts). Since I only got a smartphone last May—I still miss my dumbphone, *sniff*—I am relatively new to mobile-specific social media platforms, like Snapchat. I feel this class will connect me a lot more strongly with the digital world of science communication, plus teach me a lot of nifty ways to analyze social media data (when I have time, I need to update you all on this amazing tool called Treeverse for pulling data from Twitter threads).
The next class is Practice I: Orientation. Such a descriptive title, I know. It is NOT as bland as it sounds, though! In this class, we are working on our presentation skills, through assignments like giving presentations ourselves to being paired with biology graduate students to help them script a TED-like talk about their research. I have to give my first presentation on Wednesday, and I'll be presenting the talk I'll be giving at the American Physical Society conference in March (why not hit two birds with one stone? Practice my speech while fulfilling a class requirement).
The Thursday class will likely be the most intense: Communicating Science Through Exhibits. In this class, I'll be working at Science North (the local science center) to develop an exhibit prototype that will be displayed for visitors during March break. If it receives positive attention and engagement behaviors from the visitors, Science North could potentially make it a permanent exhibit! This class was one of two courses we had to choose from, and the majority of my cohort decided on the other class, Traditional Media. I didn't for two reasons: 1) I already covered all that information during my communication bachelor's and 2) I have never designed an exhibit before and want to add that to my skill set. There are only five of the 14 of us in Exhibits, but I don't mind since that means we each will have more time to use the machine shop to build our projects. What will my project be, you may wonder? Another girl and I will build an exhibit on gravitational waves!! More information on that coming soon...
Since the Exhibits course is at Science North, I've been spending more time there than I did last semester. I'm really glad because that is one reason I was so excited to enroll in this program. I spent a large amount of time there today with some of the other Exhibit students working on our first homework assignment, and took quite a few pictures to share so you can get an idea of the fun I'll be having this semester. :)
So many big things on the horizon! So little time! The local high schools have finals this coming week, so I've been pulling a lot of extra tutoring hours to get them ready. Once I get my students through that (and get myself through all the homework due this week), I hope things will slow down a bit and I'll be able to post again soon. :)