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You probably want to start your own blog and share all your adventures, breakthroughs, mishaps, and sometimes sheer frustration with the world, right? Yet, the thought of setting up a website, having to fight with yet another computer language, and be witty and charming on semi-regular basis on top of all your research duties pretty much puts a damper on the whole thing doesn’t it? Yea, we agree.

There’s a simple solution, write for the JP blog! Write as often as you want and share it on our broader impacts group website. List it on your CV or personal website too, whatever you like. We can all band together as JP-ers to form and curate a mega blog, a communications/outreach super-organism if you will. With the goals of communicating science, showcasing the grad student life, and sharing interesting stories with the public.

If thinking about writing anything also tends to stress you out, you should know that writing a blog can be quite quick and fun. A paragraph or two can do! Did you take some amazing pictures on your last cruise? Make a slideshow. Figure out how to finally get that pesky instrument to analyze your samples? Tell us about your struggles. Did you finally figure out how to explain to your 5-year-old niece what you do? Tell us too!

And if you want a few more ideas here’s quick list the BIG blog managers brainstormed to get you started, but you’re by no means tied to any of them:

  • Day in the life  

           A behind the scenes peek in to what you do on a regular day

  • Local climate impacts 

          Explain to someone from your home state, why they should be concerned about climate change

  • Sustainable living

           Tell us how to avoid polluting our ocean with more plastic or other ways to make a difference

  • New research discussion

          Is the media raving about some new study in a field you’re an expert in? Chime in!

  • Fieldwork journal

          Because who doesn’t love looking at pictures of nice a landscape and awesome sea creatures

  • Conference stories

          Remember that time your slides kept auto-advancing during a talk? Help others avoid that mistake!

  • Basic science

          How would you tell a small human what ocean floor petrology is? Or epigenetics?

And if you want some guidance on how to simplify your writing from the jargon-rich lexicon of science into a decipherable, intelligible… simple paragraph or two we’ve put together a list of resources to help!

Send your ideas to big_leadership [at] mit [dot] edu!

Posted in Blog