Category: My Personal Life

Book Review: A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius

Book Review, Good Writing, My Personal Life,

Generally when I become clued in about a new author I try to read their work in the order in which they published it. I guess there is no real reason other than I like to see the evolution of the writer as it occurred, their interests, style etc. I do not always succeed at doing this, as is the case with Dave Eggers. The first book of his that I read was Zeitoun, followed a few months later by What is the What? I recently got a copy of his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I was going to read it in Germany, but then I didn’t. I had good intentions. Anyway, I just got around to reading it and now I feel conflicted.

tumblr_l7tef8fihn1qaouh8o1_400Conflicted because I’m somewhat in awe of Eggers’ ability to put his subject’s voice at the front of his other books, when the memoir shows that his own voice is so strong. The author’s voice in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is nothing like the voices you get in Zeitoun and What is the What? I think I’m just having a hard time reconciling the fact that all of these books were written by the same person. I’m also not sure which voice it is that I find the most appealing. Eggers as he presents himself in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is simultaneously appealing, astounding, and revolting and you know he did that on purpose.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is a memoir, so as such it chronicles the period in Eggers’ life right before the deaths of his parents and the years following in which he takes over the responsibility of raising his younger brother. Eggers has a lot of self loathing going on, and while I love his honesty his feelings about writing about himself hit a little too close to home for me. They made me uncomfortable because I had to think about things I didn’t want to think about. Writing about yourself is weird. Writing about the people you know is even weirder, especially if they are going to find out you’ve been writing about them. I joke all the time with my parents that I’m going to turn their lives in a book and that is what is going to win me my first Pulitzer and launch my career. Eggers didn’t win the Pulitzer for this one, but it was a finalist. He did something I’ve always jokingly yet seriously considered doing and it freaked me out.

The only piece of writing I’ve ever done about myself and my family was to write down my September 11th story. We all have one and with 10 years separating me from those events I felt the need to have it written down somewhere. I pitched it, felt guilty about possibly benefiting from a story about a tragedy and about my family, and was more than a little relieved about the rejections that came back to me. Then I also felt rejected by the rejection and was sad that a story that meant so much to me wasn’t going to be heard. I think you can see the same mixture of emotions taking place in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Although Eggers’ story ended up quite successful.

My perception was that he desperately wanted the story to matter to someone other than himself. I feel like that is perhaps a characteristic of all writers, we want what matters to us to matter to you. More so when we are talking about ourselves. My story of September 11th and of my relationship with my parents feels like the most important story I have to tell. But the idea that what is so important to me wouldn’t matter to anyone else, and is not even comparable to the tragic tales of the rest of the 6 billion people in the world makes my feelings about the story fall flat. Then again, despite all of Eggers self-flagellation about everything his book was really well received. Perhaps because we all enjoy watching a car crash. All of us are voyeurs, we cannot help but be curious to peer inside the tragedies of others. But that still doesn’t make my story matter.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius left me feeling unsettled. It is brilliantly brutal. It reads the way I’d like to someday be able to write. It also reads like the diary of someone with more than a few screws loose. I find this impossible to reconcile with the pitch perfect precision of Zeitoun. I now feel like I need to go read everything else by Eggers in an attempt to understand someone I will never actually know. He is not just the author, he is his own character, and I cannot help but be compelled to continue as a voyeur. I want the author’s voices to make sense, but perhaps there is no way for it to make sense. Perhaps the beauty of the whole experience is in seeing the author’s ability to unleash himself with such incredible force in one book, and disappear completely into the background in another. Regardless, I’m impressed and I recommend his work highly.

The Final Countdown: Closing Time

Blogging, Employment, Grad School, My Personal Life, Science writing,

Tonight is my last night in Madison. I’ve said a lot of goodbyes in the last week, but none that felt particularly adequate. Most people just got a half hearted wave before I ran away, if you were very lucky you got a hug before I ran away. I’m not very good at goodbye indefinitely. It might actually be worse than goodbye forever. So, I’ve decided to take to the blog once more to try to say goodbye.

I vividly remember walking through the security line at Newark airport sobbing because I didn’t want to leave New Jersey. My friends were there. My family was there. All I knew was life on the East Coast. That first time that I had to get on the plane alone and fly to Wisconsin was the hardest. Every flight after got a little bit easier, to the point where I was happy to head back to Wisconsin. That change happened due to the people I now count among my friends. It happened because of the places here that I came to love. That change happened because I changed.

Photo by Erin Podolak

Photo by Erin Podolak

Sometimes it is hard to explain what I gained in Wisconsin without making my life in New Jersey seem lacking. That certainly isn’t the case. The bulk of my support system is in New Jersey, my family and the good friends who came along on this ride with daily gchats, emails, texts, and phone calls. They are the people who matter most to me, and I couldn’t have done any of this without their support, advice, and encouragement. But that being said, my time in Wisconsin was truly everything I never knew I needed.

I didn’t realize how close I was to giving up on journalism and science writing. It has been my dream to write about science since I was a kid, but in 2010 I was ready to give up. After the graduate school rejections, a full year of fruitless job searching, and working my ass off for free I came to Wisconsin on my last legs hoping dearly that journalism school would save the dream I saw imploding. It didn’t, particularly. Don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot. But classes themselves are not the stuff that dreams are made of. People make dreams. What saved mine was the professors who told me that my voice matters and is strong, the classmates who pushed me forward sharing my frustrations and successes, the wonderful journalists and speakers who gave me their attention and shared advice, and all the other people who remind me everyday on Twitter and on this blog and theirs why I love doing what I do. All of you contributed to bringing my dream back from the brink.

When people ask what comes next for me and I tell them I’m job hunting the answer I almost always get is “good luck, it’s tough out there.” Yes, it is. But I’m tough too. I’m more determined than ever to break into this field. Sometimes there are no open doors or windows, sometimes you have to burrow under a wall or scale the roof to get in. Sometimes you have to wait, or go back and draw up a new plan. I will not stop writing. I will not stop meeting people, or chasing the stories that interest me. I hope someone will pay me to do so, but if that doesn’t happen for a while I’ll just keep doing it on the side. I’ll keep trying. That is what I promise all of the people who have supported me and who believe that I can do this. I’ll keep trying. Wisconsin, the people I met, and the experiences I had living out here gave me the strength to try and to keep trying. I feel like I’ve gotten a part of myself, the feisty determined and confident part, back.

It is easier to leave a place, a time, a chapter in your life that you love and want to hold onto, when you know what comes next. I have no idea what comes next. Immediately I know that I’m moving back to New Jersey to stay with my parents until I find the kind of employment that comes with health benefits. But what that job will be, where it will be, and what I’m heading into, I don’t have a clue. That sort of seems fitting though. I had no clue what I was getting into when I decided to move to Madison, picked an apartment site unseen and agreed to live with a total stranger. That stranger ended up being the single most encouraging and sympathetic person in my life here and I will miss my roommate immensely. She made me laugh more than any other person whether it was at her, with her or at myself.

There is something I love about the unknown. If life was always tied up nicely in little packages, all planned out according to what everyone expects you to do it would be insufferably boring. The unknown holds the promise of an adventure the details of which you can’t see or understand. It is hard to say goodbye when you don’t know what comes next, but not knowing is life’s way of keeping things entertaining. You know I like to be entertained. So, it makes sense to me that I don’t have it all planned and figured out. I think that the most interesting lives are the ones that meander, the ones that don’t take a linear path. I want tremendously to succeed, but if I end up taking the long way to get there it will be okay. It might even be better than okay.

So tonight, as I look around my empty apartment, I propose a toast to dreams rekindled. To irreplaceable friendships forged over coffee and those Wisconsin beers. To going home again, better than when you left. To people who never let you forget that you matter. To getting what you need instead of what you want. To making your own opportunities. To the unknown. Cheers.

I’m so fortunate to have spent this part of my life in this place with these people. I wouldn’t trade the depression and tears or the joy and laughter for anything. As much as we might want to slow time down and hold onto a moment, we have to let moments pass. My moment in Wisconsin has passed, and it’s time to move on. On to the next adventure. There is a lot about Wisconsin that I’m going to miss dearly, but I’m ready to meet whatever comes next. So goodbye, and thank you.

The Final Countdown (Part IV): Time To Panic?

Blogging, Employment, Grad School, My Personal Life

Dear readers, please excuse me while I have a quarter life crisis. We’ll get back to your regularly scheduled science writing posts momentarily. The last few weeks have seen such a mix of emotions, that it seems necessary to collect them in a blog post as an update for my semester long series about graduation and saying goodbye to Madison. So here is a self indulgent list of all the thoughts ricocheting in my brain. My hope is that a post like this chronicling the weird, pathetic, and hopeful thoughts of a graduate, a graduate school graduate mind you, about to be turned loose in the world will be one that others can commiserate with. I’m taking this to a blog post just to tell you that you don’t have to worry, there are other people out there freaking out. I am one of them.

  • I did not appreciate how amazing and wonderful the city of Madison is nearly enough. Now that I’m leaving it, now that the flight is booked, now is when I start to love it.
  • Having attended a small private school and now a large state university I can say that they each provide a very different experience. I’m glad to have gotten a taste of both.
  • The one thing I am dreading most about presenting my final portfolio to my peers is that in our presentation we have to include our “what’s next” plans. I do not know what is next, but I take comfort in knowing that I will not be the only person up there who doesn’t know what their future holds just yet.
  • The last two years alleviated the sense of failure I felt at not getting a writing job in New York City. It made everything okay because I was a graduate student. Being a graduate student was not the solution to a problem, it was the postponement of a problem.
  • Everyone keeps telling me that I am young and I have time. I’m 24, and it is young, but its not that young. I was supposed to have traveled the world and written a memoir by now.
  • I am 24 and I have a Master’s degree. So I didn’t write the memoir, I wrote a lot of other things! That’s pretty good right? Right.
  • It makes me frustrated to see jobs that I really feel like I could be great at require years of experience. You are supposed to do internships to get experience, so why does everyone act like my four internships and two part time writing jobs held while going to school don’t add up to three years of experience?
  • I do not know how to become “successful” in terms of finding a job that will pay my bills and make me a grown up and also become “successful” in terms of not abandoning my dreams and being happy. I desperately want them to be the same thing. I do not think I will get so lucky right out of the gate.
  • I do not know if being someone that everyone who has invested in me can be proud of, and being someone that I can be proud of are going to be the same thing.
  • How are you supposed to know the difference between following a dream that is a fool’s errand and following a dream that you can really make happen? Perhaps I am just an inspired fool.
  • The decisions I make now feel like they will impact forever. Everyone, including those older and wiser and those younger and wiser keep having to remind me that you can change your mind, change your job, change where you live, change who you know, and change what you know.
  • I want to ride an elephant, go to borneo, get a tattoo and jump out of an airplane. The last two are much more likely to happen than the first two.
  • I also want to have a car, pay my rent, buy food, and otherwise be a grown up and stand on my own so my parents can retire in peace.
  • Does going back to a place mean you will go back to who you were when you were last there?
  • Who I am now and who I was when I left New Jersey is not the same person. I feel the most like me that I have in a long time. The only crisis I am not having is a crisis of self. I am confident, relaxed and certain that it will all work out while still being certain that I’m going to stumble along the way as it is inevitable.
  • There are other people out there who are smarter than I am, who are better writers than I am, and who if I was doing the hiring I would probably hire before myself. These people understand how to properly use commas. I will probably never understand how to properly use commas.
  • I am still smart, a good writer, and willing to work really hard. I am also still idealistic enough to believe that if you work really hard you can make things happen.
  • I am one of the luckiest people I know. I have had such amazing opportunities, among them attending two highly respected universities. I am incredibly grateful to my parents for financing six years of education and for telling me to go after science writing with everything I’ve got.  Without them I would be living in a cardboard box with a sign that says “will write blog post for food.”
  • I am incredibly grateful to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for being everything I never knew I needed. There is really nothing like the insight and knowledge you can gain on a college campus, especially this campus.
  • I don’t know that I could ever get tired of the view from the Terrace. Honestly, I’ve never been on a more beautiful college campus, and I was very much in love with Lehigh’s.
  • The amount of people rooting for me is seriously humbling.
  • Selling oneself in the form of a cover letter is awkward. It never stops being awkward.
  • If I had my college years to live over again, I would do a lot differently. If I hadn’t lived it the way I did, I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am. Thus I would not be the person that would live it the way the person I am now would. We do not get do-overs, so must find a way to be content with what was.
  • Regardless, in each case my undergrad and graduate school experiences resulted in wonderful memories, great friendships, and more fun than should be allowed.
  • The second time around, I actually feel ready to graduate.
  • The amount of opportunities, of change, and of chances that lay before me is another reminder of how lucky I am. I can go anywhere, and do anything and I will still have a cheering squad behind me. This includes running away to Borneo or getting a full time job with health insurance.
I can’t say that everyone who is graduating will feel the way that I do. I’m quite sure some of my thoughts wouldn’t have crossed your mind, but I do hope they show you that being optimistic and confident doesn’t have to do with having all the answers. Sometimes it is just as important to have the questions, and to know that you have what it takes to find the answers…eventually. I don’t know what I’m going to be, or where I’m going to be but I can’t wait to find out.
Final countdown: T-11 days until my last assignment is due, T-19 days until I move back to NJ. Now, here is some Bon Jovi for you, and while we’re at it here is a little Passion Pit and some Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox Twenty, Eli Young Band, Semisonic, the Talking Heads, Lady Gaga and the Killers because every crisis, especially those in your mid twenties should have a soundtrack.

