This blog marks the end of the #365DaysOfScience challenge on Twitter. This involves tweeting about my research, PhD life or other science which I find interesting every single day for an entire year.
As of today, I have officially tweeted day 365 of 365! Thank you to all who have followed and supported me during this, I am so very grateful.
The whole process has been a lot of fun and I’ve met so many fantastic people through this. There were many moments I wondered why on earth I started this challenge or whether I was going to accidentally miss a day or two. Thankfully, I made it!
I originally decided to give this challenge a go because I thought it might be a nice way to get me to use Twitter more. I could see the benefits for using it for science and many of my co-workers were big fans of the platform, but I only ever ended up using it sporadically and so never got the full benefits. That was until #365DaysOfScience.
I felt as though by sharing my research and my PhD experience on Twitter, I could help others. My aim was to showcase what doing a PhD is really like, on a day-to-day level, to those potentially interested in post-graduate research or a career in science. I also wanted to use my experiences to help other PhD students and scientists to show that we are not all alone regarding our PhD. A doctorate can be a tough process at times that challenges you both mentally and physically. To see others feeling and experiencing similar things to you can often really help.
Science isn’t fully complete until it has been communicated. A lot of science can be technical, complex, jargon-filled and often locked behind a paywall – hardly accessible for a lay-member of the public. Short 140-character tweets, I thought, were a perfect to help bridge this divide in an accessible and informal way.
Over the course of this challenge, I have tweeted about so many different things. Here is just a flavour of some of the things I ended up getting to share:
- My experiments in the lab
- The theory behind my research*
- The ups and downs of the PhD journey
- My science communication and outreach work
- Science conferences, workshops and events
- My 3 month “PIPS” PhD internship in Kenya
- Scientific problems I needed help with
- Interesting science and science communication articles
- Highlighting some brilliantly talented scientists and science communicators as part of #ScientistSpotlight days
- Community interaction
I will stick with social media for science as I think it is an excellent way to connect with both scientists and non-scientists. Sites like Twitter are free, you can share easy-to-digest short accessible updates each day and you can connect with people all over the world. To have a platform like this 15 to 20 years ago would have been unthinkable. The future of science is connected online as it helps to communicate our research with all audiences and helps to break down barriers.
If you have enjoyed my journey and would like to continue following my science and my science communication work, I will be continuing my updates on Twitter. I am also on other social media platforms and I also have my own website, feel free to visit and connect:
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/dannyjamesward/
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannyjamesward/
Website – https://dannyjamesward.wixsite.com/home
*This PhD research is supported by the UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership.