Introducing… GSC Blogs!

Hello World!

This is the first post to the blog organized by the Boston University Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student Committee (BU BME GSC). This first post is intended to outline the purpose of the blog, just as the first lines of any good analysis code outline the purpose of the code that follows.

Recently, I was attending some of the career development events hosted by the BU BEST program. They were discussing the variety of career options available to PhDs in science, many of which involve writing to different audiences than the standard audiences of journals we typically publish in and write for. I started thinking, “How can I get experience and practice writing to a different audience than the hard science writing I am used to doing?”

I decided that writing a blog would be a great avenue to get experience with this writing. However, one thing I learned about blogging from my wife is it takes a decent amount both time and energy to continually post and update a blog in a manner that is worth following. It typically involves a post every few days, with typically once a week at minimum. I don’t feel I have the time and energy to keep this up in addition to my many responsibilities as a graduate student.

This is when I thought, we should start a crowd-sourced blog for the graduate students in the BME department at BU. I’m sure I’m not the only one with these concerns and interests, and distributed blogging power will be more beneficial to everyone involved. The GSC has organized and put together many fantastic resources for graduate students in BME at BU, such as practice giving oral talks and other social and service activities. I contacted the GSC about sponsoring a shared, crowd-sourced blog to practice our writing skills in addition to the other skills they provide events to help us develop. Thanks to the smooth rolling efficiency of the GSC at BU, here we are a month or so later with our first blog post!

In my mind, this crowd-sourced blog will have a few purposes and benefits that I thought would be good to share for anyone interested in posting to the blog:

For Current BU BME Graduate Students

1. This blog is a place to practice science communication.
As I was thinking during the career development meeting, writing is a skill that can be learned and practiced for improvement. I see this blog as a place that we can practice our written communication in ways that extend beyond the writing we do for our scientific papers. If anyone wants to write a science policy piece on something they are passionate about, this blog is a great way to disburse it. Done some statistical investigation of some odd point of interest a la the website FiveThirtyEight? Post it to the blog for everyone’s benefit. I have also learned in talking to my wife that the easiest way to figure out what I really don’t understand about my own research is to try and explain it in a very simplified manner (She is an American Studies/History major). I feel that as we have this blog as an outlet to practice science writing in a less threatening manner, our overall abilities to communicate as researchers will improve.

2. This blog is a place to share elements of daily life to strengthen the graduate student sense of community in BME at BU.
One thing I have loved about my time at BU is that we have a multifaceted graduate student population. In my lab office alone, there are six of us that claim different beliefs spread across the spectrum of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Atheism. This blog can be a fantastic place to share and learn about the different interests, thoughts, beliefs, and activities we all participate in to get to know each other better and diversify our understanding of how the world works. I also see this as being beneficial in discussing and making career plans and open doors to potential interesting collaborations in our research moving forward. Last, but not least, it can be a way to share, highlight, and discuss the FUN things we get to do as graduate students (Both in and out of the lab).

For Others Outside of BU BME
1. This blog provides and idea of what graduate student life is like for prospective and incoming graduate students.
This blog can be provided to supplement the survival guide provided to new graduate students with more of a “day in the life” perspective of graduate life, rather than a nuts and bolts perspective of moving to Boston. When looking at and applying to graduate schools and external fellowships, I know I found a few blogs that were beneficial for me to follow and got me excited for graduate school. This is our chance to give back and inspire that population of students about our BME department at BU specifically.

2. This blog can provide information to the general public about some of the science we are doing in BU BME.
I envision some posts being able to provide summaries, thoughts, or input on the science we are doing in our department. I would also envision being able to add or link certain posts that we make on resumes or job applications where that might be applicable, almost as a portfolio or concrete example of our individual writing ability in the public sphere.

With these thoughts in mind, and any other purposes you’d like to consider in contributing to this blog, we would like to encourage everyone in the BU BME graduate student population to consider contributing to the blog. It will be beneficial to not only you, but for everyone else in the department. Send your blog posts to bmegsc@bu.edu for a quick approval process (we don’t want this to turn into a bashing board) before being posted to the blog!

Signing Out,

Kyle Hansen