A Science Writer’s Mistakes

Blogging, Good Writing, Grad School, My Personal Life, Science writing

Do as I say my friends, not as I have done. Recently I read this post by Genomic Repairman (@genomicrepairman) in which he provides 10 basic tips for grad student science bloggers, which are really just good tips for any novice blogger. I also read this post about whether or not science writers should always read the academic paper they are writing about, something I try my best to do but haven’t always done. These two posts inspired me to assemble some of my own tips and thoughts about science writing. I’ve made the executive decision to frame this post around the stupid things that I’ve done, in the hopes of helping writers new to the blogging scene avoid my mistakes (so that they can make their own, of course). Also because it is always more interesting to know how someone has messed up than to hear them talk about how great they are. So I’ve decided at the risk of public embarrassment, to bare my little science writing soul and share three of the things that make me shake my head at my own silliness.

Not me, but fairly standard. via Wikimedia Commons

Not me, but fairly standard. via Wikimedia Commons

1. Comment on other people’s blogs. I read between 5 and 10 blog posts a day, yet I am terrified of adding comments for fear that I will sound like a moron. I have written more than 200 posts here, but leaving a sentence in the presence of the likes of Carl Zimmer scares the hell out of me. I can’t tell you how many times I have written a comment, stressed out about it, re-written it, stressed out about it some more and then deleted it completely. I’ve heard over and over that you shouldn’t leave comments unless they serve a purpose, otherwise you aren’t adding to the discussion. However, most of the time I feel like I just want to say “I like you” “I like this” “This is really smart” and thus I end up saying nothing. This is problematic for two reasons, the first being that people I admire put themselves out there in a way that allows me to tell them I admire them and I never do. The second reason is that I can’t very well expect people to leave me comments if I never comment on anyone else’s site. I have a new resolve to get involved in the conversations, but new bloggers should train themselves to comment before they become comfortably silent. Make a habit of it, so that you don’t have to break a cycle of complacency later on.

