Clarissa Wright – Promoting the Intersection Between Science and Art - a podcast by David Mendes, PhD

Coming from a specific domain of research doesn't dictate what your career journey will look like. Your interests, your strong suits, as well as any extra skills you've picked up during your lifetime may reveal themselves to be instrumental and key elements in what you'll do profesionally later on. In this episode of Papa PhD, Clarissa Wright shares how different life and professional experiences built up and brought her from geology and microarchaeology to launching and editing an online magazine.Clarissa focused on her art from a young age, but her interest in science grew as she studied geology at university of Aberdeen, before completing a Master's in micropaleontology at university of Birmingham. After exploring various ideas, she entered the scientific publishing industry in London at Springer Nature, from which she started freelance writing and founded a science communication digital magazine in her spare time.


Join the Papa PhD Postgraduate Career Exploration Group!What you’ll learn about in this episode:

The role odd jobs can play in preparing you and in setting you up for the career you want to embark onWhy you should never stop nurturing your interests and hobbies
Why you should get in touch with graduates from your program about their career journeyThe gradual process of transitioning into your postac career
How self-study can help you prepare for a job interview in a field that is new to youHow you can build a profitable side-hustle through freelancing

This episode’s pearls of wisdom:“It wasn't until about 9 months later that I was looking around at what other people in my class were doing and I heard that one girl was an editorial assistant in a physics journal. And I thought:'That sounds cool – what does that involve?'So I just looked it up and it sounded interesting, so I pushed myself to apply for these.”

“I ended up getting an interview in Cambridge and an interview in London, and got a job in London in a large publishing house as an assisting editor. I was there for two years, during which I learned more about the sicence publishing industry, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me during my studies that that was a potential route to go down.”

“Actually, my job at the time, which was in the health clinic, I managed to use that as extra experience, because I'd studied geology. I think maybe during the application process or the interview I kind of mentioned that I'd familiarized a bit with health science during my time there, so that ended up supporting that unexpectedly.”

“I basically did a bit of research about basics about science public publishing like open access, blind peer review, and things like that. Those questions actually came up in the interview, so that was useful.”“I started thinking'how do I work best personally?'and I found that I work quite well just tackling different problems creatively, so I found that, actually, it would be worth it to work my own way, even if I was leaving a very structured and kind of cushiony kind of job. For me, it was just worth it to just have the change.”

Clarissa’s links:LinkedIn; Naturevolve.com; GNU Image Manipulation Program; InkScape Vector Graphic Editor.


Leave a review on Podchaser !Support the show on Patreon !

You might also like the following episodes:Dana Murchison – Science Outreach: PapaPhD.com/1

Kelly Bullock – Science illustration: PapaPhD.com/9Rob Hutcheson – Health Economics: PapaPhD.com/4

Tamarah Luk – Entertainment Law: PapaPhD.com/10Launching your podcast?
If you're preparing to launch your podcast, you may be asking yourself what hosting platform to use.

I launched Papa PhD on Bluebrry because I wanted a professional service that would interface with my WordPress website, that would robustly broadcast Papa PhD to all platforms, and that would allow me to grow my podcast in years to come.And these are the reasons why I'm recommending the Blubrry podcast hosting and syndication platform.
...

Further episodes of Beyond the Thesis With Papa PhD

Further podcasts by David Mendes, PhD

Website of David Mendes, PhD