2. Put an RSS feed and subscription options on your blog. Simple enough. People want an easy way to filter through all the blogs out there, and if they can’t subscribe there by RSS or email the odds of them obsessively checking your site everyday to see if you have a new post (especially if you post sporadically like I do) is slim to none. Why did it take me a year and seven months to put these things on Science Decoded? Hell if I know. I guess I figured, well I have all the share buttons so that’s good enough right? No. No, it is not. I should have had RSS and email subscriptions from day one, and I’m kicking myself that posts that did fairly well from being RT’d on Twitter probably didn’t get me any actual followers because I didn’t have an easy way for people to keep reading posts after they found my blog. Face palm on that one.

3. Read the study, link to the study. If you are going to talk about a paper, you need to link to that paper, even better you should look at it. I mentioned in the beginning of this that I was inspired to write based in part on a discussion about whether science journalists should always read the academic paper. In general, I agree with what I believe is the more popular view that you should always read the paper if you intend to talk about it. However, I also agree with the fact that journalists aren’t always going to understand the methods and technical terms. I think the rule I go by is that I have to feel like I understand the study, either by reading the paper, talking to the researcher, or talking to another researcher in the same field to back up what the study author said. Any combination of these things could make for a well written science article, but you can’t just regurgitate a press release. Just don’t do that. No one likes it when you do that, and all those people you admire from afar because you’re afraid of the comment section? They aren’t going to respect you doing that either. Have I done it? Yes. Is that the work I’m proudest of? Not in the slightest.

Bonus tip: If you want to be a science writer, you should hold yourself to a higher standard than that of EurekAlert. Hold yourself to that standard. For me, one of my biggest mistakes was allowing others to put priority on how quickly I could get a story out rather than the quality. Don’t put yourself in the position where you see your name on a piece that you know you could have done so much better. Don’t settle for easy. If it is easy to do, who is going to be impressed and want to talk to you? You need to offer something to your readers that they aren’t going to get from a press release. This might be an interview, it might be your own analysis, or maybe it is added context but you still need to give something. Leaving a story exactly as you found it, or perhaps just going so far as to rearranging the words isn’t why we’re all here. I for one am here to learn, here to listen, and here to talk. But, how much of those things can you really do if you aren’t actually interacting? Unless you start saying something of value, you’re just going to be talking to yourself.

So there you have it, three of my mistakes. I sincerely hope they won’t be held against me. I also sincerely hope that they will help some other poor soul just getting started as a writer. This isn’t an easy field to break into, and we all stumble sometimes. But if you are open, honest and sincere in your desire to produce good science writing I think you will find that there are people out there willing to give you a chance.

Facebook, As We Knew It

Grad School, My Personal Life, The Internet

Have you ever heard the term, “shoulder surfing?” It is the practice of peering over someone’s shoulder to look at what they are viewing on the internet, particularly if they are logged into sites that have content that isn’t visible to the general public. I recently read this Time article about employers asking interviewees to log into their Facebook so they can shoulder surf your profile, thus getting around those privacy controls. This has caused enough of an uproar that Facebook actually commented on it, urging users not to allow employers to circumvent the privacy settings as it is actually a violation of Facebook’s user agreement. All this (and some other stuff) has got me thinking about what role Facebook plays in my life.

Hello freshman year profile picture, you're looking particularly innocent today.

Hello freshman year profile picture, you’re looking particularly innocent today.

In August 2005, I was extremely anxious for my freshman year at Lehigh University to begin. My brother, one year older and thus a fountain of wisdom about such things, insisted (and I do mean insisted to the point that he set it up for me) that I needed a profile on this thing called Facebook. Back in those days Facebook was just for college students, so you didn’t have to worry about your mom, the kids you used to babysit, or your employer checking up on you. It seems crazy to me now how safe that little fact made us feel.

We posted just about everything. We wore our lives in the open on a profile, most of the time without security settings. We covered each others walls with pieces of flair and bumper stickers (yeah, remember those?) to show how cool we were with our inside jokes. We tagged ourselves in pictures out on the dance floor, beer in hand at tailgates, and crowded into the mirror in the ladies room (I shake my head at my own participation in such bathroom photo shoots). I didn’t think about the implications of such posts further than, “oh thats funny, except my bra strap is showing, alright detag.”

Fast forward seven years to where I am now, finishing up grad school and getting my ducks in a row for my impending job hunt. I started looking at my Facebook profile with a more critical eye when Facebook went from requiring a college email address to open for the general public. While in the grand scheme of Facebook, I never had anything on my profile that I considered particularly inappropriate (how lame of me, I know) I became much more vigilant about what was said on my wall and what pictures I was tagged in. I started thinking about how harmless jokes that I understood the meaning of could be seriously misinterpreted because Facebook took them out of the context in which they occurred. I’m now friends with both my parents and several of my aunts, which can be a useful barometer for the appropriateness of your content. I have my profile set for “only friends” and I am only friends with people I actually know. You won’t see any pictures on my Facebook profile that I would be embarrassed to see elsewhere on the internet. I understand that private comes with risks.

Still, the nature of my Facebook posts and pictures is inherently personal. Just because the content is of an appropriate nature and it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it got out doesn’t mean I actually want to see any of it elsewhere on the internet. Why should my vacation pictures be open for all when really I just wanted to share them with my aunts? That picture of me with no makeup? Yeah I don’t mind if my brother sees it, he already knows what I actually look like, but a business contact I’ve never met in person? Not so much. I feel like there is still something about the personal Facebook those of us who jumped on the bandwagon back in the only college days just don’t want to let go. Not because it was safe and personal, but because it felt that way. I have established Facebook for seven years as a running conversation with close friends and family. Turning it into a free for all makes me feel seriously exposed.

I use Twitter professionally. My blog is professional. My website is professional. LinkedIn is obviously professional. I have, but don’t use Google+. So what is it about Facebook that I don’t want to turn over to my professional life? I believe my main audience is on Twitter, but at the same time I fully recognize that there are other target audiences that are most reachable by Facebook. There could be real value in turning Erin Podolak into a business page, but I just don’t want to do that. I know I’m not alone in this either, because it is a sentiment that has been expressed over and over again by my fellow students in the social media for the life sciences course I’m taking this semester.

In class we had the opportunity to pick the brain of Sarah Bedrick from Hubspot. She gave us a lot of great advice, in addition to nobody likes a whiner she also told us to use common sense online. This includes but is certainly not limited to making sure all of your public profiles would hold up to public scrutiny. In addition to Bedrick, we’ve also been able to talk to Mark Schaefer, John Morgan, and Joe Sorge all of whom got asked the same question about keeping Facebook personal, and all of whom echoed the same sentiment that they don’t separate the content of any one of their social media platforms into personal and professional. It all just blends, and if it is personal to the point that you don’t want to share it openly you should probably think twice about posting it in the first place. I understand this, I mean it doesn’t get simpler than just “use common sense” but at the same time I still hold onto my Facebook “privacy” as though it is my precious.

Just use common sense isn’t satisfying. I already use common sense. I’m not ashamed of my Facebook, but I’m still not going to accept your friend request if I don’t know you. I think what we all wanted to be told was that it’s okay to reserve Facebook for just us, to keep it just for our friends and family. The truth of the matter is that if I think Facebook has professional value, I’m going to have to cut back on my posts even more. This will mean not using it for picture sharing, or to post the funny things my roommate says. Not because those things are inappropriate, but because they just go to a level of my personal life that I wouldn’t share with just anyone. If I don’t want to use Facebook to connect with anyone I don’t already know, then fine just keep it clean and keep on keepin’ on. But is my comfort level on Facebook worth the possible lost connections?

I think it is time for my generation to say goodbye to Facebook as we knew it. We aren’t going to get back the “safe” little bubble for inside jokes and silly pictures with our friends. We need to let go of that image of Facebook. It may need to be wrenched from my resistant little fingers, but then again there is a huge difference between understanding something and implementing it. I understand that safe on the internet can only be so safe. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

So what do you think? Should I go the public route on Facebook? (I’m only sort of hoping for a no…)